Love's Gamble Read online

  “I see you’re finally awake.”

  She turned to see Max walking into the room, looking fresh as a daisy, his freshly washed black hair in a stubby knot on top of his head. Wearing nothing but a towel...and a titanium wedding ring on his left hand.

  Despite the circumstances, Pru couldn’t help but stare. Max Benton, as it turned out, didn’t spend all his time in the club. He must have also been clocking some serious hours at the gym, too, because he was cut from head to toe with lean muscles. The sight of his nearly naked body was so impressive that Pru couldn’t take her eyes off it for a long entranced second before it occurred to her why he was staring back with an equally impressed look on his face.

  Then she remembered she was sitting there still naked as the day she’d been born.

  With a gasp, she grabbed the white duvet, bringing it up to cover her chest before demanding, “What happened last night? Tell me. Now.”

  Chapter 7

  Prudence had warned Max she’d no longer be there when they woke up.

  “Wanna do me?” she’d asked him when she’d crawled onto the bed in her showgirl costume. “I’m only here for one night.”

  Max, who had a rule about sleeping with a completely wasted woman, had answered, “I don’t think so, sweetheart.”

  Then he’d come over to the bed, undid her feather bustle and started the surprisingly complicated process of getting her showgirl costume unzipped, unhooked and off her body. The idea had been to get her out of the costume and tucked into bed, but Pru didn’t make it easy for him. She was little to no help, forcing him to turn her body every which way in order to get her undressed.

  And then there’d been the big reveal of her fully naked body. As it turned out, Pru had a body built for loving: soft wide hips, a heart-shaped backside and a set of breasts so glorious, they made his mouth water at the thought of tasting their black-cherry centers.

  “You sure you don’t want to keep the party going?” she’d asked, arching her back and extending her long legs in a classic pinup-girl pose.

  Max had gritted his teeth before reaching for the duvet and yanking it, so that she came tumbling out of her sexy pose.

  By the time she recovered, he was holding up the duvet, letting her know that he was ready for her to stop tempting him and lie down. He needed to cover the sight of her nearly irresistible body with the blanket.

  Pru obediently lay down, but she continued to argue with him. “C’mon, Max, don’t be like that. I had so much fun tonight.” She pouted. “Just do me, okay? One time. That’s all I’m asking.”

  It was a hard argument to resist. Especially with Pru running her hands over her body, making it blatantly obvious that she would rather have him on top of her than the blanket he was holding.

  But Max, who prided himself on not living by the rules, followed this particular rule of consent for good reason.

  He averted his eyes from her delectable body and reminded himself why. It’s a good way to get taken to court, he told himself. Do you really want to be that douche bag who gets a girl drunk in order to get her into bed? he’d asked himself.

  No, he didn’t want to be that guy, but he did want Pru. There was that unfinished business in New Orleans that they had. The kiss that had continued to haunt him in the weeks before she’d called to accept his offer. And he still owed her for using her womanly wiles to basically serve him with his brother’s stupid demands.

  But he didn’t want Pru like this. Not in some drunken lay, meant to cap off a night of partying it up. No, he decided, when he took Pru, he wanted her completely sober. He wanted her to give in to him, not because she was drunk, but because she wanted him, wanted the things he could and would do to her body.

  Determined to do this his way, he moved in with the blanket. But at the last moment, she grabbed one of his hands with two of hers, bringing it down to rest on one perfect globe.

  “Max Benton, do you know how hot you are?” she asked him.

  Max went still. He could feel her heavily beaded nipple against his palm, and Max’s cock jumped inside his white tuxedo pants in response.

  Perhaps sensing that Max was at the edge of his restraint, Pru let out a sexy moan before asking, “Do you have any idea how hot you made me when we were dancing together? I want you so bad right now, Max. Please.”

  For a moment, Max was paralyzed with lust, locked in a battle with himself to throw his number-one rule straight out the window.

  Pru totally took advantage of that. Her hand snaked around the back of his neck and pulled his head down to hers for a kiss so hot, it made his entire body pound with need. His instincts howled to take what she was offering.

  But he somehow managed to pull back. He tore his lips away from hers and said, “Pru, I want to. You have no idea how much I want you. But not like this, okay? Not when you’ve had too much to drink.”

  He cursed himself now for letting that happen. When he started offering her shots, he’d thought she’d do the same thing she’d obviously done in New Orleans—pour them out when he wasn’t looking.

  He’d used a trick one of the old Benton magicians had taught him back in the day for making drinks disappear in front of a large audience, while Pru knocked back every shot during the vows and then grabbed a bottle of champagne for all the photo ops Max had prearranged for after their stunt ceremony.

  At first, Max had thought Pru was just playing her part to the tee. Pretending to be an anything-goes party girl like in New Orleans. But when the photos were done and they were free to do their own thing, instead of running to Tomas so that he could drive her home, she’d pulled Max out onto the dance floor.

  Some showgirls he’d met, even the ones with dance degrees, weren’t particularly great dancers when it came to getting out on the floor at a nightclub. Sometimes they were stiff when they didn’t have choreographed moves to follow, or more interested in how they looked while dancing than actually having fun.

  Pru wasn’t one of those girls. She’d dragged Max away from the cameras into the middle of the crowd because according to her that was the absolute best place to be. Then she’d danced with him. Really danced. Abandoning herself to the music and using him as an instrument of her appreciation, until eventually it felt as if they were one body, writhing together on the dance floor, held in thrall to the music’s sway. They danced like this for what felt like hours, him reveling in the feel of holding her close as they moved in time with the fast music.

  When Max had sent Tomas home and arranged for the hotel room, his intentions had been honorable—sort of. Let Pru sleep off the night’s excesses, then continue the party in the morning.

  After the night they’d had, he’d doubted Pru would have much more energy than what it would take to climb into bed. He hadn’t counted on her propositioning him, or making it so hard for him to turn her down.

  But he did it. He ended the kiss before it got out of control.

  “Not tonight,” he told her, bringing his hand up from her breast and using it to cup her face instead. She was still beautiful, he couldn’t help but notice, even with her eye makeup all smudged and her long curly hair looking less than perfect.

  “Tomorrow, I’ll make you feel good, give you everything you want, I promise. Just wait until morning, sweetheart. We’ll spend the whole day in bed.”

  She smiled at him, her eyes hooded with desire. “That sounds really nice,” she said. “I wish I could.”

  “Why can’t you?” he asked. “Whatever you’ve got planned, cancel it. We’ll keep the party going, just like you said.”

  “I wish we could keep the party going forever,” she whispered. Then her smile turned sad. “But we can’t. I won’t be here tomorrow morning. If you want me, this is your last chance, your only chance.”

  Max had frowned the night before, not understanding. But i
nstead of answering his follow-up questions, Prudence had turned over and fallen asleep without any further discussion. Leaving Max to sleep on the couch because he didn’t trust himself to occupy the same bed as Pru or her naked, nubile body.

  He’d taken a cold shower before going to sleep. Then another one after waking up from an erotic dream involving him stripping Pru out of a real wedding dress and taking her from behind before the dress had even hit the floor.

  He’d taken the second shower in the hopes of calming himself down a bit before he woke Pru up to fulfill the promise he’d made her the previous night. He didn’t want their first time together to be over in a few blazing minutes.

  But when he came out of the shower, it hadn’t been necessary to rouse his sleeping bride, because she was already awake. With her long hair in a tangle of curls, and naked, she looked every bit as enticing as she had the night before.

  She stared at him in his towel, her dark brown eyes lighting with appreciation, which had given him momentary hope that what Pru had said last night hadn’t been a case of drunken gibberish.

  But then a look of horror had overtaken her face as she covered her breasts with the duvet and demanded to know what had happened last night. Her face accusing, as if he hadn’t used every weapon in his willpower arsenal to keep his hands off her.

  That was when he understood exactly what Pru had meant the night before. Wedding Night Pru, the woman who’d met every challenge he’d put to her, the woman who had posed and laughed and talked and danced with him all night, the woman who had kissed him as he’d never been kissed before—she was gone.

  Gone and replaced with the tight-faced would-be detective currently clutching the duvet as if he’d done something indefensible to her.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart. If we had hooked up last night, you’d have no doubt about what had happened, because you would be feeling it this morning. All over your body.”

  His words hit their mark, and even though Pru’s face was too dark to show a blush, he got to enjoy the show of her looking away from him, obviously flustered.

  But his enjoyment was brought up short when she said, “I have to go. I have to get home.”

  “Why?” he asked. “Your brother’s at camp. What else do you have to do today?”

  She turned on him, her eyes sharp. “How did you know my brother was at camp?” she asked.

  He gave her a lazy shrug and took a seat on the suite’s dark gray couch. “I guess the same way you knew to look for me at the club in New Orleans. Research.”

  She wrinkled her nose, obviously not liking the idea of someone prying into her life as she’d pried into his. “So yeah, I need to go. Like right now.”

  She got out of bed, taking the covers with her, but stopped short when she saw the showgirl outfit on the ground. “You left vintage clothing lying around on the floor?” she nearly shrieked, as if this, and not waking up in his bed, was the most horrific thing she’d experienced that morning.

  Supposing he should be grateful to have waking up in his bed pushed into second place, he watched her perform the rather impressive task of keeping the heavy duvet in place as she picked up the old costume. She draped it across her two arms and carried it like a wounded animal over to the suite’s large walk-in closet.

  “You should ask whoever pulled this for you to come up and get it,” she said as she disappeared into the closet. “Make sure it gets properly cleaned and put back wherever you found it...”

  She suddenly popped her head out of the closet and asked, “Where exactly did you find it?”

  Max didn’t reply, knowing she probably wouldn’t like the answer.

  But his refusal must have been clue enough, because she groaned. “Tell me—please tell me—you did not pull a costume from Nora Benton’s special collection.”

  “My grandmother loves weddings, and if she’d been here to ask, she would have been happy to loan it to you.”

  That was true. His Irish grandmother had been a Benton Revue girl herself. She would have been thrilled to see one of her costumes make an appearance at her grandson’s wedding—crazy but true, she was that kind of grandmother.

  However, it was also true that he’d have hell to pay from his redheaded grandmother when she got back from her European vacation at the end of the summer. It was one thing to get married without inviting her or Cole. It was another to do so with this particular bride. A girl she liked so much, that she’d actually cheered when Pru turned him down at his brother’s wedding, with a “Thatta girl, Pru” before telling her own grandson, “She’s too good for the likes of you.”

  “So you have a thing for vintage,” he said before Pru could argue with him any further about the costume. “Is that because your mom did costume work for the line?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly why,” Pru answered. She emerged from the closet, now dressed in one of the suite’s complimentary white robes. “And she’d be rolling over in her grave if she knew you’d thrown an original Benton Revue costume on the floor.”

  She cinched the robe’s belt tighter around her waist and asked, “Can you call Tomas? Tell him to meet me in the garage? Sunny gave me the code to Cole’s private elevator, so I can take it and meet him down there.”

  He answered her furtive request with a cool look. “Depends.”

  “Depends on what?” she asked, annoyance etched across her face.

  “On where you put the girl I met last night,” he answered. “You’re holding her hostage, and I’m not letting you leave here until you tell me how to get her back.”

  * * *

  “G-get her back?” Pru blinked at Max, everything inside her cringing up.

  This is why she worked so hard to keep the girl she used to be completely suppressed. The old Pru had never been anything but trouble—a walking invitation for regrets.

  Pru cursed herself. Yeah, she’d been understandably nervous about getting married in front of a nightclub packed with Max’s friends, but she never should have drank so much. Never should have risked letting her out.

  Pru took a breath and answered as calmly as she could, “Max, I drank a lot last night. I probably said some things I shouldn’t have.” Her cheeks heated. “Probably did some things I shouldn’t have, too. But it was because I was drunk. That girl last night wasn’t me.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Four words. Said quietly, but with more conviction than she would have guessed Max Benton capable of.

  She opened her mouth to once again feint what he had guessed correctly. To once again try to convince him that she didn’t have a wild party girl trapped inside her, one she’d been ruthlessly suppressing for the past five years.

  But she was saved from doing so by the sound of a vibrating ring. It was Max’s smartphone, going off on the little table beside the couch.

  He picked it up and smirked. “It’s my brother,” he told her before answering the phone with a fake-chummy, “Cole, bro. What’s up?”

  Cole answered and Max’s smirk grew even more pronounced. “Well, you know me, bro. Impetuous is my middle name. Sorry you had to hear about it on the news, but Pru’s a great girl. You know that. I’m just happy she agreed to marry me, so of course I wanted to lock that down sooner rather than later.”

  Max nodded, looking bored, as he remained silent. “Okay, duly noted. You and Sunny want to be invited the next time Pru and I get married. We’ll keep that in mind. Meanwhile, should I pick up my trust-fund check from your office or do you just want to transfer the funds straight into my account?”

  Cole answered again, and this time the smirk fell off Max’s face. In fact the more Cole talked, the more furious Max looked.

  But in the end, all Max said was, “Fine. See you later.”

  Then he hung up, his jaw ticking.

  “What did he say?”
Pru asked, her curiosity temporarily superseding her need to run from the room. “Is he refusing to give you the money again, even though you met his terms?”

  “No,” Max answered, his voice tight. “He says he’ll sign off, but he has one more condition. He wants me to come meet him to fill out the paperwork.”

  “That’s not a bad condition,” Pru told him. “You can do that. Isn’t his office right upstairs on the thirty-fifth floor?”

  Max rubbed a hand over his face, suddenly seeming weary beyond his years. “Yes it is. But he’s not there today. He’s in Utah, on the company’s annual executive retreat near the Grand Staircase.”

  Pru would have argued that this wasn’t so bad either. The Grand Staircase was only a few hours’ drive away. If Max left now, he could get there before lunch maybe.

  But then Max let the other shoe drop. “He wants me to come meet him in Utah. And he wants me to bring you.”

  Chapter 8

  Pru hadn’t loved the idea of being married to Max, and she was even less enthusiastic about having to pretend to be in love with him directly to his brother’s face.

  Max knew this because she’d made him wait outside in his Ferrari sports car when he dropped her off at her apartment to get a shower and put on something to wear for the short trip to the Sinclair Lodge, a retreat a few miles from Utah’s Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument. The shower and change of clothes didn’t seem to help her mood. She barely said a word in the car ride up to Utah, not even when he baited her with questions about Wedding Night Pru.

  She maintained her hostile silence, breaking it only to greet the Sinclair Lodge’s manager, who handed Max a set of old-fashioned metal keys and guided them to their room on the second floor. The manager walked beside Pru up the stairs, telling her about the lodge’s history. How it had started out as a private residence for the Sinclairs, a prominent Pittsburgh steel family, but had later been converted into a corporate retreat by Andrew Sinclair, the youngest Sinclair brother, who had decided to leave behind the steel business and start his own line of specialized hotels. Ski resorts, dude ranches and retreats such as this one, which were rented out only to large groups for reunions, corporate retreats, etc.