Page 112 of The Wildest One
Dad, these are grown-ass men. Some are married with children. They don’t need a babysitter.
Dad
Jolene, these aren’t just men. They’re the representatives of our team.
I’m not asking you, I’m telling you to be there.
Times like this, I wished my boss weren’t my father. As his daughter, I felt I had every right to talk back and tell him exactly how I felt about what he was asking of me. As his employee, I didn’t. I had to just do what he said.
But, my God, his order was making me furious.
I needed a break from Beck. That was why I’d only popped into breakfast, grabbed a banana and a coffee, and quickly left to hit the gym. That was why I’d spent the rest of the morning at the spa. And that was why, once I showered and got dressed, I planned on walking the Strip this afternoon, getting lost within the chaos of pedestrians and doing some massive retail therapy.
The pool wasn’t on my agenda.
Beck amnesia was.
Yet my dad was making that impossible, forcing me to face a reality that I was beyond tired of looking at, just like he’d done to me on the plane. A reality that continuously repeated in my head,You can’t be with him.
Me
I’m headed there right now.
“Would you like a refill?” the server at the pool asked as I set down my empty whiskey sour on the small table beside my lounge chair.
I would like ten.
Make that twelve.
And hold the sour mix.
But instead, I smiled at him and replied, “Please,” and returned my gaze to the tablet in my hands.
At least I was attempting to read. The book was loaded onto the screen. Except I would skim a line or two and immediately glance up to stare at Beck.
Fucking Beck.
He was in the pool, not more than fifteen feet from me, hanging with a bunch of the players. They’d just finished a game of volleyball. Which meant I’d had to endure almost an hour of his arms lifting in the air, his triceps contracting from the movement, his shoulders flexing, his back muscles tightening, his pecs bulging. And when he jumped to spike the ball, I had a clear shot of his abs, etched like someone had used a spade and dug an outline around the perimeter and middle of his abdomen, each one ripped from the tension.
But that wasn’t the only thing that had me completely worked up.
His whole attitude was doing that too—the way he was laughing with his friends, smiling, the sly glances, the flirtatious ones. With his sunglasses being so dark, I couldn’t tell if at any point he was looking at me.
But did it matter?
Ugh, this was excruciating.
And all it did was make me angrier at my father.
I’d been down here for almost two hours. That was more than enough.
The guys were fine.
They didn’t need someone watching over them.
Besides, I simply couldn’t take another second of this.
I waited until the server returned with my drink, and I closed out my tab and downed the last cocktail he had delivered. I then grabbed my cover-up—an old white button-down of my dad’sthat I let hang open. I tossed my bag over my shoulder and walked toward the entrance of the Cole and Spade Hotel.
