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Hot Finish

Hot Finish (Fast Track #3)(46)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“I’m supposed to blow on a swipe card?” She looked bemused. “Alright.” She leaned over and blew on the card in Ryder’s hand. “Mama needs a new pair of shoes.”

Ryder knew exactly where the slot was they’d won on before. He had passed it several times over the years but had never played it, not without Suz. It was their machine.

“How can you be sure this is the right one?” she asked, sitting on the seat as he stuck his card in.

“I know everything.”

“And I know you’re full of bull.”

“Not about stuff that matters.” Well, not most of the time anyway. He had to admit he hadn’t known a whole lot when it had come to his marriage. Ryder put his hands on her shoulders because he had developed an obsession with touching her now that he was allowed to again. “Push the button.”

She pushed it. “I don’t even get these games. I can’t even tell if we’ve won or not.”

“We didn’t. Push it again.” When she hesitated, clearly trying to interpret the screen, Ryder reached over her and pushed it.

“Hey. Am I doing this or are you?”

“Then move quicker. The slots are about speed. Just keep pushing.”

Suzanne glanced up at him and said, “I’m going to push you.”

But she was all talk and he knew it. Suzanne started pushing the button faster and they won fifty bucks. “Oh! Did we just win?”

“Yep. You’ve got the touch.”

Ryder watched Suzanne get into gambling, betting higher and double, and whooping when they won something. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and an hour later they were high-fiving.

“Holy shit! We just won five grand!” He eyed the machine and felt a surge of gambling victory. This was definitely their slot.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Suzanne jumped up and did an impromptu butt-shaking dance that Ryder really appreciated. “How much did we spend?”

“I think we spent about two grand, so we’re up three.”

She stopped dancing and gaped at him. “We just dumped two thousand dollars into this blinking machine?”

“Yeah. Gotta spend to win.”

Suzanne grabbed her heart for a second, then yanked his card out of the machine. “Good Lord in heaven. That’s insane. That’s a huge amount of money.”

It was entertainment was what it was, and Ryder considered himself very fortunate that he could indulge himself now and again. He wasn’t a big spender for the most part, and he had a career that paid him well. There was no reason to feel guilty for spending a few thousand dollars on a special weekend. “It’s not a big deal.”

“I’m having a heart attack, I swear.” She handed him the card. “Take that.” Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were a little glassy.

Suddenly unnerved by her reaction, Ryder said, “Maybe we should move on to something else. How about blackjack?”

“How about no. You shouldn’t spend any more money. We should be glad we won money and just walk away. Good Lord, two grand . . .”

“Well, what do you want to do then? We can get massages with our winnings.”

“Maybe you should just keep the money and not spend it.”

“What’s the fun in that? It’s like free money. It’s money that I never had, so we should feel completely justified in spending it.” Ryder pulled Suzanne closer to him and kissed her.

After a moment of hesitation, she relaxed in his arms and kissed him back.

“We’re here to have fun,” he murmured, suddenly knowing he was going to tell her the truth, right there on the casino floor. He couldn’t hold it in any longer, couldn’t pretend he was feeling less than he was. “Just two crazy kids in love cutting loose in Vegas. What we should do is take our three grand and get rehitched with an Elvis wedding package.”

Suzanne stiffened. Pulling back, she stared up at him. “That’s not funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be funny.” He was as serious as the heart attack she’d been claiming to have earlier.

“Why would you say something like that?”

Uh-oh. Suzanne was getting mad and he wasn’t even exactly sure why. Trying to tread lightly, he just said, “Because I was trying to get you to relax, to not worry about spending the money, to just enjoy this weekend where we’re together. I want to be with you, isn’t that obvious? For real be with you.”

Oh, my God, there were suddenly tears in her eyes.

Ryder panicked and said, “What? Baby, what’s wrong?”

Her lip trembled and she waved her hand wildly to indicate nothing was wrong, yet it clearly was, because now a tear had actually escaped her eye and was trickling down her cheek. Suzanne never cried and it was scaring the hell out of him.

“Let’s go . . .” Ryder looked around wildly. They were in a f**king casino, there wasn’t a single inch that wasn’t blinking and beeping and crawling with gamblers. “Back to our room.”

But Suzanne didn’t move. She just swiped at her eyes and said, “That was a cruel and stupid thing to say. We’ve never been two crazy kids in love cutting loose in Vegas. Not even on our honeymoon. And you can’t possibly really and truly want to be married to me again.”

There was one thing that boiled his blood, raised his blood pressure, had him seeing red, and that was when she told him what his feelings were. Nobody knew his feelings but him, damn it, and he thought for the most part, he was pretty honest when he shared them. She had no idea how much he wanted to be married to her, and that she could dismiss it, just like that, infuriated him.

“That’s two different issues. One, if I say I want to be married to you that means I do, and don’t tell me otherwise. Two, I was feeling pretty crazy in love on our honeymoon. I don’t know what you were feeling. I kind of thought you were happy, too.”

“I was happy. But I was scared. Terrified that you had married me because I was pregnant, plain and simple, and that I wouldn’t be able to hold on to you. I was terrified that we would drift apart and that we would end up divorced, my heart broken. And we did, and it was.”

“You left,” Ryder exploded, despite the fact that an older woman with orange hair shot him a glare from her slot stool a few feet away. “I never wanted this damn divorce. And I didn’t marry you because you were pregnant. I married you sooner than I intended because you were pregnant, but I always knew, from the first night we met and made love, that I would marry you.”

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