“No.” Sed laughed. “You sound like you swallowed a frog. I get that he was just making a joke, but it’s still too soon. Just make sure he doesn’t send it to Jessica. It would upset her.”
“Are you sure? It might make her feel better to laugh about it.”
“I think she’d rather forget it ever happened.”
“I’m sure if it hadn’t gone public, she’d remember that time with you as special.” And hot. Rebekah was feeling flushed just thinking about what the two of them had done not far from this very spot. She’d never have the guts to go through with something like that. Let some guy in a parking garage watch her have sex with her husband in the safety of their room, sure, but not go at it in a public place.
“You think?” Sed sounded unsure and the man never sounded unsure about anything.
“You could ask her.”
“I’ll do that. Now keep your husband in line so I don’t have to break his neck the next time I see him.”
Rebekah chuckled, knowing Sed’s threats against Eric would never see fruition. He’d probably whop him a good one in the head, though. “I’ll try, but it won’t be easy.”
She handed the phone back to Eric who, after getting another chewing out from Sed, hung up and shoved the device into his pocket.
“He never has a sense of humor where Jessica is involved,” Eric grumbled.
“Maybe because he’s serious about her.”
“I’m serious about you, but that didn’t suddenly turn me into a lamewad.” He wrapped his arms tightly around her, hugging her from behind. “Maybe I am lucky, after all. No one else understands me the way you do. I’m lucky we found each other.”
“The way we found each other wasn’t lucky at all,” she murmured, a pain stabbing into her chest as she thought about her brother’s accident and how he might be permanently disabled because of it. If Dave hadn’t broken his neck in that bus accident, she wouldn’t have needed to stand in for him as soundboard operator and she probably never would have gotten close to Eric. Eric was the kind of guy that took a while to grow on a person. Her first impression of him hadn’t swept her off her feet, but once she’d seen the tender, generous heart he carefully guarded with his inappropriate jokes and pranks, she’d been a goner.
“That’s true,” he said. “Do you want to go somewhere else? I feel kind of… I don’t know…”
“Guilty for tainting one of Sed and Jess’s special places?”
She felt him shrug behind her. “Not really. This place is kind of boring.”
She wasn’t buying it. He practically had guilt seeping out his pores. She turned in his arms and pressed her ear to his chest, listening to his heart beat. “I’m never bored when I’m with you.”
His hand cupped the back of her head, pressing her closer, and he kissed her hair.
“I think we’d be even less bored riding the rides at the top of the Stratosphere.”
“I’ve always wanted to ride those,” she said, leaning back to look up at him. “Everyone I know is too chicken to get on any of them and riding by myself would have been pretty lame.”
“Then let’s go.”
They took the monorail to the far end of the Strip and when they reached the top of the Stratosphere, which looked like a spaceship perched on the top of a tall spire, Rebekah stared down at the ground far below and thought perhaps she’d been a bit hasty in wanting to climb into an amusement ride that hung over the edge of a tall building. Saying she wanted to ride the contraption and actually standing in line to get on it were entirely different things.
“Are you sure you want to ride this?” Rebekah asked Eric as he bounced up and down on the balls of his feet like a seven-year-old. “I hear it’s pretty intense.”
“I’m all in, but if you’re scared—”
“I’m not,” she interrupted, her stomach a tangle of nerves and nausea.
She played brave through the short line and while she strapped herself in, but when the ride started, she screamed like a little girl who’d woken in the night covered in poisonous spiders. The ride only lasted a minute—during which she was certain fifteen years of her life had been stolen. Unfortunately, she opened her eyes when the car was pointing straight down, and her stomach took a free fall the entire seven hundred feet of empty space between her body and the ground. Eric was whooping beside her with unparalleled glee. The man was obviously insane.
When it was over, Rebekah climbed from the car with wobbly knees and clung to a nearby railing for stability.
“That was awesome!” Eric shouted. “Let’s go again!”
Just the thought of getting on again made bile rise in Rebekah’s throat. She shook her head vigorously.
“You didn’t have fun?”
She plastered on a brave smile. “Once was all the fun I can take.”
“Let’s go see our ride photo,” he said, taking her hand and tugging her toward a photo booth.
They located their photo easily. Eric had his hands in the air and wore a euphoric expression on his lean, rugged face. Rebekah looked like she’d just discovered the eighth circle of Hell.
Eric laughed his ass off as he pointed at her terrified expression. “You were petrified.”
“Was not!”
He placed a comforting hand on her lower back and nudged her up against his side. “I was a little scared too,” he said in a low, soothing tone.
She stared up at him, clinging to his comforting words. She didn’t like to think of herself as a wimp. Ever. “You were?”
He grinned. “Not really, but if it makes you feel better—oomph!”
He deserved that elbow to the gut. Her legs were working properly again, so she stomped off while he bought the goddamned picture of them on that death trap.
“I’m going to hang this on the fridge,” he said when he caught up to her on the escalator, a much saner way to head down.
“Do you really need to tease me about everything?” she snapped.
He was so busy staring at her in shock that he stumbled over the landing when they reached the bottom.
“I’ve never teased you about being scared of something,” he said as he trailed after her to the next down escalator. “Because I’ve never seen you afraid. You’re a rock.”
“You have seen me scared,” she said. “Just last week when I thought my cancer had come back.”
“That’s entirely different.” At the bottom of the escalator, he pulled her aside and out of the flow of foot traffic. “Rebekah, that was a real threat to your life. I’d never joke around about something like that. This”—he flapped the photo at her—“was just a perceived threat. If I’d thought you were in danger, of course I wouldn’t have teased you for being afraid.”
She bit her lip and stared at his chest. Perhaps she had taken his teasing too hard, but she needed him to understand why. And after the misunderstanding that had almost torn them apart, they’d promised each other to always talk about their problems and differences.
“Please don’t make fun of me when I’m scared,” she said. “I’ve had to be strong for so long that showing any weakness really bothers me.”
He cupped her face and encouraged her gaze to meet his. His thumb caught a stray tear on her cheek. How mortifying. Here she was claiming to be strong and she was crying like a child.
“Sweetheart, you don’t have to carry your entire burden anymore. I’m here to shoulder as much as you’re willing to allow. You’re my everything.”
His face blurred beyond her suddenly watery eyes. Those were the words he’d vowed to her. Words he believed so much he’d had tattooed on his skin. Words she hadn’t quite comprehended until that moment.
“Can we go back to our hotel room now?” she asked. “I’ve had about all the fun I can handle for one night.”
He grinned and pecked the tip of her nose. “You know the real fun starts when we’re alone together.”
Of course she knew that.