He looked up at me, where I was standing in my wedding dress on top of my suitcase with my head and shoulders sticking out above the crowd, my veil blowing sideways in the hot wind funneled between the sharp-edged buildings.
His eyes were the teal blue of Arctic ice, a cool breeze on my bare shoulders in the blazing desert heat.
The prince and his wife enteredBillionaire Sanctuary,and the ice-eyed man followed them inside.
The black-glass door closed, breaking the cool breeze. I swayed in the return of the heat.
The security entourage swarmed into the cars and departed.
“Wow,” a woman beside me said as the crowd surged into motion around us. “Did you see who that was?”
But I was The Bride, a living statue, and statues don’t answer.
My gaze softened, staring above the bobbing heads of the crowd, down the row of luxury shops toward the glittering canyon of the Strip in the night.
The woman dropped a single into my hat.
Yay. A dollar.
The Luxor’s laser knifed into the darkness above, and the Sphere turned into an enormous eyeball that watched the crowd over the rooftops.
His ice-blue eyes had touched mine like a snap of electricity between us.
I knew I was imagining the connection. I’d read too much pretty fiction, back when I believed in love and happy endings, back when anything mattered.
It wasn’t a magic fae mating bond. He wasn’t a wolf shifter who wanted to bite me.
It wasn’t even a Craigslist Missed Connection.
It was just eye contact, and I was so sad and lonely that it meant too much to me.
A few hours later, a tall man staggered out ofBillionaire Sanctuary, stumbling through the crowd that parted for him.
His thick black hair was mussed. Drunkenness dulled his teal-ice eyes.
I almost didn’t recognize him as the same guy.
He flopped to a stop beside where I posed, busking, and peered up at me as he raked his hand through his dark hair, squinting from where he sprawled on the cement at my feet.
His voice was hoarse with drink.“Marry me.”
PART TWO
nicolai romanov
CHAPTER 10
the las vegas bachelor party
NICOLAI ROMANOV
Goingto Las Vegas for John Borbon’s bachelor party week was my first mistake.
The private plane skidded to a stop on the runway, lurching me forward in my seat. My notepad slid across the dark wood table. I grabbed at the fluttering pages but missed. The sheaf flopped off the table and into my uncle’s lap.
Michel Pictet, the uncle in question, frowned and flopped the paper back on the table with an imperious wave of his hand, as if my notes offended him. Silver iced his blond hair at his temples, and six decades of sun damage splotched his ivory-pale skin with brown stains. “I don’t know why you bother with trivial details. We have people to do this for us.”
The people who did this for us were stealing from our charities. This particular river blindness foundation was showing no decent impact, but I couldn’t prove they were pilfering the coffers yet. “It’s important to keep up.”
