1. One

1

ONE

PRESENT DAY

“ I t’s not funny!”

I glared at my brother as he hid behind his blue cocktail at The Chandelier, one of our regular meetup places for drinks when we were both busy and working on the strip. Sure, it was a place that was geared for tourists, but I happened to love how beautiful the three-story bar was, and Rex was a huge fan of the women who frequented it.

So, tourist trap or not, it was one of our favorite Las Vegas hotspots.

“Oh, come on.” Rex wiped at the corners of his eyes, seemingly ignoring the women who kept giving him appraising looks from across the bar. He was in simple jeans and a polo shirt, his dark hair swept away from his face, but he was drawing a lot of attention.

That was my brother. He knew he was hot, but he never came across as egotistical. Would he use his looks to pick up a tourist and have a wild night tonight? Yes, but none of these women were in it for “forever” and so nobody was in danger of nursing a broken heart. So everything was just “good fun” where he was concerned, and nobody ever complained.

I didn’t have it that lucky, which was exactly why I had invited Rex out for a drink.

“Focus!” I flicked his ear. Hard.

He yelped. “Ow, Livvie!” He murdered me with a single glare. “That hurt!”

“It was supposed to.”

Rex and I were tight. If you’d asked me if I saw that happening when I was fifteen and he was seventeen, I would’ve laughed until I passed out. Hindsight is a funny thing, though. We were tight back then too. I just didn’t see it. Perhaps my braces’ rubber bands were so tight it blinded me.

“We’re talking about me,” I reminded him. “I lost my job today.” The reality hit me yet again. It was a hard slap on a naked cheek.

Rex turned instantly contrite. “I’m sorry, Livvie.” He rested his arm across the back of my chair and angled himself so he was looking directly at me. “You didn’t even like that job, though.”

He wasn’t wrong. I didn’t even know how I’d ended up in that position. Head accountant for Bradford and Sons, one of the premiere bookie agencies in the city. I’d always liked numbers. They made sense to me. There was nothing more soothing than tabulating in my book. I wasn’t a math genius by any stretch of the imagination, but I had an orderly mind. Balancing books was easy.

Unfortunately for me, what was also easy was discovering a hastily covered error on one of my sheets. It wasn’t even a big error. Five hundred bucks. That’s it. The thread was too tantalizing not to pull, though.

That had been the beginning of the end.

I’d pulled the thread, which led to a cascade of more discrepancies. Then I’d discovered an avalanche. It was an avalanche that had almost buried me.

Upon finding out that my boss was embezzling money, I’d gone to the head of the company, who just so happened to be his father. He’d thanked me profusely for discovering what his son had been doing—he was mortified to find out how much hookers and blow that money had gone toward—and then he called his son into his office. I expected there would be a trip to rehab and more oversight appointed to my boss. There was no way his own father would fire him, right?

Wrong. Three days later, my boss had been ousted from his corner office. The family was fighting. A week after that, while still thanking me for discovering the error, Bucky Bradford Sr. had informed me they were scaling back operations and that my position was no longer required.

He’d given me a decent severance package, of course. He seemed legitimately sorry that he had to pull the rug out from under me. That didn’t change the fact that I was now jobless in Las Vegas, and I had no idea what my reputation looked like. What if the senior Mr. Bradford decided to blame the money lapse on me? I couldn’t know what was being said in private circles.

I was uneasy, though, and an uneasy Olivia was not a good thing.

“Come on.” Rex gave me an elbow to the side. “You did the right thing.”

That was one thing I didn’t doubt. Losing my job sucked—I needed a bigger word than “sucked” because it didn’t suffice—but I’d been duty bound to report the accounting errors. The fact that I’d been unceremoniously dumped from the position I’d happily held for three years even though I’d done the right thing was still a kick in the pants. Did I mention the cowboy was wearing spurs when he kicked me?

“What am I supposed to do?” I demanded of my brother as I sipped my pink cocktail. Getting drunk likely wasn’t the smartest move, but since I didn’t have to be anywhere the next day, I saw no reason not to embrace the idea of a hangover. At least I wouldn’t be bored.

“You’re a good accountant,” Rex said. “You’ve always been good at that stuff. I bet you’ll have another job by the end of the week.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What if they’re secretly bad-mouthing me, though?”

“Why would they?”

“I don’t know.” Frustration reared up and grabbed me by the throat, making my voice squeakier than normal. “What if they’re trying to blame me for what happened so their son doesn’t look so bad?”

“They wouldn’t do that.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Rex seemed to reconsider them. “Probably,” he added.

I scowled. “You know as well as I do that they’ll do it. Appearance is everything in Vegas.” I stared mournfully into my glass. “I’m in trouble.”

“You’re going to be fine.” Rex squeezed my shoulder. “If you want, I can talk to Zach.”

I shot him a dirty look. Despite my mother’s insistence that Zach and Rex would fall out of touch as they got older, the opposite had happened. They were as tight as ever, and Zach had basically installed Rex in one of the cushiest gigs in Vegas. My brother was head of security at Stone Casino & Resort, which had a prime location directly across from the Bellagio and was one of the most popular casinos on the strip.

Zach was in management—I had no idea what he did for his father—and he and Rex spent their days pretending they were diligent employees and their nights scoping out women at the various bars and clubs. I’d seen Zach here and there over the years. He’d grown up to be even hotter than he had been as a teenager—which should’ve been against the law in my book—but we weren’t close. In fact, whenever we saw each other, we ended up bristling and snarling.

He continued to call me Shorty, even though I had managed to gain three inches in a weird after-fifteen growth spurt that brought me up to a perfectly respectable five-foot-four. I retaliated by suggesting he was going to have to buy stock in whatever STD drug was about to become trendy to afford the treatment for himself. Then we glared at each other for five minutes before pretending the other didn’t exist.

For that reason alone, I rarely accepted the invitations Rex tossed my way when he and Zach had a night planned on the town. I always came up with an excuse. It was always a grand excuse, of course. The truth would’ve made them both feel sorry for me. “I’m polishing my toenails and eating Phish Food ice cream straight out of the tub” didn’t make me sound like I was beating off the fun fairies with a stick.

Not that I cared what Zach thought anyway. I just didn’t want to look pathetic. I hated that more than anything.

“I don’t need Zach’s help,” I said. “I’m not taking a job from him.”

“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting a job.” Rex let loose a giggle that turned into a full-on guffaw. “You guys would kill one another.”

He wasn’t wrong. Still, he’d piqued my curiosity. “If you weren’t talking about a job, what were you talking about?”

“His family knows everybody in the business,” Rex replied. “If somebody is spreading bad rumors about you, they’ll be able to track them back to their source.”

“Oh.” It wasn’t the worst idea I’d ever heard. Still, I shook my head. “No. I’m not sure I want to know.” Absently, I poked my cheek. The dull ache there that never fully went away was a constant reminder of exactly what I’d lost. “I called the dentist.”

I hadn’t even realized I’d said it out loud until Rex sent me an odd look. “You’re dating a dentist?” He looked horrified at the thought. “Did I ever tell you about the time I was dating that chick who claimed she had teeth in her vagina?”

“We’re still talking about me,” I reminded him. I loved my brother—no, truly—and he was giving of heart. He was also a bit of a narcissist. His favorite subject was himself.

“Sorry.” Rex turned sheepish. “I think I lost track of the conversation. What does the dentist have to do with you losing your job?”

Ah, the question to end all questions. “I have a few issues.” This was hard for me to admit. It wasn’t as if I was telling him about a gynecological visit or something—I would never do that—but it was still an odd conversation. “I know Mom and Dad did their best when we were kids, but I need you to keep this to yourself.”

Rex was no longer making eyes at the women across the bar. His sole focus was on me. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve always been a little self-conscious about my teeth.” I squirmed on my stool. “They’re crowded, and some of them are uneven, and a few don’t line up properly.”

“I’ve never noticed that.”

“That’s because my front teeth are fine. Mom and Dad made sure that anything that was seen was okay. They couldn’t spend the extra on the stuff that wasn’t as obvious, though.”

“Oh.” Rex nodded. “Yeah. I get it.”

“I got an estimate for the work I need done. It’s thirty grand.”

“No way!”

“Dental work is expensive, my dude,” I drawled.

He lightly cuffed the back of my head. It drove him crazy when I called him “my dude” for some reason. That, of course, meant I used the term far too often.

“My insurance was going to cover two-thirds of it,” I continued. “I managed to save the rest.”

“You should be able to keep your insurance until the end of the month, right?”

“Yeah, but the dentist can’t get me in for a month, so the insurance is out. Even if I could keep the insurance, I can’t just use all the money in my savings to fix my teeth. He says I need a root canal on top of everything else. I can’t risk that money, though.”

“Oh, Livvie.” Rex looked pained. He only thought about it for a few seconds, though. “I have some money saved.”

I knew he was going to offer before he opened his mouth and was already shaking my head. “I cannot take your money. You’re saving up for a place of your own.”

“I can save some more.”

“No.” I felt pitiful … and there was nothing I hated more. “I’ll figure it out.” I forced myself to look on the bright side of things. “Maybe I really will have another job by the end of the week. Then I won’t have to put off the surgery for more than a month or so.”

Rex looked caught. “Have you considered talking to Mom and Dad? They might have some extra put away.”

“No.” That was something I absolutely wouldn’t consider. My parents made a good living, but they had grand plans for their retirement. There was no way I would delay that. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Are you in pain?” Rex’s gaze was seeking. “If you’re in pain?—”

I cut him off with a headshake. “I’m fine. You can’t even see what’s bothering me. I’ll figure it out.”

Rex’s hand landed on my back. It was his awkward attempt at making me feel better. “I’m sorry, Livvie. You deserve better.”

“Yeah.” I rubbed my forehead, briefly closed my eyes, then forced myself to stop being a Debbie Downer. “So, which one of them are you taking home?” I managed a smile around my straw as I sipped my cocktail and inclined my head toward the women across the bar.

“Well, I haven’t quite decided yet.” Rex seemed happy enough to be talking about himself again. “The blonde has some … nice assets.”

“There’s no way those are real,” I countered.

“Who cares?” Rex wrinkled his nose. “I bet they look fantastic in a strobe light.”

I was grossed out to the max. “You don’t still have that strobe light over your bed, do you?” I was appalled.

“Why would I ever take that down?”

“You live in a hotel,” I reminded him. “Aren’t they annoyed you installed your own light?”

Rex merely shrugged. “Ryder and Cora like me.”

Ryder and Cora Stone were Zach’s parents. I’d met them a few times over the years, and they’d always come across as cold and disinterested. They made polite conversation when Zach and Rex graduated. It was obvious that they thought my parents were beneath them, though.

“Are you sure they like you?” I challenged. “I mean … do their faces actually move when they see you? Or, have you held up a mirror to make sure they both have reflections?”

Rex barked out a laugh. “They’re not so bad. Ryder is kind of funny when you get a few drinks into him.”

I tried to picture Zach’s stately father—the guy never met a two-thousand-dollar suit he didn’t want to wear once and throw away—cracking more than a polite smile. It was like trying to picture a Kardashian not posing for a camera. “Yeah, I’ll take your word for it.”

“He’s not a bad guy,” Rex insisted. “He’s a good father, too.”

“You have to say that. He’s your boss.”

“Listen, I never knew girls could be so much work until I got to see Ryder in action with his daughters. All that complaining I did about you when you were an angsty tween and pouty teen? You were a freaking angel compared to Ruby, Pearl, and Opal.”

I had to bite the inside of my cheek not to laugh at the names. Ruby, Pearl, and Opal Stone were Zach’s older sisters. They’d arrived in this world in two-year intervals, and Ryder and Cora hadn’t stopped until they’d finally gotten their coveted son.

Word on the street was that the sisters were bitter because Zach was obviously the favored child. Supposedly, they doted on him despite their annoyance with their parents. They also liked to publicly torture him as some sort of penance. I’d only heard rumors on that front, but I was still dying to see them in action one day.

“What could they possibly do that’s so bad?” I challenged.

“Well, Ruby likes dating hotel workers. Like … bartenders, janitors, and lifeguards.”

“So?” I was having trouble figuring out why that was such an issue. “Why can’t she date who she wants?”

“Because she’s a Stone,” Rex replied simply. “Her parents want to arrange marriages for them—well, at least if you believe what Zach says—and they refuse. That means that Ryder and Cora refuse to pay for weddings unless they approve of the husbands.”

That was the most antiquated crap I’d ever heard. “You have got to be kidding me.” I was incensed on their behalf, and I didn’t even know them.

“It’s a very weird setup,” Rex said.

“Are they that way with Zach?” I tried to picture it—he’d been photographed with showgirls and cocktail hostesses of the highest order for as long as I could remember—and shook my head. “There’s no way they’re exerting any control over who he’s with.”

“Oh, they have a ‘boys will be boys’ mentality with him,” Rex explained. “They think he’ll outgrow his current … proclivities.”

“You mean nailing anything that moves,” I assumed.

Rex grinned. “Actually, that’s me. He’s nowhere near as active as I am. Most of the time he likes to sit and brood. That’s not to say he doesn’t get a piece of action here and there. He’s just quieter about it of late.”

I shot my brother a dirty look. “I cannot believe you just said it that way. What is wrong with you?”

Rex merely shrugged. “I like what I like.”

“Don’t you ever want to settle down?”

Rex looked horrified at the question. “Absolutely not. Why would I want anything of the sort?”

“I don’t know.” I held out my hands. “I’ve started to think about it. A home to call your own. Maybe a kid or two.”

Rex immediately started shaking his head. “No way. I’m nowhere near wanting any of that. Why would I when this town is my oyster?” He waved at the blonde, who had the audacity to act shy even though I’d seen her adjusting her dress so it showed more cleavage only thirty seconds before. “I like my life, Livvie. If you don’t like yours, maybe now is the time to change it. You can go in any direction you want from here. You just need to decide what that direction looks like.”

I hated that he was right. I was at a crossroads. I had no idea what to do about it, though.