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office.
    Which totally pisses me off. I mean, come on. Yes, I hit a high roller but the jerk totally had it coming. Plus, I’ve already been fired—what the hell else does the old man want to do to me?
    I’m tempted to duck out, to say to hell with the whole thing. But I need that paycheck—it’s the only thing standing between me and asking my father for money—and I’d rather hook on the Strip than ask him for a cent. Not because he wouldn’t give it to me, but because he would. The only problem is it would come with about a million strings attached to it and I am so done with that. It took me twenty-four years to cut those damn strings and gain control over my own life and when I did, it was messy as hell. No way am I voluntarily tying myself back up in them.
    My stomach is roiling a little by the time I get to Mr. Caine’s office on the thirtieth floor. Not because I’m nervous about meeting with the big boss—I don’t get nervous like that anymore—but because I’m afraid of what he’s going to say. This is Vegas and these guys have all the power. If he doesn’t want to pay me because the high roller has suddenly decided to sue or something, there’s nothing I’m going to be able to do about it. Not without an attorney that I can’t afford anyway. And not when I’m the one who’s so clearly in the wrong.
    Not that I’m about to admit that to him or anyone else. No, I need that damn paycheck and I’m not walking out of here without it.
    When I get to his office, I check in with his secretary—an older woman with short hair and a sour expression that reminds me of the nuns at Our Lady of Lourdes, the all-girls Catholic school I attended all the way through my senior year in high school. She tells me to take a seat, but I ignore her. Instead, I wander over to the window and look out at the Strip far below me. From here it looks almost magical—the dirt and porn pamphlets and desperation are a million miles away.
    I can’t help remembering a time when they were always a million miles away, a time when the glitter and the glam was all I knew of Las Vegas.
    But that was a long time ago and there’s no use looking backward. Or at least, that’s my philosophy and I’m sticking to it. As soon as I can get this damn paycheck and be on my way.
    I brace myself for a long wait—I can’t believe a fired cocktail waitress is exactly high priority to Richard Caine—but barely a couple minutes pass before the nun in civilian clothing tells me to go in.
    I head to the door leading to the office’s inner sanctum, but before I can so much as touch the knob, it swings open. And reveals a tall, well-built man with the broadest shoulders I’ve ever seen. A man who is very definitely not seventy-year-old Mr. Caine is standing there.
    Our eyes meet as I cross the threshold, our bodies brushing in the narrow doorway. And for long seconds I can’t think, can’t breathe. Can’t do anything but stare as my carefully constructed don’t-give-a-shit attitude comes crashing down around my ears.
    I don’t want him to see it, can’t let him see it, so I look him in the face, straight in the eyes, just like my mother taught me. But this time, it doesn’t work. This time all it does is make me shakier. Not because he’s a letch like that Russian bastard from last night, but because he isn’t.
    I blink, try to focus, but all I can see are his green eyes. Lush, verdant and filled with a darkness that seems to echo the one inside of me. It’s a darkness I’ve worked hard to ignore, a darkness I’ve spent so much time trying to pretend isn’t there.
    The fact that I can so readily see it reflected in him is terrifying. I should be looking away, pulling away.
Running
away. But instead I just stand there for several long, quiet seconds. Spellbound. Captivated.
Enthralled.
    I don’t move. I don’t blink. Hell, I’m not sure I even breathe. It’s only the wild galloping of my heart that proves to me I’m still