Page 8 of Knight Life In Vegas

I supposed it couldn’t hurt to give them that much. “Dark blonde hair, hazel eyes, looks a bit like she’s never seen the sun, and about this tall.” I leveled my palm perpendicular to my chest.

“Okay, okay, what else?”

“Curvy-ish. Cute as fuck stretch marks.”

“She a mama?” Dylan asked.

“I didn’t ask and she didn’t offer. Recently divorced, though. Ex sounds like a real piece of shit.”

Eduardo tilted his head, examining me. “How old is this divorcée?”

“Forty-two. Her birthday is next month.”

“You learned when her birthday is but not what her name is?” Dylan laughed.

“She’s the one who said it. I don’t know the exact date.”

“Scent?” Dylan asked. “I need the whole picture here.”

“Closest I can come is probably lemon meringue pie. Buttery, sweet, and citrusy.”

“Shame you fumbled her,” said Eduardo smoothly. “Her scent would fit with ours.”

He wasn’t wrong. We both had citrus elements—orange liqueur and clove for me, and lemon oil and black pepper for him—and she would complement us. Dylan was a tiny bit of an outlier with his leather and cherries, but the warmth and fruit lingered through all of us.

“Well, if you see a gorgeous lady matching that description who smells like pie, chat her up for me and get an actual name.”

Eduardo bit into a cinnamon-and-sugar confection, chewing thoughtfully for a moment. “I’ll keep an eye out. Are you going into the office today?”

“I don’t know why you even ask that anymore.”

“In the vain hope that you’ll actually take a full day off.”

“You and I both know I can’t do that.”

“Grinding yourself into the dirt isn’t going to save the business any faster.”

I knew he was right, but resting felt like a betrayal. Surely if I worked hard enough, the answer to all of my problems would appear.

“I’ll come in with you,” said Dylan. “Applesauce needs a good groom anyway.”

Applesauce was Dylan’s horse: a gorgeous golden Palomino he’d had for about ten years now. He used to do jousting with her at the renaissance fairs before taking a steady job with Night of Knights. He catered to our numerous horses like they were a pack of princesses.

“Well, if we’re all going…” Eduardo stood and transferred his coffee into a to-go mug.

We took the remaining donuts with us to bribe our part-time stable hands. It was still weird to consider that we had a stableinside Vegas when the two seemed so incongruous in my mind, but it did make the horses very adapted to loud noises.

The traffic was god awful, but then it always was around the Strip. Even in low season, about ten times the amount of people I would’ve preferred congregated there. I shouldn’t really complain. Having them there meant they could come to our show, and if they came to our show, then maybe I wouldn’t lose everything my grandfather had worked for.

Doing the walk of shame to pick up my children wasn’t something I’d been planning on. I’d originally intended to only stay snuggled up for a few minutes and then leave, but once all the stress had flooded out of me, I had fallen straight to sleep in Francisco’s arms. In the morning I’d woken with a jolt and slipped away as quietly as I could so I wouldn’t wake him.

I’d done what I’d set out to do: reclaim a part of myself I had let go quiet during my marriage. Except now that I had let some of my omega nature out, I didn’t really want to stuff it back inside the box.

I took a deep breath and parked in Ava’s driveway. After double-checking my makeup and pinning my hair, I ventured inside. Luckily the dress I had worn last night was perfectly suitable for an event today.

My attendance probably looked strange from the outside.

For a few short months I had thought that Lucy—Ava’s daughter and today’s birthday girl—was going to be adopted into my family before everything had come to light. It had taken mesolong to have our boys, so many interventions, and Andrew had known how much I loved being a mother. Taunting me with a third child almost broke me, over and above the betrayal of his affair. That was probably the cruelest lie my husband had told.

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