Cassie licked her top lip slowly and deliberately. “Both. I’m multi-tasking.”
Taryn shook her head slowly. “You’re killing me.” She glanced toward the bar. “Can I get you a drink while we wait for our table? Unless of course, you want to skip dinner and get room service.”
Cassie perched on the edge of a bar stool. “I’d like a mojito, please.”
Taryn got the bartender’s attention, and their drinks quickly followed.
“Do you drink anything other than Jack and Coke?” The smell of whiskey had long been a trigger she avoided, but her mom’s budget didn’t run to the good stuff even if her tastes did. She swallowed the reminder with a taste of her own drink and refocused on Taryn and her sparkling eyes.
“I occasionally drink bright red cocktails.” Taryn tilted her head. “Would you rather I drank something else?”
“No,” Cassie said, a little too quickly to convince herself. “No. Why would you ask?”
Taryn shrugged. “Maybe I imagined it, but you had a strange look in your eye for a millisecond. I’m sorry; you probably just don’t like my shirt. Were you hoping for an evening gown?”
Cassie smiled, which she did a lot around Taryn. Feeling so at ease with someone was a new and unfamiliar experience, but she liked it. A lot. She also wasn’t used to someone being able to translate the emotions in her eyes. That was less comforting. “Whiskey has always been a problem in my family.” Why not be honest? Like Rachel said, she wasn’t interviewing a potential wife and thus having to hold back the unpleasant family history until a year in. “But it’s fine, truly. And I love your shirt.” She ran her fingers over Taryn’s collar then tugged gently on her tie. Her mind took a sharp turn to imagining Taryn nakedbutfor the tie.Yum. She met Taryn’s gaze and saw undiluted desired reflected in her stunning eyes. Cassie hadn’t fully appreciated their color in the club or during their video call, but now she was mere inches away from them, she didn’t want to look away from their beauty.
“Ms. Taylor, your table’s ready.”
“Uh, yeah, that’s great.” Taryn blinked repeatedly then hopped off her stool and held out her hand again.
Cassie accepted the chivalrous gesture with her best demure smile.
The waiter scooped up their drinks onto a silver platter, but Taryn removed her glass and put it back on the bar. “I don’t want that,” she said. “I’ll order something else upstairs.”
Cassie put her hand on Taryn’s forearm. “There’s no—”
Taryn pressed her finger to Cassie’s lips. “There’s every need.” She winked. “Especially since I’m hoping you’ll want to kiss me later.”
Touched by Taryn’s thoughtfulness, Cassie leaned close to her ear and whispered, “I already want to do far more than kiss you.”
Taryn cleared her throat, and a short breath escaped her mouth. “Devil woman,” she whispered back hoarsely.
They followed the waiter, took the elevator to the eleventh floor and were seated with a prime view of the Bellagio fountains below. After the waiter had left them with the wine and drinks list, Cassie gestured across the road. “You were serious about those fountains, weren’t you?”
Taryn frowned for a moment before she grinned and nodded. “I was. I’m impressed you remembered though.”
“Of course I did. It was the weirdest question I’ve ever asked someone, but weird seemed to be the order of the evening given the turkey conundrum.” That, and she’d replayed every moment of the night with varying scenarios, all of which ended up with them in bed.
Taryn’s smile widened. “Theyarea conundrum.” She looked out the window. “And thosearespectacular, don’t you think?”
Taryn looked back at her with such innocent curiosity and enthusiasm that Cassie couldn’t help but agree, even if she hadn’t really thought about them that much. “I suppose they are.”
Taryn filled two glasses with mineral water and handed one to Cassie. “I think that’s one of the problems with staying in one city. You take everything in that place for granted and don’t stop to appreciate the beauty you’re surrounded by.”
“Is that why you don’t have a place you call home?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you didn’tnotsay it either. In fact, you and your friend got positively squirrelly when I mentioned it. It was quite the conversation killer, as I recall.” Cassie eased back in her chair and took the pressure off, though she did enjoy the effect she had on Taryn.
Taryn clasped her hands together and placed them on the table. “Not having a permanent residence freaks a lot of people out.” She unfurled her hands and fiddled with the multiple sets of silverware in front of her. “I didn’t want to freak you out…”
“What else about you do you think might freak me out?” Cassie asked. “You said you’d be staying in Vegas for work—what is work?” Given that their coming together was purely for sexual release, she shouldn’t have been hoping for honesty. But for some reason, she wanted to believe that Taryn wasn’t a player who would say anything she thought a woman wanted to hear just to get her naked. She’d been told all manner of nonsense by women in the clubs who had no idea that Cassie didn’t care one iota what they did for a living, what relationship they had with their family, or even that she was just an experiment. But she wanted Taryn to tell her the truth. She was having too much fun to have it ruined by being lied to.
“Tell me what you do for a living, and then I’ll tell you.”
Taryn’s eyes twinkled, and Cassie was once again drawn to study them. “Your eyes are beautiful,” she said, “and I’m an ER doctor.”
