Epilogue
COLT
Las Vegas
Seated at a bar, the lights of the casino flashing around me, used to be my happy place. I love watching all the people as they come and go, making my own personal bets about how much money they’ll win or lose as the night goes on.
I’m usually right.
Reading people is part of what I do for a living. How I make the deals that built my family’s fledgling lumber business into an empire in less than twenty years.
And I’m very good at what I do.
Tonight, however, the clanging machines and cheering people hold little appeal.
For the first time, I find myself wishing I was home with my siblings and my adorable nieces, watching to see what kind of trouble they’re going to get themselves into.
Lanie and Josie keep us all on our toes, and not a single one of us would have it any other way, no matter how much grumbling Elias does when they get into the snacks he has “hidden” all over the kitchen.
I wonder if Axel and Bram have realized yet that he deliberately hides the goodies where the girls can find them.
A soft huff draws my attention to my right, where a woman in a cheap, too-tight dress has settled herself onto the stool beside me. “Whiskey sour,” she tells the bartender, with none of the breathless cheerfulness I’m used to hearing from women in casinos.
Intrigued, I shift to face her more fully. “Rough night?”
She snorts. “Rough fucking life.”
My palm positively itches to connect with her bottom, and I just manage to catch myself before lecturing her about using such crass language.
But then she turns her head, and I find myself staring down into a pair of eyes the same color as the whiskey the bartender is currently pouring for her.
And I know, then and there, I won’t be returning to Colorado alone.
Vegas is the city of sin and luck, and both have smiled down on Colt Thorne in the form of a sweet, wild Little girl.
But Colt is about to learn that some Little girls aren’t all fire and fury from the start.
Some are firecrackers—slow to ignite, but ready to burn everything down around them once that fire catches.
See what kind of trouble Daddy Colt has brought home with him in Daddy’s Reckless Bride, Book 3 of the Forbidden Pleasures Mountain Series.