Married Till Christmas. Christine Rimmer

      * * *

      The next day, she half expected to find him waiting in the hallway outside her room when she went down for breakfast.

      He wasn’t. And she was not disappointed. Last night had been perfect. She’d had a great evening with him; however, it really was over between them and had been for eleven years. He must be on his way home by now.

      After breakfast, she went to the trade show and spent the morning watching installation demonstrations and connecting with granite, marble, tile, concrete and quartz composite distributors. At around eleven, she met up with Sherry Tisbeau, who lived in Seattle and worked with her husband, Zach. Tisbeau Development built condos mostly. Nell had struck up a friendship with Sherry a few years back. They’d met in LA at Build Expo USA. This trip, Sherry had brought along Alice Bates, the Tisbeau office manager.

      At half past noon, just as Sherry was suggesting they ought to go get some lunch, Nell spotted a guy who looked like Deck. He lounged against the wall by a granite dealer’s booth about twenty feet away, a glossy brochure in front of his face. Her pulse started racing and her stomach got quivery.

      As she gulped and stared, he lowered the brochure, revealing that gorgeous, dangerous slow smile. Every nerve in her body went on red alert. It felt amazing. Invigorating. And scary, too.

      She knew she was in trouble and somehow didn’t even care.

      She turned to Sherry. “Listen. I see an old friend and I need to spend some time with him. I’m going to have to take a rain check on lunch.”

      Sherry gave her a hug and reminded her to keep in touch. A moment later, the two women were gone and Deck stood at her side.

      She met those eyes and felt as light as a sunbeam, fizzy as a just-opened bottle of Dom Pérignon. It had to stop. She needed to remind him that they’d said goodbye last night. And then she needed to leave. If she hurried she could catch up with Sherry and Alice.

      About then, she noticed the lanyard around his neck and the official trade-show badge hanging from it.

      “You stole someone’s badge,” she accused.

      His grin only deepened, revealing that dimple on the left side of his mouth. “They wouldn’t let me in here without one.” Way back when, she used to watch for it, that dimple. She used to hope for it. It only appeared when he let himself relax. He rarely relaxed back then. He was constantly on guard.

      How completely things had changed.

      He took the badge between his fingers. “But then, luckily, I found this one on the floor outside—and it’s not stealing if I found it on the floor.”

      Just turn and leave him standing here. Walk away and don’t look back.

      But she didn’t budge. Instead, she opened her mouth and something stupid came out. “We’re here in Vegas. Stuff happens in Vegas and that stuff is meaningless. That’s all this is.”

      He gave her the lifted eyebrow. “Meaningless, you mean?”

      “That’s right. It’s just for now. Nothing more. Nothing changes when we go home. I have my life, you have yours.”

      For way too many glorious seconds, they simply regarded each other. She had that sense she used to get with him, when they were together so long ago. The sense that they were the only two people on the planet.

      Finally, he asked, “Hungry?”

      She slipped her arm in his. It felt absolutely right there. “Starved.”

      * * *

      She never returned to the convention floor.

      They had lunch and then they played the slots. She had a great time.

      Was she being an idiot?

      Oh, absolutely. She knew she shouldn’t give the guy an inch.

      But he was so much fun—a lot more than he used be, now that’d he’d found the success he’d always craved. There was an easiness about him now, a confidence that made him even more attractive than before, if that was possible. She liked just being with him.

      And why shouldn’t she indulge herself? Just a little. Just for this short time that they were both here in Vegas.

      She got lucky and won a thousand-dollar jackpot. She collected her winnings.

      Then he suggested a couple’s visit to the hotel spa, of all things. No way she was passing up an offer like that.

      They took mud baths side by side and he told her all about the things you could make with a barrel, everything from cuff links to wall clocks, chandeliers to yard art. They got massages, their two tables pushed together. It was intimate in the most relaxing, luxurious sort of way. And she went ahead and allowed herself to love every minute of it.

      After that, they had facials, then mani-pedis. Somehow, he looked manlier than ever, sitting in that pedicure chair as a sexy blonde took an emery board to his toes.

      It was a little past six when he left her at the door to her room.

      “I’ll be back for you at seven thirty,” he said in a tone that teased and warned simultaneously. “Be ready.”

      She was ready, all right. In her favorite short black dress, sleeveless and curve-hugging with a cutaway back, her red hair pinned up on one side by a rhinestone comb, wearing killer black heels with red soles. His eyes darkened when she opened the door to him, and his gaze moved down her body, stirring up sparks. He wore a gorgeous graphite suit and she wondered how she’d gotten here, about to spend an evening that could only be called romantic with the penniless, dark, damaged boy she used to love, the boy who’d grown up to run his own company and look completely at ease in the kind of suit you couldn’t buy off a rack.

      She grabbed her beaded clutch and her metallic Betsey Johnson wrap and off they went.

      Down at the lobby entrance, beneath the porte cochere, he had a car waiting. She sat beside him on the plush leather seat and stared out the tinted side window as they rolled by one giant pleasure palace after another, the bright lights melting into each other, gold, green, red, purple, blue. Eventually, the driver turned down a side street and stopped in front of modest-looking restaurant with a red-and-white-striped awning over the door.

      Inside, they sat beneath a stained glass ceiling with chandeliers shaped like stars. They had champagne and caviar, lobster bisque and the best filet mignon she’d ever tasted, the meat melting like butter on her tongue.

      Okay, yeah. It was dangerous, doing this with him. Every moment she spent near him she could feel herself giving in to him, the sharp edges she used to protect herself leaving her, morphing into vulnerable softness that invited his touch.

      He leaned across the table and so did she. She shouldn’t have, but she was full of a happy, giddy sort of longing—to savor every minute, to get closer.

      And closer.

      And then he touched her, so lightly, a brush of his index finger across the back of her hand, over the bones of her wrist, up her forearm, drawing the nerves with him, making a trail of pleasured sensation along her skin. She shivered, a hot kind of shiver, the kind that promised forbidden delights to come.

      “It really can’t happen,” she whispered.

      “Why not?” That voice of his, sweet and rough, was like raw molasses pouring out.

      She was in trouble. Worse, she was loving it. “A thousand reasons. It’s over. You know it. It’s been over for years.”

      “Nellie.” His finger at her elbow, sliding higher, over the bright tattoo that covered the evidence of what he had been to her. “It doesn’t feel over. That’s what I know. And you know it, too, whatever lies you think you have to tell yourself.”

      She caught his hand, gently pushed it away. She sipped more champagne and treated her taste buds to another wonderful bite of buttery steak. “This