Gambling on the Bodyguard by Sarah Ballance Page A

than her body. He wanted to know her , and that was terrifying.
    Too bad it didn’t terrify him enough to keep him away from a phallic meltdown, but he’d figure that out. They had all night.
    One damn night.
    He must have shaken his head. Looked at her in a certain way.
    “You don’t want to do this?”
    “Funny thing,” he said. “I can’t think of what I’ve ever wanted more. Scares the hell out of me.”
    She blinked once. Then about ten more times. Then she scooched off the bed. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said.
    “Okay.” Only it wasn’t. He had no clue what he’d said. Or hadn’t. He watched her walk, attention pegged on her ass, until she disappeared into the bathroom. Why had she chosen that moment to walk away? Was she feeling what he felt? He ached with the reality of this mess he’d gotten himself into. He was afraid to stay. Just as afraid to go. Did she want him out of her room?
    He turned toward the view of the city. Barely recognized it. The landmarks were there, but something inside him had changed. Something inside him that needed her. But he couldn’t do that—he’d avoided connections far too long. This one had slipped past him. Thrown him.
    He sensed her presence before he heard her. Before she slid her arms around his waist from behind and rested her head against his shoulder. She wore a shirt. The realization hit him hard. Regrets already?
    So many questions assaulted him, but one hit harder than the rest. One mattered more. He tried to push away the importance it held, but all he managed was to ask, “You think you’d ever leave Colorado?”
    “I never even thought about it before.” She left the rest unspoken. She had now . “You think you’d ever leave Vegas?”
    He stared through the glass, the knowledge strong that he stood inside a building that looked like it had fallen off a trailer at Mardi Gras. On the strip, among palaces and pyramids and scaled down versions of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, the Masquerade didn’t stand out. Much. But just a block to one side or the other, the view was almost normal. Casinos were scattered throughout the city, but off strip they tended to wear the neon with a bit more subtlety. Of course, subtle compared to the deep fried vat of crazy that was Las Vegas Boulevard probably wouldn’t qualify anywhere else in the world, but here, it was a thing.
    “I don’t do mountains,” he said. He still wouldn’t. Not even for her.
    He turned to draw her into his arms, to soften his words, and was surprised to discover the shirt she wore was his. Seeing her like that made his heart do funny things in his chest—things he didn’t want to examine too closely.
    “Funny thing about mountains,” she said. She traced the lines of his tattoo as she spoke. He wondered if she looked at it and saw what he did. What he couldn’t forget. “Some people just stand at the bottom and talk about how big they are, never once believing they could get to the top. And some people aren’t afraid of the climb, but of what they’ll see when they get there.” She looked from the artwork on his arm to his face. “Some people are just so afraid of falling that they won’t even try.”
    “What about the ones who do fall?” he asked. “Those who hit the ground hard and are just too damned broken to get back up again?”
    “Is that what happened to you?”
    Him. Gracie. Same damn thing. He hadn’t quite realized that before. Sixteen years later, and neither one of them were living. “Not every wound can be healed.”
    “I saw you out there in the desert,” she said. “I saw your face. You found something out there, and it scared you. That’s why you come back to this city, isn’t it? Because nothing here is real.”
    Her words cut a little too close for comfort. Stung like a bitch.
    “You’re real,” he said. It sounded a little more like a protest. An excuse.
    She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “No, Jax. I’m not.