This man, as his eyes hold mine…he seems to understand. He steps slowly to me, strokes my cheek. His eyes are so raw and real, I’m sure he sees right through me, down into the pitiful depths of my self-doubt. “There’s nothing to feel bad about, okay?”

I nod—except I’m remembering what happened with Cross. The humiliating rebound attempt that probably wrecked our friendship.

Shameful tears fill my eyes as I turn and push through the bathroom door. Do I need affection so badly that I’ll let myself get intimate in a casino bathroom?

I wipe my hand over my eyes, looking down at the glossy hallway floor and moving as quickly as I can when I hear someone say, “Suri!”

I jump as I slam into something, and there is Lizzy, dressed in skinny jeans, a giant beige sweater, and charcoal Chucks. She looks pink-cheeked and beautiful.

“Oh my God, Suri! Are you okay?”

I wipe my eyes and nod. “I lost my purse and security acted bizarre, and I didn’t believe the guy was really security; I thought he was a kidnapper, so I ended up running off.” I roll my eyes at myself. “It’s a sad, pathetic story—” and that’s not even telling half of it. I sigh softly. “Where were you when I called?”

“I’m so sorry, I fell asleep!”

Lizzy looks nervous, but before I can ask why, Hunter appears behind her, and he has my purse.

“Hunter. Thank you.”

“The casino’s director of resident operations said to tell you he’s sorry about the misunderstanding. Whatever that means.”

“I understand.” I squeeze my eyes shut. I guess that’s what I get for name-dropping.

I take the purse and Hunter frowns at Lizzy, then me.

Lizzy’s face goes serious—that plastic, frozen kind of serious that always makes my blood run cold.

“Is something wrong?” I frown at Hunter, who’s wearing a Lakers cap and a t-shirt. “I thought you had a fundraiser tonight…”

Lizzy turns to me and takes my hands, and my stomach clenches. “Suri, Cross is in the hospital—in El Paso.”

“What?”

“You know how he was down in Mexico for that motorcycle convention? Well, apparently he got into another accident. But don’t worry, it’s not—”

“Oh my God. Is he okay?” My voice cracks, and tears fill my eyes so rapidly I can’t see Lizzy’s face.

“It’s okay, Suri. A nurse called Love Inc. looking for Marchant, who isn’t there, and when Rachelle didn’t get Marchant, she tried Hunter.”

Liz nods at Hunter, who expounds. “The nurse said that he was fine, but being prepped for surgery.”

 “Another surgery?” My stomach clenches. “Then we need to go.” I look around the hall as my mind shifts from nimble hands and warm lips to white hospital halls. “Let’s go to El Paso now. I have my plane.”

“Hunter’s is already on the runway,” Lizzy says. “I wanted us to be there when he woke up.”

“Good idea.”

She nods. “Your bags should already be on it.”

Lizzy lightens the mood by telling ridiculous knock-knock jokes as we ride a shuttle from the back of the casino, past the palm-shaded golf course, toward the Wynn’s VIP airport. I glimpse hangars as our path takes us over a small hill, and I’m amazed at how little I remember from when I landed…two hours ago?

“Suri.”

“Hmm?”

“You’re supposed to say, ‘Boo who?’”

“Oh. Right.” I shift my gaze from a W-shaped shrub to Lizzy’s face. “Boo who?”

“Open the fucking door.”

“What?”

Lizzy laughs. “’Who’s there?’ ‘Boo.’ You said, ‘Boo who?’ and I say, ‘Open the fucking door.’ It’s funny. Remember humor?”

“I’m just so worried.”

“Suri, he’s okay. A nurse told Hunter he’s okay. Nurses don’t lie.”

“I thought nurses couldn’t reveal a person’s medical condition.”

“That’s doctors.”

“Oh.”

The shuttle drops us off near the fence dividing the golf course from the airport—a fence I really don’t remember going through at all—and I try to keep myself centered as I think about my mystery bathroom guy, and Cross, and my bathroom guy, and Cross, and how it’ll be between us now, post-embarrassment. I guess he’ll probably be normal. Maybe extra nice. It’s me who’s going to be awkward.

That low, deep voice rolls through my mind: “There’s nothing to feel bad about, okay?”

He might have been a brawler and a bathroom slut, but my mystery guy was nice. I could tell.

I think of Adam at his book signing and feel a burst of anger. Adam sucks. Because he didn’t really love me. Or rather, we weren’t really in love. It took a dramatic act to help me figure that out. Is it because I wanted a happily ever after so badly I just overlooked all the signs?

Yes. And with Cross, I saw signs that weren’t there.

We’re approaching the twinkling landing strips, dotted with light-bathed control towers and those sleek, glass-looking hangers, when my mind starts playing tricks on me. Standing beside one of the planes, I think I see the guy from the bathroom.

I squint at him, because surely it’s not the same guy, but as we get closer, I grow more certain.

My feet stop moving; Lizzy and Hunter take a few steps forward without noticing I’ve stopped. Lizzy is the first to turn around.

“Sur—you coming?”

“Who is that?” I whisper.

“Who, Marchant?” She jerks her thumb his way. “Radcliffe. I’ve talked about him before.”

But I don’t. I…can’t. He can’t— “He can’t be Marchant.”

My head spins and I grab onto Lizzy’s forearm for support. I shake my head and look at him—the scoundrel’s handsome face and scruffy beard. This can’t be Marchant Radcliffe. Womanizing asshole. Pimp.

I just let him give me an orgasm.

4

SURI

Marchant. Marchant Radcliffe. I keep blinking at him, because I can’t believe my sexy bathroom guy is him: Marchant Radcliffe—the pimp.

We’re close enough now that he lifts his head, and his gaze laps up and down my body in a manner I assume he must use with his harem. I feel heat rush into my face, followed by the sting of tears in my eyes, because he didn’t understand me—back there when I was having my little freak-out. We didn’t have a real moment. He’s just good at this stuff. He’s good at…well, at womanizing. He’s a professional.

Lizzy grabs my hand, because my feet don’t seem to want to take me to the plane, and we drop back as Hunter strides forward to greet Marchant.

“You okay?” she asks.

I nod—a little too frantically—and try to keep my wandering eyes off Marchant Radcliffe’s bulky shoulders. We’re less than twenty feet from the plane now, and as we get closer to the fold-out stairs, I can feel my body reacting—my skin warming, my heart rate speeding up—for a pimp, and it makes me feel like a fool.

I remind myself the attraction wasn’t one-sided. The wet-spot still visible on his pants attests to that. I did nothing wrong. There’s no reason I can’t look him in the eye and act like an adult about this.

But what if he says something in front of Lizzy and Hunter? Then they’ll know.

So what if they know?

It would change the way they think of me—that’s what.

I’m Suri Dalton. Suri Dalton of the random-hook-ups-are-just-weird policy. I’m the one who discouraged Lizzy from selling her V-card at a brothel, because having sex is supposed to be meaningful.

Except it wasn’t, was it? Having sex with Adam turned out not to feel so meaningful at all—at least in retrospect. So maybe I was wrong about what sex should be, but that doesn’t mean I want Hunter and Lizzy to know about The Bathroom Incident. I had a personal moment, during which I felt like doing something outside my usual norm, and I’d like to keep that to myself.

Because you screwed around with a pimp.

I quiet the judging voice inside my head by insisting that it could have been any guy. Mr. Love Inc. was simply at the right place at the right time. It isn’t as if I’m attracted to him in particular.

The guys are at the top of the stairs by the time Lizzy and I reach the bottom. By the time we step into the plane, they are, thankfully, out of sight. Hunter’s flight attendant waves us past a curtain separating the cockpit from the cabin, and we step into a mod space done in black and gray and cream—the kind of space that screams ‘I had this specially designed but didn’t give the interior designer much creative leeway or any instructions.’ There’s not much of it, either: just a couch, a recliner, and a table, along with eight plush leather seats arranged in two rows of four along the right side of the plane. The rows face each other, like the benches of a restaurant booth.

When I don’t see Hunter or Marchant at first glance, I allow myself to hope that maybe they’ve closed themselves into the plane’s office. Then I realize that, unlike several of my dad’s planes—the Boeing 767 and Gulfstream—this one doesn’t look big enough to have an office.

Damn.

My hopes come crashing down when I spot them seated across from each other in the rearmost cluster of seats. Hunter’s in a window seat, facing the front of the plane, with Marchant across from him in the seat beside the window seat. I divert my eyes from the back of that red-brown-blond head and am trying to decide if I can invent a reason to go into the plane’s bedroom when Lizzy takes my elbow.

“C’mon, Suri. Let’s sit down.”

It’s clear from Lizzy’s distracted, slightly tired-seeming expression that she has no idea I’m tied in knots. If I run off now, she’ll know for sure, and—my cheeks heat up—Marchant Radcliffe might tell them what happened.

Would he do that?

Of course he would! He’s a pimp. Bragging about his sexual conquests is probably as natural to him as breathing air.

I gulp a big breath back, then paste a neutral expression on my face and smooth my blouse. I can do this. I can act natural. I need to get into that seat beside him and set a tone of normalcy. Strict normalcy.

As for his part, he’s probably already forgotten me. Hoping that’s true (and hoping it’s not), I follow Lizzy with my head held high and my shoulders loose.

When we come into their space, Hunter’s eyes sweep Liz like he wants to take her to the bedroom. In the moment they’re eye-screwing each other, I brave my first glance at Marchant Radcliffe. He looks…different. And also the same. Now that I know who he is, I can see details I hadn’t noticed before: like how he’s wearing a flashy, platinum watch I’m pretty sure is IWC—the kind of timepiece that would be deemed totally excessive by a man like dad, but suits a brothel owner perfectly. His tux, originally nothing but a blood-spattered barrier to the body below, is in fact Brioni—the brand favored by James Bond. His light beard is impeccably trimmed, his mane of blond-brown-red hair impeccably cut, impeccably styled. Even his shoes look flawless—and that’s after kicking someone’s ass.

The boy-girl gods must be looking out for me, because while I ogle the pimp, he’s looking down into a drink he’s clutching. Something with orange juice—possibly a screwdriver?

I blink at him, waiting for him to look up. Waiting to set the tone between us. A jab of humiliated panic stings my chest, but I ignore it. When did I become so concerned about what other people think of me?

Lizzy takes a seat beside Hunter, and that’s when Marchant snaps out of his daze. His eyes slide over me, and then he does a double take, his eyebrows shooting up into his hair.

 “It’s you,” he says, in that soft, deep, sexy voice. My body reacts with goose bumps and a roller-coaster feeling in my stomach.

I give a little wave that is only slightly awkward and force my legs to lower me into the seat.

Lizzy’s sharp blue eyes inspect the space between us. I can feel the curiosity oozing out her pores. She can tell that something’s up. She’s probably desperate to pounce on me, but she won’t do it in front of Hunter and Marchant. Instead she presses her lips together and looks from me to Marchant, like a school teacher awaiting a pupil’s answer.

I turn to Marchant— No, to Marchant Radcliffe. That’s how I need to think of him. With some distance. I give him a smile I hope is generic. In doing so, I’m forced to look at his face. Kaa-pow! It’s like bumping an electric fence. He’s just so…handsome. The kind of handsome that’s sturdy and square-jawed. Rugged. Like a cowboy. It’s strange. He’s supposed to be a pimp. Someone on the fringe of society. Someone weird. Perverse. Instead, he makes me think of Superbowls and sports cars. And sex.