In What Happens in Vegas, high-roller Jay Douglas is on a hot streak, winning millions off the blackjack tables at Eddie Flynn's Gold Dust Casino. Eddie Flynn wants to know how--and if there are any cards up Jay's sleeve, Flynn's going to break out the brass knuckles. A desperate Libby Thatcher agrees to get close to Jay to save her father from Flynn. But as Libby cozies up to Jay, what began as a con becomes a passionate winner-take-all gamble that could pay off big for both of them.

Excerpt

"Well, hello there." Jay opened his eyes and hauled his head up from the rim of The Gold Dust’s outdoor spa, a round, sunken hot tub enclosed by dense foliage in a far corner of the pool complex. This being a fairly mild May night by Vegas standards, steam rose like smoke off the warm, churning water, obscuring the dark figure on the other side despite the underwater lighting.

He recognized her voice, though. It was the girl who’d sabotaged his game at the blackjack table this afternoon. Libby...something wholesome and Tom Sawyerish. Thatcher. Libby Thatcher.

Jay sat up a little straighter, scraped his damp hair off his face. He’d been half dozing up till now, but watching her walk toward him around the perimeter of the enormous spa provoked a spurt of adrenaline that made his heart race.

It was a classic fight or flight reaction. He could get up and head back to his room—"I was just leaving, see you around"—or he could stay and confront this threat to his equanimity. Conquer it. Subdue it.

Bring it to its knees.

That thought inspired a mental image so visceral—and physically evident—that getting up was suddenly no longer an option.

"You here all alone?" she asked with a smile as she stood over him at the edge of the spa, that green straw shoulder bag slung over one shoulder.

"Until now," he said.

She looked away, the smile vanquished. If it were daytime, he would probably see her blushing, as she had when he’d sent off to have dinner all by herself.

"I didn’t mean..." he began, then just shook his head. "I wasn’t trying to be a jerk, it’s just... It’s been a long day for me, and I’m a little scorched."

She nodded thoughtfully. "And your back is sore from sitting at that table, so you thought a little hydrotherapy before bed would be just the ticket."

"Mostly my neck and shoulders, but yeah, that’s the idea." That, and maybe it would relax him enough to get a good night’s sleep before hitting the blackjack pit again in the morning.

"Don’t you have a whirpool tub in that fancy suite of yours?" she asked.

"Two, actually, one for each bedroom, but they don’t have a view of the stars."

She raised her gaze to the night sky, searching...

"There’s a lot of light haze from the Strip," he said, "but if you look, you can see—"

"Yeah, I see them," she said. "They’re beautiful."

Libby’s hair was caught up haphazardly, framing her face in stray tendrils. She had on a batik-printed pareo that fell almost to her ankles, and a white bikini top comprised of two crocheted triangles tied together in front. Her body was toned but womanly: round breasts, round hips, stomach flat but nicely unsculpted. She untied the knot that secured her pareo at one hip, drawing Jay’s attention to her arms and shoulders, which were sleekly muscled, more so than the rest of her. Interesting.

She lowered her gaze. Jay swiftly made eye contact, but there was no doubt she’d caught him checking her out. She looked away, her tongue flicking out to lick her lips—a nervous gesture that made him groan inwardly.

When she returned her gaze to his, there was a look in her eyes—bashful but with a certain glint—that told him the heat might not be entirely one-sided. "So you, uh, don’t mind if I join you?" she asked.

"Um, no. No, of course not."

She tossed the pareo and bag onto a chaise lounge, unveiling the bottom of her string bikini, which tied at the sides. Jay had seen more revealing swimsuits, but few as sexy. Its appeal wasn’t in its brevity, but in the ease with which it could come undone.

"I came out here looking for a nice quiet, evening swim," she said as she dipped an experimental toe in the water, "but there are all these smarmy singles over there, drinking frozen margaritas and hitting on each other." She nodded toward the pool on the other side of the spa’s circular barricade of shrubbery, through which muffled conversation and laughter could be heard above the low, watery rumble of the spa’s jets. "I thought I remembered something about a spa being out here, but it sure wasn’t easy to find."

"Which is one of the reasons I like it."

Libby lowered herself into the water, moaning with pleasure as she settled next to Jay on the submerged bench that ringed the spa. She laid her head back and closed her eyes, emitting a kittenish little growl. "Oh, man, I’ve been needing this."

Jay swallowed hard and wrested his gaze from her. He should leave. He would.

As soon as he could stand up without making a spectacle of himself.

He closed his eyes and started reviewing basic double-deck blackjack strategy in his mind. If you’ve got eight or less: Hit. Nine: Double down against dealer’s six or less, hit against anything higher. Ten: Double down against dealer’s—

"I don’t often ask guys out to dinner." She was looking at him. Her eyes, veiled by steam and lit by shimmering waves of underwater light, were the warm, iridescent green you might see at the edge of a forest pool.

"Um..."

"Actually, that was my first time ever. Pretty lame attempt, huh? Now I know why guys find it so hard."

"It wasn’t lame," he said. "I was lame. I was..." He looked away, shook his head. "Preoccupied. It wasn’t you."

"Really?"

"Trust me."

She smiled. "Thanks." The only part of her visible above the simmering water was her head, her shoulders, and the upper slopes of her breasts. Water roiled around her from jets in the backrest, some low, some high. The damp heat had corkscrewed those loose tendrils of hair, giving her a slightly untamed aura. "Normally I wouldn’t have had the guts to ask someone out," she said, "but this is Vegas, you know? You’re supposed to take chances in Vegas." He nodded inanely, thinking this was the first time he’d ever tried to make small talk while he had a blue-steel hard-on. "So, uh, are you here alone, or...?"

"Um, I’m here with a girlfriend. Jane." Libby bowed her head to slide out the chopsticks holding her hair in a twist at her nape. Setting the sticks on the concrete deck, she shook her head to loosen the unruly mane, which fell almost to the level of the water. "Problem is, yesterday morning, Jane met this guy and brought him back to our room, and he hasn’t left since, so I’ve got no place to go."

"They kicked you out of your own room?"

"They said I should stay," Libby said as she stroked her fingers through her hair, fluffing it, "but they’re, like, going at it nonstop, and they don’t mind an audience, so it’s a little...icky, you know?"

"Couldn’t you just get a room of your own?"

"Um, I tried, but there are all these conventions in town right now. Every hotel is booked solid."

"So, where’d you sleep last night?" he asked.

"I hung out in the casino." She looked away from him, almost as if the subject embarrassed her. "Walked around. Played the nickel slots for a while. Walked around some more. Played some more slots."

"All night? You look pretty good for someone hasn’t had any sleep in the last day and a half. You must be exhausted."

"Not as exhausted as I’ll be tomorrow morning." She closed her eyes and sank further down in the water to let the jets hit her neck. "I’d give my right arm for a bed to sleep in tonight."

They fell silent as Jay contemplated the second bedroom going to waste in that big, tacky suite Eddie Flynn had moved him to his second day here. Bad idea, he thought as he pictured her stretched out on the bed, hair rippling like fire over the pillows, gazing at him in gratitude as she untied the top of her bikini.

Eleven: Double down against all hands, he chanted to himself as his erection swelled inside his baggy swim trunks. Twelve: Hit against two or three, stand against four through six, hit against seven and higher...

"I was wondering about your shirt," she said.

He turned to find her looking at the Astro Boy T-shirt he’d dropped onto the deck nearby, along with his jeans and sneakers.

"That writing on it," she said, "what is it, Japanese?"

He nodded. "Astro Boy was the first Japanese animation introduced to the U.S. market, back in the sixties."

"Where’d you get that shirt?" she asked. "My nephew loves anime, and his birthday’s coming up."

"Tokyo."

She blinked at him, nodded slowly. "Wow. You, uh, travel a lot?"

"Some." Quite an understatement for a man who’d been literally living out of a suitcase for the past decade.

The tension that had been seeping out of Jay as he soaked was reasserting itself, and not just in his groin. Part of him wanted to drag his deep-fried ass back to his room, fall asleep with playing cards dancing in his head, and wake up focused and charged and hungry for more of Eddie Flynn’s millions. Another part, just as adamant, just as ravenous, wanted to grab this woman and hammer himself into her, right here—never mind that there were people milling around the pool right on the other side of those bushes. Jay scrubbed his hands over his beard-roughened face, rubbed his neck, twisted it this way and that.

"Still aching?" she asked.

He sighed, thinking of his unrelenting boner. "You have no idea."

"Maybe I can do something about that."

He looked at her.

"I actually happen to be a masseuse."

It took him a moment to process that, given that very little blood was making it upstairs to his brain.