Keir O'connell's Mistress. Sandra Marton

so sorry…”

      What he’d meant was, What the hell was I doing?

      She knew, because she’d seen that look on men’s faces before, when she was a showgirl. You met someone, you hit it off, things were fine until the guy asked what you did for a living.

      “I dance,” she’d say.

      “Where?” he’d say.

      From there on, it was all downhill.

      By the time she’d been desperate enough to strip, she’d known better than to talk about it.

      She wasn’t either a showgirl or a stripper anymore but it didn’t matter. She was still Cassie Berk and some things never changed…and where was that miserable elevator?

      To hell with it. History was history. With a little luck she’d be out of Vegas soon enough. No more hearing the ping of the slots, even in her sleep. No more guys thinking she was smiling just for them. No more turning her feet into aching, leaden weights.

      Best of all, no more seeing Keir.

      He was away. On vacation, everybody said, as if it were a miracle the great man would do such a thing.

      She’d already known he was going away.

      “I’m taking some time off,” he’d told her as they sat alone at one of the little umbrella tables, smiling at each other because smiling had seemed a good thing to do right then.

      He’d said her he was going to New York and then he’d hesitated as if he were going to tell her something else, and just for a minute, for the tiniest bit of eternity, she’d thought maybe, oh maybe he was going to say, “Cassie, come with me…”

      The light panel blinked to life; the elevator doors slid open. Cassie was trying to jam her foot back into her shoe when the doors began to slide shut.

      “Hey!”

      She lunged forward, hobbled into the car and stepped on some plywood sheets one of the maintenance guys must have left on the floor. One heel sank into the wood.

      “Idiot,” she mumbled, as the elevator doors closed.

      She grimaced, tried to jerk her foot free, but the heel was wedged into a knothole.

      “Major idiot,” she said, and jerked her foot out of the shoe. Tongue between her teeth, she bent over and began working the shoe free. It wobbled under the pressure of her hand and she knew she’d have to be careful or she’d snap the stupid heel off. It wasn’t just high, it was also thin, sharp and unstable.

      Too bad she hadn’t been wearing this pair of torture devices at Dawn’s wedding. If she’d planted a heel like this in Keir’s instep, he’d still be limping.

      “Dammit,” she hissed, “would-you-let-loose?”

      The shoe didn’t budge. Maybe it had better sense than she did. If she hadn’t budged, hadn’t gone into that garden with him…

      How could she have made such an ass of herself? She’d spent her life living by Rule Number Five, or maybe it was Six. Who cared what number it was? The rule was what mattered.

      Never Make It With The Boss.

      It was the most important rule of all, it let you avoid a whole mess of trouble, and she’d almost broken it. And what about the rules he’d broken? All those sexual harassment things that said employers were not to hit on their employees.

      What about that?

      She’d been foolish but no question, Keir was to blame for what had happened. Coming on to her, when he was her boss. Maybe he did it all the time. She’d never heard even a hint of gossip but when men who looked like he did—tall, broad-shouldered and altogether gorgeous—they set their own rules.

      What was with this damn shoe?

      If she never saw Keir again, it would be—

      The car jerked to a stop. The doors slid open. She heard someone clear his throat and she almost laughed, thinking what a weird sight she probably made…

      “Hello, Cassie.”

      She froze. That voice. Male. Deep. A little husky. As removed as if they’d never had that midnight encounter in the garden.

      But—but it couldn’t be. Keir was away. He was—

      He was here, looking at her with a smile so polite she wanted to slap it away.

      “You,” she said, and she knew her loathing for him was in the one word because that polite smile slipped from his face.

      “Yeah, that’s right. Me.” He looked at her foot, then at her face. “Having a problem?” he said, his voice tinged with amusement.

      “No,” she snapped, “I always stand around like this, with one shoe on and one shoe—”

      The car began to move. She hadn’t expected it and she jerked back.

      “Careful!”

      Keir grabbed for her but Cassie flung out a hand and caught the railing.

      “Don’t touch me!”

      “No problem.” His voice was cool. “You want to break your neck, be my guest.”

      “I’m doing just fine on my own.”

      “Oh, yeah. I can see that.” He watched, arms folded, as she tried to pull the shoe free again. “Stop being foolish, Berk. Let me help—or would you rather I put in a call to Maintenance and have them send up a work crew?”

      “What? Those idiots? They’re the ones who left this damned piece of wood here in the first place.”

      She glared at him, then at her shoe. The truth was, he could probably free it in less time than it would take him to make the call. Besides, if the maintenance guys showed up, they’d have a good laugh and spread the story all over the hotel.

      Cassie lifted her chin. “All right.”

      “‘Thank you’ might be a more gracious response.” Keir squatted down, grabbed the shoe, yanked it free and rose to his feet. “Here. Next time you decide to wear stilts—”

      The car jolted to a stop. Cassie stumbled, yelped, and Keir grabbed her before she could fall.

      Grabbed her, so that she was pressed back against him, so that she could feel the warmth of his body, feel the swift hardening of it…

      Somebody was laughing.

      Keir swung around, still holding her. Cassie’s eyes widened. Two men were standing at the open doors of the elevator, taking in the scene with big grins on their faces.

      They looked nothing like Keir or each other…and looked everything like Keir and each other.

      Her heart dropped to her toes.

      For days, the staff had been talking about the O’Connell clan, all Mary Elizabeth’s daughters and sons, and how they were going to descend on the hotel for the duchess’s wedding to Dan Coyle.

      “Your brothers?” Cassie said, even though she already knew the answer.

      Keir nodded, his brothers chuckled, and Cassie wondered what the odds were on the bottom falling out of the car so she could simply disappear.

      CHAPTER THREE

      BEYOND the perimeter of the Desert Song, the Strip was as brightly-lit, as busy and noisy as if it were midday instead of midnight, but everything was hushed deep within the hotel gardens. The lights in the oversized pool had been dimmed and emitted a soft, fairy glow.

      Nice, Cullen O’Connell thought, as he drifted on a float in the warm, silky water. You could even see the stars. Not the way they blazed in the blackness over the vast grasslands of the Rift Valley or on a rare, clear night high on the snow-laden slopes of Mount McKinley,