He’s loved me for ages. Looked out for me when I was too stubborn and too worked up to do it myself. In a choice between a career that is doing its best to use me up and spit me out, and a man who cares this much about me, is there actually any choice at all?
“Hey! It’s my favourite people.”
I turn, and Jake’s coming across the pool deck. He’s in a polo shirt and khakis and looks like the human embodiment of an upwardly mobile vacation. He waves like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
Well, he’s about to.
I move so fast, Gordo doesn’t have time to catch me.
“Bailey.” His voice is full of warning, but I don’t care. I march across the deck. Jake’s all happy smiles and confidence as I stride toward him.
“Morning, buddy,” he says. “I meant to ask you if you want Lachlan’s old office, or if you think I could have it?”
He doesn’t even see his doom until I have his shirt in two fists. Anger is pretty powerful. I spin him until he’s got his back to the pool.
“Hey. Hey, what’s up?” He grapples for purchase as I lean him back.
I get close to his face so there’s no question of him mishearing. Between clenched teeth, I say, “Fuck you. And both our jobs.”
Then I let him go.
Teenage me is so proud.
His face, as he tumbles into the water, is priceless. I will remember it forever. Gordo and Elias both rise to their feet. Elias looks astonished. Gordo looks proud.
Jake comes up, spluttering and wiping his face. He’s soaked and his clothes cling to him.
“What the hell?” he says.
“You know exactly what.” I jab a finger at him. “You are a jerk and a loser and you always have been. I’m not playing your game anymore, Jake. Sink on your own. I quit.”
He spits and splashes. “What? You can’t quit. Bailey.”
It’s hard to take him seriously as he wades to the edge of the pool. He looks like a wet cat, and about as happy.
“I’ll have my resignation in your inbox by the end of the day. And I’ll be sure to cc Ed so there’s no confusion.”
Gordo comes to my side and I slip an arm around him. He puts one of his on my shoulders and kisses my temple.
“Good choice,” he says.
I laugh as we turn. Jake’s still yelling from the pool. Some of the staff have come to see what the commotion is, but Jake is no longer my problem, and a fully dressed man in the water is nowhere near the weirdest thing they’ve ever seen at a Vegas hotel.
I nuzzle into Gordo’s side. “Easiest choice ever.”
So it turns out, when you’re unemployed and your boyfriend is a top-secret millionaire, things like airline change fees suddenly don’t seem like such a hassle. I’m going to do my best not to get too spoiled, but when Gordo suggests we stay a few more days, I jump on it.
“I thought you didn’t like Vegas?” I say.
He lifts me up so I have to wrap my legs around his hips. Did I mention I’m naked? So is he. No one’s going anywhere.
“I like it wherever you are.”
His kiss makes me melt, which is good, because I need to be butter a few minutes later when he has me facedown on the bed and he’s slowly sliding into me.
“Oh, Jesus. Gordo.” My knuckles go white as I grip the sheets.
“Too much?”
Never. Gordo is everything I want.
We don’t get out of bed all day.
Well. We take advantage of the shower a few times.
“What do you think about putting one of these nozzles in the condo?” I say.
“Whatever you want,” he says.
We sleep through dinner and order room service at two in the morning.
“Gordo,” I say as I chew on a french fry.
“Yeah?” He opted for a club sandwich and is currently picking out the middle slice of bread from each quarter, which, if you ask me, defeats the whole point of a club sandwich.
“Did you change our room booking?”
He freezes halfway through his sandwich surgery. “What do you mean?”
The question is casual, but he’s only wearing his shorts, and a flush creeps up his chest, barely visible under his hair.
Busted.
I can barely control my smile. “I mean, I called after you agreed to come on this trip and made sure the room had two beds. It was a whole thing, so I know I did it, and then they emailed me the confirmation. But I also put your name on the reservation. So did you call them after and ask them for a room with one bed?”
“No.”
“Oh.” That’s disappointing. Here I had visions of Gordo planning to seduce me all along and sneakily calling to make sure we had no option but to sleep together, and it turns out maybe I was getting ahead of myself.
“But I called and asked them to upgrade from the room block to a suite, and they said the last one available only had one bed.”
Sneaky bastard.
“So your plan was to get into my bed all along?”
He shrugs. “I wanted you to have a nice time. If you had to come and deal with all this awful stuff at work, I wanted to make sure you were sleeping well.”
And I have definitely done that. Well, most nights.
“You’re so thoughtful,” I say.
His sandwich seems to meet with his specifications because he puts a wedge in his mouth like it’s meant to be bite-size. I guess for Gordo it is.
He licks mayo off his thumb. “And that’s why I got the first-class plane tickets too.”
I drop a fry in my lap. “The what?”
He smiles. “You didn’t think we kept getting magical upgrades because of your good looks?”
“Uh. Yeah.” God, I was so strung out that afternoon at the airport I could hardly function. So yeah, I’d assumed the first-class thing was good karma.
Instead, it was Gordo.
One more thought shakes loose in my head. “What about the condo?”
That catches him off guard at least. He frowns his bushy frown. “What about it?”
I choose my words carefully. “I mean, I think we’ve established that you don’t actually need a roommate. Financially speaking. Why don’t you have a place of your own?”
He buys time with another quarter sandwich, chewing carefully. “I was lonely. The people I’d been closest to were the ones I worked with, and then we weren’t really speaking to each other without lawyers present. And everyone else . . . When you . . . Something changes when you get a lot of money like that. It changes how people relate to you. But you didn’t. You thought I was just a guy who needed a place to live.” He pushes the plate with his sandwich aside and reaches for me. “And I could tell you needed someone too. Just took you two years to realize it.”
I shake my head as I crawl into his lap to kiss him. “I don’t deserve you.”
“But you got me,” he says.
With full bellies, we get back into bed. I’m too spent to fuck, but I could crawl on top of Gordo and let him wrap me up like a Bailey burrito forever.
He says, “Bailey.”
“Yeah?” I yawn.
“I booked us a helicopter ride in the morning.”
Fine by me. “To see the Grand Canyon? That’s the kind of thing people do out here.”