“Wait… what? No way. With just the three bedrooms?”
“I think you missed part of the tour,” he said.
He pushed out of his seat and waited for me to do the same.
Curiosity got the better of me, and I fell into step beside him.
“This,” he said when he got to one of the doors in the hallway, “is a pocket door.”
He pushed the door into the wall between the study and the first bedroom.
Then we were walking down a short hallway to another bedroom, a small sitting room, and a back balcony. A balcony with, I kid you not, a pool.
“Oh, come on,” I said, shaking my head at him. “A pool on a balcony? That’s a ridiculous kind of opulence.”
“To be fair, it was here when I bought the place.”
“Do you ever actually use it?”
“I do. In the fall and winter, I run for cardio. In the spring and summer, I swim.”
“I hate running. My cousins and aunts make me do it, but I hate it.”
“No runner’s high?”
“I think I have something opposite. Like ‘runner’s hate’ maybe. By the time I’m done, I make honey badgers seem friendly.”
“You’d rather be kicking someone’s ass, huh?”
“I told you about that?”
“That you’ve been trained in mixed martial arts since you were a toddler? Yeah, it came up.”
“I only do actual martial arts in my hometown. When I’m traveling, I take cardio kickboxing classes.”
“Well, you don’t need any more martial arts practice, that’s for sure.”
“Oh, no. Did I flip someone over my shoulder?” I asked. It was something I’d done a time or two with handsy men in bars.
“You did. Me.”
“What? Why? What’d you do?”
“Dared to question that you could do it,” he said, smiling. “I think I still have a bruise on my ass from how hard I fell.”
There was a flash. Barely a memory at all. Just a quick image of Harrison on the ground, eyes wide.
“Was that before or after the ceremony?”
“That was after the ceremony but before the lobster.”
“That didn’t get us kicked out of the casino?”
“Hands may have been greased. Plus, the pit boss really seemed fond of you.”
“I’ve been going to the casinos for years,” I said, shrugging that off. Even though my relationships with the workers on the strip were really important to me.
Up that high, the wind felt colder and more intense, making a shiver rack my system.
