Chapter 3 Bash
BASH
She keeps looking at me.
Not while she’s working, but between tables, surreptitious glances from beneath her lashes, a tentative smile that tugs at something deep inside my core. And lower. The kind of reaction that I generally detach myself from in the workplace.
What the actual fuck!
Is my ego that needy that the tiniest bit of attention dives straight into my pants?
I’m a successful thirty-something businessman.
A few calls, and I could be sitting in my private booth with a runway model within an hour.
Not that I make a habit of dating for appearances’ sake; unlike my brother, I go along with it when duty calls, but I’m not okay with that shit.
The rest of the world can think exactly what they want about me, and I won’t lose any sleep over it.
But now that I’ve noticed her, my eyes keep seeking her out.
“Good trip?” My stepdad, Terry, has joined me like a ninja all in black, silent until he wants his presence known.
“I got what I went for.”
I just flew back from Dublin on our private jet. My twin brother Cash has been running the Rinse for me while I took care of some business in Ireland with Eoghan Byrne, my brother-in-law.
Terry’s smile is tight. The head of security is a cuddly bear when it comes to family, but here on the casino floor, he doesn’t let the light shine through the cracks.
When he met my mom, Moira, he accepted that she came with four sons as a package deal and embraced us all with open arms. Even when my little sister Emily was born, and he carried her around like a precious doll, he still had enough love to accommodate his four stepsons.
His sole request was that we all protect Emily from the knowledge that she was born into an Irish mafia family, and that her dad was the best enforcer in New York City with a reputation that could kill from a hundred paces.
Understandably, he went ballistic when Emily secretly married into a rival Irish mob.
I’d never seen him lose his shit before, and I’ve dealt with some angry Bratva pakhans, but even I feared how far he would go to protect his baby girl.
Credit to Emily’s husband Eoghan though.
He proved his love for my little sister and won Terry over.
And he only suffered a bullet in the shoulder for his endeavors. Still, it could’ve been a lot worse.
My siblings have been lucky in love. Caleb fell in love with Victoria, the woman he fake-married to get a psychopathic mafia heiress out of his life.
Kyle spent six years and fuck knows how many dollars’ worth of therapy waiting for Sienna, the woman he fell in love with at a costume party in a nightclub one New Year’s Eve to come back into his life.
And Emily met Eoghan in the arrivals lounge at Dublin airport.
Love at first sight.
Terry has rubbed off on us more than anyone realizes, proving the argument for nurture over nature.
Three down, two to go for a full house.
My stepdad doesn’t ask me for the details of the trip. We’ll hold a board meeting tomorrow, share information, and figure out next steps. This is what we’re good at.
“Glad to see the young lady came back.” He nods at the casino floor, at Remy Jones, the croupier who keeps glancing my way, and then saunters off to keep an eye on the clientele.
She’s busy on the roulette table, eyes cast down, mind in the game.
It affords me a moment to study her while she’s oblivious.
Her thick honey-blonde hair is tied into a neat ponytail at the back of her neck, but I can imagine it set free and swishing around her face when she shakes her head like an advertisement for shampoo.
The uniform is designed for branding and comfort.
But somehow, she manages to make it look sexier than should be allowed on the casino floor.
No distractions. We want our guests to spend money not chat up the croupiers.
But the table is divided almost equally, male and female, and none of them are paying her any attention.
Just me then.
The evening is steady. A couple of VIPs require my attention, another guest is refused service at the bar because he is steaming drunk, and Terry deals with an altercation outside the foyer. When my gaze finally searches for Remy Jones, she isn’t there.
Disappointment settles around my shoulders like a wet towel.
Don’t get involved, I tell myself. You don’t know anything about her.
I never let women in because I’m not ready to let down my guard.
I’m too busy building my business and my reputation to dilute my attention by falling in love, and I don’t care for one-night stands.
Call me old-fashioned, but I want affection too.
I want more than steamy sex, a messy bed, and a wave goodbye.
I want what my family has; I’m just not sure I’m ready for it yet.
My legs instinctively carry me to the staff room behind the bar, hoping to find her there. We almost collide in the doorway, and she stumbles backwards. I catch her wrists, and my throat hitches in my chest when our eyes meet.
“Sorry,” we both say together.
Her lips lift at the corners, and the bulge in my pants grows uncomfortable.
“After you.” I stand aside and gesture for her to return to the casino floor, inhaling her delicate scent. It’s fruity, slightly exotic, but subtle enough for it to not follow her around like a toxic cloud. I lean closer without realizing, and she doesn’t back off.
Instead, she chews her bottom lip and releases a shaky breath. “I lost something in your guest room.” She watches me with an apology in her eyes. “I thought it might be at home, but it isn’t there, and I’ve searched everywhere.”
“In my guest room?”
She nods, her eyes narrowing slightly. “The night before last. When I lost my keys.” She’s waiting for a response, and when I’m too slow catching up, she adds, “The guest you barred from the casino?”
I hear the panic in her voice, and I don’t want to be responsible for it. “Do you want to come and look for it?”
“Can I?” She raises her eyes to meet mine, and the pale gray is almost swallowed whole by the enlarged pupils. “You cut your hair.”
Jesus fucking Christ. The familiarity shouldn’t have the effect on me that it does. It takes all my willpower not to fist her hair and taste her lips.
“You noticed.” My voice is thick with want, and I see it in the way she licks her lips that she knows it too.
She nods. “Can we go now? I’m on my break.”
“No time like the present.” I sound too much like Terry, and the realization mingles with the inexplicable pumping of my heart when I’m this close to Remy.
I need to get my head into gear and focus. She’s waiting for me to lead the way, picking at her fingernail. Maybe she’s been psyching herself up to ask the question all evening; it would explain the furtive glances from across the casino floor.
That’s all it was, I tell myself, battling the fresh wave of disappointment. She was waiting for the right time to speak to me. She’ll find whatever she lost, go back to work, and maybe shoot me a look of gratitude whenever our paths cross.
What the fuck else did I want from her? This is hardly When Harry Met Sally. That kind of meet-cute only happens in the movies. Or to my brothers and my sister Emily.
She faces the control panel in the private elevator, but I see her checking me out in our hazy reflection.
I’ve glanced at her resume. College student, unremarkable background, decent references from previous employers in the hospitality industry.
She was recommended by another student who also checked out.
I don’t like that this is how my brain works, but it’s the world we live in.
Expect the worst, and anything else is a bonus.
But my gut is telling me that Remy Jones isn’t worst-case scenario. Unless she’s a fucking brilliant actress. In which case, Hollywood, where are your talent scouts now?
The doors swish open. I’m no expert in body language, but the way her lips part when she stands in front of me in my apartment foyer, her slanted eyes dark with something that could never be mistaken for menace, reaches straight through to my core and manifests inside my pants.
I almost do it. I almost raise my hand to touch her hair but stop myself in time.
What if I’m reading this all wrong? I’m a man. I don’t want to think with my dick, but it’s inevitable when I’m within touching distance of a beautiful woman who seems to have zapped me with some kind of irresistible pheromone essence.
“Which guest room?” My voice is still battling with the blood pumping around my loins and cracks mid-question.
“There’s more than one?” She looks away, and the sexual tension I imagined between us evaporates like misty breath. “I’m sorry. I’ve not had a chance to wash the clothes I borrowed, but I will.” No eye contact.
“Keep them.” It’s not enough, but I’m struggling to find the right thing to say because I don’t understand what just happened.
My brothers would be pissing themselves with laughter if they could see me now. I’m the cool one. The brother most likely to never get married because I refuse to let anyone in.
Right now, I wish I’d paid more attention when they fell in love, but I was too focused on the shit going down on the sidelines.
The psychopathic Sicilian heiress with a vendetta against Caleb, the Russians who wanted a slice of the action, and the longstanding feud with another Irish family.
Someone needed to keep their head in the game.
“What did you lose?”
Her eyes react to the question by meeting mine, and I see my control and resolve slipping out of my grasp. “A pendant. It’s a silver teardrop. It belonged to my sister.”
Her voice catches, and I’m powerless to stop myself. I take her hand. She’s trembling, and I pull her into my arms before I even realize what I’m doing.
“We’ll find it.” I breathe in the fruity scent of her shampoo and close my eyes like I suddenly discovered paradise. “It’s obviously important to you.”