Page 1 of Menace in Vegas

1

CONNOR

I’ve never been the jealous type.

I don’t get attached. I don’t catch feelings. And I sure as hell don’t sit at weddings, drinking myself into oblivion while watching some beautiful barefoot menace sing a song that is currently ruining my entire fucking life.

But here I am.Fully. Wrecked.

I tilt my glass, swallowing another sip of whiskey, but it doesn’t do a damn thing to dull the ache in my chest as Allie sways to the beat, red nails gripping the microphone while she sings the lyrics with her entire heart and soul.

She shouldn’t have this kind of power over me. But shedoes.

And when she hits a high note, something inside me shifts.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

The room blurs. I swear my stomach free-falls straight to the reception hall floor.

I know her performance isn’t for me.

She’s simply being Allie Payne, destroyer of my sanity, casually ruining my life in real time. Like she’s been doing since the day I first met her and nearly beheaded her with a hockey stick.

What she invokes when she sings feels fucking personal. Like she’s pulling something out of me I don’t want to give. Something I have no right to feel.

I’m Connor Byrns, left winger for the Green Mountain Avalanche professional hockey team. The cool-as-ice, always-cracking-a-joke hockey player everyone knows and loves.

I narrow my eyes. EveryoneexceptAllie fucking Payne, that is.

I stare into the whiskey glass, wondering if there’s enough at this wedding reception to dull my pain. I snort aloud. Her last name is fitting.Payne.What I’ve been feeling since the day I met her.

With a long sigh, my mind flashes back to the moment everything went to hell, and Allison Payne stole my soul.

Shit was tense.Someone had broken into Harper’s parents’ house while it was under renovation and trashed the place.

Ford, my best friend and the man desperately in love with Harper, had called me, panicked as hell, because the front door had been left wide open. The progress the contractors had made was ruined by the vile things painted on the wall.

I gripped Ford’s grandfather’s hockey stick like I was about to start a street fight as I ran inside the house, assessing the damage. I’m nothing if not loyal. You don’t fuck with my friends—or their significant others.

Suddenly, the front door whipped open. My instincts took over and I swung the fucking stick wildly, striking first and asking questions later.

The five-foot-two brunette released a terrified shriek and ducked so the stick slammed into the door instead of her head.

“Stop!” Harper yelled. “That’s my friend!”

"Jesus Christ!" the woman yelped, crouching like she was practicing a goddamn earthquake drill. "Is it safe? Why is a hockey-stick-wielding maniac trying to decapitate me?!"

Ford immediately yanked the stick out of my hands and smacked me in the ass with it.“You need to keep your hands off this thing, jackass.”

I stared at him like he was insane.I was trying to be responsible and protect my friends from a fucking intruder and this is the thanks I get?

Harper didn’t seem impressed, either.

Blowing out a breath, I turned back to the woman I almost murdered. She was untangling herself from the crouch of doom, slowly lowering her arms from her head. Her gaze surveyed the room, looking for the culprit who nearly beheaded her. Her eyes locked with mine.

And something went through me. Something foreign that I never felt before.

I stared into blue eyes that reminded me of the Pacific Ocean on a stormy day. They narrowed on me, her lips pursing in disdain.

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