She’d fall apart if she opened her heart to him and then lost him. That was the only given in this equation. Maybe other wives and girlfriends saw the glass as half full. These were highly trained soldiers. They were good at what they did. The best. There was a good chance they were coming home.
But she’d stopped seeing the glass as half full a long time ago. People died every day in car crashes, leaving their kids behind. One stupid teenage rebellion, one trip to town, and a monster of a man had attacked her sister.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t have a relationship with Jack, especially not a long-term one. Maybe her sister believed she could face anything, including Cade’s long deployments, after what they’d been through. But Natalie refused to set herself up for heartache.
And that was if Jack wanted anything more than to win a bet. Which was a pretty damn big “if.”
Natalie leaned in to her sister. “I might not have all the answers, but I know that I have no desire to find out what baby oil mixed with chocolate body paint tastes like. If you don’t need me here, I’m going to check on Mufa
sa.”
“Go.” Lucia waved her off. “I’ll take care of them. And if you happen to bump into a certain SEAL…”
Natalie forced a smile. “Thanks, but that’s not going to happen.”
Prince Charming wasn’t roaming the hotel halls, waiting for her. Even if he was, he wasn’t her ticket to happy ever after.
But he could be your ticket to another orgasm. He could take the edge off the loneliness.
She reached the exit and glanced back at Lucia, her beautiful, glowing, pregnant sister. She should return to the party. She should smile, laugh, and pretend the lonesomeness wasn’t threatening to swallow her whole.
But it was.
She turned and pushed through the door. Heaven help her if she ran into Jack now. She might give in and let him win. Right now, she’d risk losing for another taste of the happiness she’d felt in his shower. It would kill her to truly give in to him, to let him claim her in the way she knew he wanted, but she was close to drowning in the surge of memory and pain. If the only way to keep her head above water was to get lost in him, she wouldn’t resist.
Chapter Fourteen
All Jack needed was a fucking crown. Then he would be the official King of Stupid. Only the kingdom’s ruler would bet his brothers that he could talk the woman of his fantasies into his bed—in front of her—and then continue to play truth or dare with her.
Except they’d never touched on truth, they were playing dare or dare. After that first night—when she’d hightailed it out of dinner, and then come screaming his name through the bathroom door, offering one helluva clue that she wanted him, too—after that, he should have changed the rules of the game to truth or truth in an attempt to start something real.
And miss out on the best blow job in the history of blow jobs.
Jack stopped in the middle of the empty hallway. Yeah, that sounded pretty damn stupid, too.
But he knew they had to talk. He needed to admit the truth. This wasn’t just a bet. He wanted more than one night with her. And he needed to find out why she’d refused to give him a shot when it was kind of obvious she wanted him too.
He headed down the long winding hall toward Natalie’s room in the most undesirable corner of the hotel. Only a person smuggling a giant dog in and out three or four times a day would request a room by the stairwell and the catering supply storage. To be fair, she probably didn’t know about the catering supply area when she’d checked in.
He rounded the corner and reached the second set of elevator banks. One set of shiny gold doors opened and out stepped Natalie. She’d traded her bartender’s uniform—jeans, fitted shirt, the occasional skirt that threatened to blow his mind—for a black sundress with thin straps. The top hugged her chest, while the skirt flowed around her legs, stopping above the knee. By Vegas standards, she looked ready for church. But one look and Jack knew precisely where he wanted to see her dress—the bedroom floor.
“Jack?” She froze just out of arm’s reach. “Are you lost? Trust me, the rooms on this floor are nothing like yours.”
“I came—” To help with your dog. Because Cade sent me. Oh, and the wedding toasts, we should work on those. “I wanted to talk to you,” he said.
“If that’s your new strategy…” She shook her head and drew a deep breath. “Please, I can’t do this right now.”
Her shoulders hunched forward as she studied the floor. Where was the feisty bartender who could take on a room of drunken sailors? The woman who never begged? The woman who declared victory after a shower?
“Natalie?” He stepped in front of her and was a hair’s breadth away from pulling her into his arms when she shoved her hands into pockets hidden in the folds of her dress.
“I need to check on my dog,” she said, trying to move past him.
But he couldn’t let her run away. Not like this. He stepped in front of her, careful to still give her space. He wouldn’t reach for her or touch her.
“What happened?” he asked. She looked up, and he saw the tears threatening in her eyes. “Please tell me.”
“Sometimes I look at my sister and I see all the mistakes I’ve made.” She spoke softly, her brown eyes staring into his. “She’s so happy now. Against all the odds, after everything that happened to us, to her…she’s moved on.”