Marry Me Now: An Arranged Marriage Collection

So, some celebrations are in order. As well as a much-needed break from reality for Lea.

Hence my agreeing to this madness. “I guess it’s not the worst,” I shout back at her, even though, to be honest, I’m having a lot more fun than I expected.

“You’re gonna be a club regular by the time the weekend’s up,” Lea promises, and I snort.

“This is a special occasion. Besides, it’s your fault. What did you tell me? ‘You need to learn how to cut loose’?”

Lea grins. “I stand by that declaration.”

“Then you’d better be ready to help with the consequences tomorrow, when I need a metric ton of caffeine and Tylenol just to crawl out of bed.”

Lea shoves my shoulder playfully. “Rule number one of Vegas, Mara: we do not worry about next-day consequences while we’re still out.”

With that, she spins away from me to wrap her arms around the neck of the nearest guy. He’s pretty cute actually, tall and gangly and not at all Lea’s usual burly macho type. But maybe she’s trying new things tonight, too.

I wonder if I can be that brave. Before the thought is even in my head, though, I’m dismissing it. I didn’t come here to hook up with someone. I just came to celebrate my new job. End of list. But cutting loose is going to be hard to do with my mind still stuck in LA, wondering how my first day on the job will go the day after tomorrow.

Pitfire is a huge deal. They’re new, but they’re already big in both LA and New York, not to mention a few smaller cities between. They expanded fast, like startup-level fast, thanks to their extremely young CEO. The CEO who everyone tells me is the most eligible bachelor in LA.

Not that I plan on mixing work and pleasure. Tequila might burn, but that is a cocktail with disaster written all over it.

My head buzzes pleasantly as I skip back toward the bar after the next song, leaving Lea wrapped up with her new friend, intent on finding some water. This buzz is ideal, but if I dehydrate too much, I don’t want to know how bad I’ll feel in the morning.

As I walk over, I cast a discerning eye around the club. The lights, if anything, are even worse by the bar than they are in the middle of the room. You’d think that a club with as great a reputation as this one—not to mention one that pulls in so much money—would be able to afford a nicer lighting setup. Or even a stage with any sort of backdrop, instead of just a dingy, stained red curtain to hide the yucky bare black walls.

Oh well. There’s no accounting for taste. And while Vegas has been more fun than I expected, classy and tasteful aren’t exactly words I’d use to describe it.

“Buy you a drink?” asks a guy near the bar. He grins at me, but his eyes do that long, lingering up-and-down thing that tells me he’s already undressing me in his head. Then he actually has the nerve to lick his lips afterward.

“Thanks, but I’m good,” I reply before I move to step around him toward a less crowded section of the bar.

That’s when he grabs my hand to stop me. I’m staring at him open-mouthed, shocked at the nerve, while he rubs his palm against mine, his eyebrows shooting up with surprise. “You’ve got a lot of callouses for a pretty young thing.” He tugs me toward him and I try to wrench myself free, waking from my stupor at last. But his grip is too tight. He’s got corded muscles visible all up both arms. Bigger muscles than I have, despite my day job doing heavy lifting and construction work, and I’m no match for him.

“There’s no shame in hard work,” I tell him, narrowing my eyes. With one last tug, I wrench my hand free. He staggers a step, but rights himself before I can make a break for it.

“What kinda hard work do you do?” He gives me the once-over again—or I guess the twice-over now—and my stomach churns with nausea.

“The kind that’s none of your business,” I snap, already turning on my heel to leave. I storm off the dance floor, away from the bar. There’s a little corner a few steps away that looks fairly abandoned. Yes, okay, hiding in a darkened corner wouldn’t exactly earn Lea’s approval, but I need a break from this party girl lifestyle. Clearly it is not my thing.

I lean against the wall and let my head fall back against it, my eyes drifting shut. I can feel the thump of the bass through the wall I’m leaning against and through the soles of my feet. I smell the sticky scent of sweat and spilled rum and cokes, too. But at least I’ve got a little bit of breathing room now. Enough to clear my head and get the sensation of that creepy guy’s touch off my body.

Just then, I sense warmth at my arm. I crack one eyelid to spot someone approaching my hiding spot, and I stiffen, expecting that guy to try again. Guys like that don’t know when to quit.

But the man who stops in front of my hidey-hole is unfamiliar. I tilt my head back to squint up at him. He’s tall and dressed more like he’s about to walk into a board room than into a club. He’s unbuttoned his dress shirt cuffs and rolled them up far enough to give me a glimpse of his strong, veined forearms. His tie is loose around his neck. His dark eyes dance with amusement when they catch mine.

“Don’t worry,” he says, his voice low and yet still audible over the blast of the music, a trick I wish I could steal for when I’m on set and shouting into my mic to be heard over rehearsal music. “Your new friend won’t be bothering you anymore.”

I glance past this guy toward the doors and I spot two bouncers escorting the creep out of the club, while he tries to twist out of their arms, protesting. It brings a small smile to my face. “Your doing?” I ask.

“I don’t like men who can’t take no for an answer,” he replies. “Especially not ones who insult the concept of hard work while they’re at it.”

My cheeks flush, and I hope this guy can’t see it in the dark of the club. “Well, thanks for that, knight in…slightly disheveled suit.” I gesture at him with a grin.

He returns it, and oh, damn. He is even hotter than I thought at first. The club lights illuminate sharp hollows under his cheekbones and a sturdy brow. He’s got the kind of face that makes you immediately think about how he’d be in bed: stern and commanding, a total dom in the best possible way. “I agree with you, you know,” he says. “About hard work. There’s no shame in it.”

He takes a step closer, and I couldn’t back away if I wanted to, with the wall at my back, and me still leaning against it. Besides, I don’t want to. I raise my chin to keep my eyes locked on his, even though he’s a good head taller than me. “That why you look like you just stepped out of a board room, even though you’re in the middle of a club in Vegas?” I ask, surprising myself with my audacity. Normally I don’t really talk to guys. I don’t bother. I’m too busy for a relationship.

But this could never be a relationship. Hook ups in Vegas don’t become anything more than just that. And maybe a hook up is what I need. After all, I’ve been working my ass off at school for years. When I finally graduated, I worked my ass off some more at internships and applying for jobs, until I finally landed my dream gig. This is my one weekend to let off steam before I have to become a responsible adult. Before I start working full-time, and God knows how long it’ll be before I have the chance to do anything even remotely resembling a casual hook up again.

My mystery man laughs, like he’s startled, too. Good. Something about his serious demeanor makes me want to surprise him. To catch him off his guard and make him laugh, if I can. “What can I say? The club scene isn’t normally my beat. Wound up here by chance.” He’s grinning as he says it, his gaze sweeping over me. But unlike the creeper, it doesn’t bother me when this guy checks me out.

In fact, I’d like him to keep doing it. If nothing else, it will distract him from noticing that I’m doing the same thing to him. Giving that sexy body of his a once over of my own, because damn, that suit fits him perfectly. And it makes me wonder how it would look on my hotel room floor.

“What a coincidence,” I call back to him, raising my voice as the music gets louder. “Me too.”

“Well, we should celebrate then. What are

you drinking?” He winks at me and holds out an arm, like a real gentleman. Right here in the middle of a bunch of gyrating clubgoers, it strikes me as even more unusual.

I loop my arm through his. “Tequila, mostly,” I admit, and I’m gratified to see him cringe.

“You need something more suitable. What do you usually drink, when you’re not clubbing in Vegas?”

I laugh. “I don’t know. I’m not much of a drinker. Something simple, maybe. Not too sweet.” He leans across the bar and orders us both vodka tonics—top shelf, I notice. “You don’t have to do that,” I call in his ear. “I’m fine with well drinks.”

“You shouldn’t be,” he replies, amusement dancing in his dark eyes. “A girl like you deserves top shelf everything.”

For some reason, those words send a curl of pleasure through my belly. Even more so when he trails a hand up my arm to rest on my shoulder, his fingertips alighting so gently on my skin that they raise goosebumps the whole way up. I shiver, unable to suppress it, and his grin widens, as if he knows exactly what he’s doing to me.

He probably does. Bastard.

It makes me want more.

The bartender passes us our drinks—it didn’t take long at all, not like when Lea and I ordered shots before. I suspect the bartender must have been keeping an eye out for this guy. Probably because he’s the type to buy top shelf liquor in a club like this.

“What’s your name?” I call into his ear. Unless I’m mistaken, he flinches for a second, as though hesitating.

“John,” he calls back. Okay. No last names. I can dig it. We are, after all, in Vegas. The land of anonymity. That’s fair enough.