Page 31 of Nothing Stays in Vegas

Choking out sobs, she clutched at his shirt. Her breath came in raspy sobs. “Cal.”

He tightened his hold around her, ran one hand over her hair, tilting her head back. She blinked through her tears and looked into his eyes. Feeling the solid warmth of his hands against her, Lara cried, “If you hadn’t come… I don’t kn—”

From the ground, came the slurred voice of her attacker. “Dette…don’t do it….”

Lara froze, her eyes fixed on Cal’s face as realization hit.

“He thought you were Dette.” Closing his eyes as if to block her from his sight, Cal shook his head slowly. “Of course, ‘fucking hot’, that explains it.”

“What do you—?”

Cal’s hand waved her off and she stopped, unsure of what to say or do next.

Finally, he opened his eyes and glared down at the pile of man trying to sit. The man’s eyes rolled and turning to face Lara, he tried to stand. “Sugar, I love you—”

Lara’s throat constricted, her ears started to ring, she had the sense that the floor was dropping out from beneath her feet. Shaking her head, she stared at him. “I’m Lara, Dette’s sister.”

Cal knelt down in front of the guy and grabbed him under the arm, hoisting him to his feet. Cal’s face was red, his eyes pinched at the corners, but his tone was flat, icy. “You stupid sonofabitch. Only a complete fucking idiot wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.” He was staring at the man before him, but Lara knew without a doubt, he was speaking of himself.

“Cal.” His name wouldn’t come easily through her lips.

He looked over the man’s face. “You’re the driver from the airport.”

“Yeah, Dale Edwards.” Steady on his feet now, he looked sheepishly away from Lara.

A muscle in Cal’s jaw ticked, the air around him seemed to pulse with the energy of a storm forming. He pushed the man at the stairs. “Right. Dale. That’s what it was. Just get out of here.”

“Cal,” she pleaded, trying to pull at his arm so he would face her.

Finally, he spun back, his eyes narrowed, his body looming. “Do you do drugs?”

She shook her head, confused. “What? No.”

He stalked towards her. “Do you suffer from multiple personalities? Have the ability to teleport?”

“No,” she whispered, her eyes brimming with fresh tears.

Closing the distance between them, he grabbed her shoulders. “So then it’s safe to say, with all certainty, that it wasn’t you in Vegas. That it really wasn’t you.”

She felt small in his grasp, stupid and foolish. Dette was right, it was much worse to come clean after setting the lie in motion. And now there was no choice. Dette forgive her. “It wasn’t me.”

“Did you know before I got here?” His voice was angry, accusing. “Did you know when you started emailing me?”

“No, I swear,” she pleaded, trying to reach the front of his shirt, but he held her away. “I saw you get out of the shuttle—and my heart stopped, I knew it was you. I knew you were the man I’d been falling for, for weeks. And then Dette ran in, frantic. She was desperate. It was the first I’d heard about anything happening in Vegas. She thought your name was Kenneth or something, so when I agreed to help her, I never thought I’d be lying to you. If I’d known, I never would have done it.”

His face was hard, his eyes dark. “You agreed to scam Adam into marrying her.”

“It’s not like that,” she snapped back. “He called it off with her and she went to Vegas on the rebound. By the time she got back, Adam was sorry and wanted everything back to normal. She didn’t want to risk hurting him, or losing him…but she didn’t really do anything wrong. Except pick the wrong guy to sleep with.”

Cal blew out a short breath, squinting as he looked around the alley. “You really believe that?”

Lara’s voice hardened. “Of course I believe it. It makes perfect sense.”

“So Dette has nothing but love for Adam, nothing to cover up?”

“That’s right,” she answered meeting his eye with indignant certainty. She didn’t like his insinuations.

“And you aren’t wondering, for even one second, what that guy was doing mauling you, talking to you like you belonged to him, thinking you were Dette?”

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