The Pact (Winslow Brothers #2)(22)
Awareness heightened at the mention of Daisy, I instantly shift myself onto the arm of the couch to study their conversation more closely.
“What? I didn’t give anyone shit. Did I?” Ty asks, humorously horrified at his own lack of memory.
“I thought you were going to pull a Jude and marry her in Vegas, dude,” Remy remarks. My chest involuntarily squeezes at how close to on track he is with the wrong brother. Except for the love thing, of course. Flynn Winslow doesn’t fall in love.
“Technically, I didn’t find love in Vegas, bro,” Jude adds. “I met the love of my life in New York, while she was pretending to be the bride-to-be at a bachelorette party and I was pretending to be an exotic dancer and giving her a sexy lap dance.”
Remy just stares at him. “You realize that sounds insane, right?”
Jude just smirks. “Oh, I’m aware.”
“Enough about Jude.” Ty butts into the conversation. “What’s on the agenda today? A little pool time before we have to get on the plane to go back home?”
“Enough about Jude?” Jude retorts. “This is my bachelor party, you fuck.”
“Don’t know about the pool time. It’s already after eleven,” Remy answers, ignoring Jude completely.
“What?” Ty shouts, outraged at time’s perpetual motion. “The fuck you say it’s after eleven.”
While my two youngest brothers bicker over their need to be attention whores, I use that perfectly timed distraction to slide my phone into my back pocket, set my empty coffee cup into the sink, and grab my keys and wallet and already packed duffel.
“Hey, where are you going?” Remy calls as I open the door to the suite. “We have to pack all our shit and get ready to go.”
I give him a flick of two fingers toward my duffel and a cock of an eyebrow. “Speak for yourselves. I’m packed. I’ll see you shitheads downstairs.” Remy scowls as I let the door fall closed behind me, but just before it settles into the jamb, I push it open again. “Oh. And don’t forget to leave a tip for the housekeeper.”
The door slams shut, and I head for the elevators. I’ve got an hour to get a real cup of coffee, find a spot in the hotel to people watch, and hope that maybe, just maybe, I’ll get a glance of a wild mane of curls before we need to head to the airport and leave Vegas behind for good.
Flynn
The sounds of Vegas have managed to follow me into McCarran International Airport. Even while sitting at our gate and waiting for our flight to New York to board, my ears ring with “the slot machine soundtrack” every damn casino in the city plays to lure tourists into thinking they need to get in on the gambling fun.
I know New York isn’t the quietest city in the country, but I’ll take the sounds of honking taxis and street traffic over the ching-ching-ching Vegas song and dance any day of the fucking week.
If I had my say, and if family and business weren’t keeping me as a full-time New Yorker, I’d permanently live in my desert house, where silence and the sound of the wind are about the only things that fill my ears. My Vegas residence might be close to the Strip, but I made damn sure when I bought and built that property that it was far enough away from the casino chaos.
Yet you didn’t mind all that ching-ching-ching when there was a mane of curls and big green eyes adding to the ambiance…
I’d be a liar if I tried to refute that sentiment. It appears the only thing that made Vegas interesting was Daisy Diaz.
Actually, Daisy Winslow, the woman—your wife—whom you hoped to spot before you left the Wynn but came up empty-handed.
“I swear to God, I shit a toddler in there. Little cherub cheeks and big fat arms, I didn’t even look back after I flushed the toilet because I don’t think there was even a chance my crap was going down,” Ty announces on his return from the restroom, climbing over the suitcases and bags under his and Jude’s chairs and collapsing into the pleather.
“You’re fucking nasty, dude,” Remy remarks, pulling his sunglasses down over his eyes and sinking farther into the airport seating.
“What? I haven’t been able to pinch one off all week. Traveling and booze make me constipated as a motherfucker.”
“Ty, I’m not even remotely drunk enough to be having this conversation right now, and I can smell the booze seeping out of my pores.” Rem puts two fingers to the bridge of his nose. “So, can it with the literal shit-talk, for fuck’s sake.”
“I’m just saying,” Ty says on a whisper then, focusing his monologue at Jude, a willing listener. “It was a violent showing by my intestinal system. I didn’t know the old girl had it in her, to be honest. I thought I was going to die in the bathroom. See Ty Winslow at his eternal resting place, kind of thing.”
I step away from the group on a shake of my head and look for anything I can do that’ll be far enough out of earshot that I don’t want to puncture my own eardrums anytime soon—or admit that they’re a hell of a lot funnier than I want them to be. Just down from our gate, I spot a cluster of slot machines in the center aisle of the airport, mostly abandoned by passengers as they wait to board their impending flights.
Daisy’s bouncy curls flash through my mind like a trailer for a movie, and I move on a whim. Toward the slot machines, around the group of them in surveillance, and then finally, to take a seat at the distinctly memorable buffalo game in the middle.