Page 52 of Between Never and Forever

“I was working.”

She hummed and bent at the waist so she could put her elbow on the counter and rest her chin in her hand while she stared at me. “Do you work literally twenty-four-seven?” Her eyes sparkled with a hazy glaze, and I knew from how she questioned me, she’d drunk more than enough.

“A Vegas resort and casino won’t run itself,” I reminded her. “I can’t go around mingling with friends every night. I need to make sure HEAT members feel safe and secure. Guessing you did if you were out there drinking fifty thousand dollars’ worth of booze, right?”

Her eyes widened. “Fifty thousand? What? There’s absolutely no way. We need to go down to the restaurant right now.”

She turned toward the door but I stopped her. “What were you drinking?”

She spun back around. “Well, I just said the most expensive bottle…” Her eyes narrowed on me now. “Do not tell me you have bottles worth over fifty thousand dollars here, Dex. Do not.”

“Of course I do.”

“That’s ridiculous!” She threw up her hands theatrically, wobbling on her heels. Then, she crossed her arms over her chest and bit her lip before she started giggling. “Well, I’d say sorry but it’s your fault for having such a ridiculously priced bottle in your restaurant.”

Her giggle turned to a laugh and I had to stop myself from joining in. She was obviously tipsy and felt liberated enough to give me some of that snark she used to always have with me long ago. “We have important guests here—”

“Not that important.” She took a deep breath and tried to sober, wiping tears from her eyes from her laughing fit. “Fine. Maybe you do have important guests. Should I apologize for drinking their bubbly? As for the bill, you can take it out of my salary if you need it.”

“Need it?” Who the hell did she think I was? Did she even get why I was upset? “You think I need fifty thousand? Jesus, it’s not expensive for me and who is a more important guest than my fiancée? Spend what you want. I don’t give a shit. But I do give a shit when you don’t text me back.”

I saw how she straightened her spine. “Well, I was too busy having fun while you were too busy to come down because you needed to work all night to keep us safe, I guess.”

“And did you feel safe?” I don’t know why I even cared to ask at this point.

She squinted at me, like this was some sort of quiz. “I felt somewhat safe.”

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted praise and trust like I would have gotten from her fifteen years ago. “You do realize people have to scan IDs just to walk the premises, right?”

She shrugged like it was nothing.

“The camera system has facial recognition embedded, a software I patented, just to be able to play the slots.”

“I played the penny slots the other night.”

“You think your face isn’t in my system?” I scoffed. “It’s been in my system since the damn moment I built it.”

“Why?” she whispered.

“Because, Kee, if you were going to walk into one of my resorts or my buildings, I was going to be informed, but they weren’t going to stop you. They would have left that job to me.”

She rolled her eyes and her whole body swayed with the movement. “Of course you built a system just to make sure you could spite me. How does it feel holding on to that hate from so long ago?”

“Feels like I’m moving toward getting over it.” I didn’t offer more because I was sure I wasn’t moving in the right direction.

“Well.” She waved off the tension between us and straightened so she wasn’t leaning against the counter anymore. “With you saying all that, I guess I feel a little safer in your resort then.”

“Then I have more work to do because ‘a little’ isn’t good enough.”

“That’s my—” She stopped like she was working through her tipsy haze to tell me something. “I get paranoid sometimes, you know? That has nothing to do with you.”

I’d already seen her the other night in the hallway checking her surroundings. “Want to explain that further?”

“Your hotel is secure.” Her eyes drifted to stare out the window at the city. “You have it all figured out, I’m sure.”

I wanted to think so, but Bane and I were dealing with glitches that shouldn’t have been happening, and they were too coincidental—which meant they weren’t coincidental at all. I rubbed at my temples because the day had been much too long already. “What I don’t have figured out is how you’d like to release the statement of us together. It’s why I texted you tonight.”

“Of course there’s no other reason you’d have texted,” she grumbled, and her bottom lip pouted out.