He smiles. I don’t miss the way his eyes dart around the casino floor though, and I instinctively imitate the movement. I don’t know how he can still pull those strings when we haven’t seen each other in almost two years, but there’s no time to figure out what game my body is playing tonight. I feel like a yoyo waiting for someone else to make the bouncing stop.
Only you can take control, Remy. Ariel’s voice resounds inside my head.
She’s right.
“I’m here on business,” George is still talking.
I’ve spotted Bash on the far side of the floor with a couple of guests, the woman dripping diamonds, the man jutting his chin as if the world is his playground.
“I didn’t know you worked here.”
I face my ex. He’s good-looking in a Disney prince kind of way, all sharp jawline and perfect features. I know this isn’t what Ariel meant when she told me to flirt, but George is familiar territory, and there’s absolutely no danger of this going anywhere because, you know, he has a fiancée.
“Why would you?” I slant my eyes and give a nonchalant shrug. “I don’t have to give you a running commentary of my movements anymore.”
Man, that felt good. If this is how Ariel lives her life, I wish I’d followed her advice sooner.
His brows furrow momentarily and he quickly smooths them out. The smile doesn’t waver. “It was only because I worried about you, Remy.” He pauses. “I still do.”
“Why?” I’m on a roll; no stopping me now. “Is your fiancée harder to keep track of?”
He swallows, and his Adam’s apple bobs above his shirt collar. “Don’t be like that, Remy. You know I still care about you.”
What the actual fuck!
“Oh, is that why you couldn’t commit to a future with me?” I force an obvious fake smile. “Does this mean that you don’t care about the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with?”
His eyes darken, and the smile fades. “Keep your voice down.”
“Or what? Afraid she’ll hear that you still have feelings for me?”
“That isn’t what I said.” He tries to grab my arm, and I move out of reach.
“Don’t touch me. Go back to your fiancée and I’ll pretend this never happened.”
I walk away from him, and this time, I don’t look back. I keep my head up and tell myself that he’s watching me and wondering how the conversation could’ve steered so far off course that he didn’t have the last word.
Grabbing my bag from my locker with the new key that I had to pay for, I wave to the concierge as I walk through the foyer.
I almost make it outside.
Almost.
But Bash is there, alone, and it seems that Ariel’s advice worked after all.
5
CASH
Seeingher talking to that asshole George Quinn sparks the kind of reaction I haven’t felt in a long while. There’s a familiarity in their body language, in the way she faces him squarely, head raised, with no deference to him being a guest of the Rinse.
They have history. But the details can wait.
I’m only interested in Remy right now.
Sure, I’ve thought about her every day since that night in the guest room, the night she lost her keys, and got drinks spilt on her uniform. I dream about her at night and wake up in the morning with a raging erection that refuses to be appeased. But it’s more than the memory of how her body felt beneath mine, of her walls closing around me, of the way she arched her spine and writhed in my grasp when she reached orgasm.
It’sher.
