Submitting in Vegas (Vegas Morellis 3)

“It’s no problem, Virginia. I can have someone drive your car home. Hell, I’ll do it now,” he says, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

“I don’t think you giving me a ride home is a good idea,” I tell him. “Remember last time you gave my drunk ass a ride home? It didn’t end well.”

“I thought it ended well,” he says dryly, as he types out a text.

“Fine, it ended well in certain respects, but it can’t end that way tonight, and you smell really good, so I think we should probably not do that,” I inform him, doing my best to express my drunk girl logic.

“All right, then you can come back to my house,” he offers back, with his te

rribly flawed sober Rafe logic.

I point at him. At one of him. I close one eye, and then there is only one of him again. Much better. I open both eyes. “No.”

“But I smell so good.”

I grin, leaning over and bumping him in the shoulder. “Don’t use my compliments against me, you rogue.”

“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” he demands.

“Mm… I don’t know. My favorite color is brown.”

“No one’s favorite color is brown,” he says dismissively.

Anyone who has seen how lovely his brown eyes are would most certainly see the benefits of choosing that as their favorite color. “It used to be blue,” I tell him. “I like both. But brown wins every time if there’s a competition.”

“Tell me something else. Something more substantial.”

“Okay. Well, I’ll tell you something, but you have to promise not to judge me.”

He smiles benignly. “Are you joking? Me? Judge you?”

“Just promise.”

His eyes narrow, but I can see the interest there. If I want immunity before telling him, it must be good. Since he seems to be in the mood to go rooting around in my soul, he bites. “All right, I promise.”

“It’s kinda bad,” I tell him.

“Worse than shoplifting a Christmas ornament?”

“Well… that was an action, this was more of a thought crime. I didn’t actually do anything wrong, it was more that I considered doing—or not doing, I guess—something.”

“All right,” he says, even more interested.

“I should preface this by saying, I love my mom. I know not everyone has great relationships with their parents, but that’s not the case for me. I mean, our relationship is by no means perfect, no relationship is perfect, but I love her and she’s important to me.”

“Got it.”

“Two years ago she called me and told me she had to talk to me about something. She’d been to the doctor, and they thought she might have cancer.”

Rafe leans back. “Oh, shit.”

I nod my head. “So, of course I was really scared and upset about it, I was worried for her, I felt terrible. I started researching everything I could about it, you know? All the tips and tricks. It’s stupid, but you always think you’ll be able to stumble across some miracle cure that somehow the rest of the word missed, because you really need it.”

He nods his understanding. “Sure.”

“So, I started sending her this new diet regimen she needed to adopt, tea she should try—the works. If there’s a suggestion on a website somewhere of a miracle cure, I found it. She eventually got tired of all the emails, and she called to tell me to cool it, you know? We didn’t even know if it was cancer, and I always do this, I always get ahead of myself. She’s my mom,” I offer with a shrug. “She nags me sometimes, even when I’m trying to help.”

Rafe smiles faintly. “My mom nags with the best of ‘em.”