Page 103 of Vegas Heat

“Right?”

She giggles, and this is the moment when she’s waiting for me to ask her what time she gets off so I can take her somewhere to ravage her.

But I don’t want to ravage her.

She’s not Gabby.

“Well, uh,” she says a little awkwardly. “I guess I better get back to it.”

I press my lips together and nod. “Thanks for the laugh.”

She gives me a sympathetic look, and if it were another time and my chest wasn’t hollow right now, maybe I’d find it in me to at least get her number.

But that’s not where I’m at.

A reminder comes through on my phone.

Stay at Caesars Palace on Saturday.

Right.

Two days from now is my thirty-third birthday, and sometime back when Gabby and I were together and we weren’t sure where we were going to be able to meet up for sex, I reserved a room for the night for us.

I figured she celebrated her birthday there, so I should, too.

It was going to be a romantic night just for the two of us—where I didn’t have to worry about my boss overhearing my antics and she didn’t have to worry about her father overhearing hers.

Little did we know the man was one and the same.

I move my finger to cancel the reservation, but I pause over it.

Surely I could round up a few buddies to hang with me this weekend, and I could collapse onto a bed at Caesars rather than running back to Troy’s place drunk.

I can take the night away from both Gabby and her father to try to get my head on straight.

I move my finger away from the cancelation button, and I suck down my whiskey, pulling an ice cube into my mouth to suck on it.

The girl Danny’s been chatting with gets up, and he wiggles his eyebrows at me across the table. I laugh.

“She has a friend that’s meeting her here in a bit,” he says suggestively.

“I’m not in the place,” I say around the ice cube, and then I chew it.

“So what place are you in?” he asks.

I can’t help it. My eyes move across the bar toward Gabby, and when they flick back to Danny as I realize my mistake, his eyes widen a little as he’s looking where I just was.

“Wait a minute. Aren’t those the interns?” he asks.

I flatten my lips and nod.

“You’ve got a thing for an intern?” he practically roars.

“A, shut the fuck up, and B, no. It’s not athing for an intern.” I stare down at a spot on the table. If there’s anyone I could trust with this secret, it’s Danny Brewer. He’s a good guy who’ll take it to the grave, and it might help to have someone on the field who understands what I’m going through.

When I finally glance up at him, he’s staring at me with concern.

“Then…what is it?”