A Baby for the Boss by Maureen Child Page B

almost surprised he didn’t burn a hole through it. But left to herself, she watched the clouds and enjoyed the all-too-short flight.
    In less than an hour, they were landing in Las Vegas. There again, people scrambled to make Mike’s life easier, smoother. A rental car was waiting for them and after forty minutes on a nearly empty highway flanked on either side by wide sweeps of desert, they were in Laughlin, Nevada.
    Laughlin was sort of the more casual, fun, younger sister of Las Vegas. There were plenty of casino hotels, but there was also the Colorado River. In the summer, the town was booming with water-skiers and boaters and everyone looking for a good time on the water. Then the hot desert nights featured riverside dining or visits to the casinos where top-name acts performed on glittery stages.
    Jenny had been there before, though the last time had been five years ago for a bachelorette party. Remembering, she smiled. That party was the reason she’d had condoms in her bedside drawer a week ago when Mike had shown up at her apartment. As a party favor, the condoms had seemed silly at the time, but now, Jenny could appreciate the gesture because without them, she wouldn’t have had that spectacular night.
    The town had grown a lot in five years. There were new casinos springing up everywhere along with housing developments and shopping centers just out of sight of the big hotels.
    In late January, the weather was cool and the river ran high and fast. Jenny stood on the shore and looked upstream toward the heart of the city where big hotels lined the Riverwalk—a wooden boardwalk that stretched the length of hotel row. At night, she knew, there were old-fashioned streetlights sending out a golden glow along the walk. There were restaurants and bars, where a couple could sit and talk and look out over the water.
    The Ryans had made a good choice in building their hotel here. All in all, Jenny told herself, if she had a choice, she would come to Laughlin instead of Vegas. It was smaller, friendlier and offered a variety of things to do.
    She shrugged deeper into her navy blue jacket as a hard, cold wind carrying the sharp tang of sage blew in off the desert. There were clouds on the horizon promising a storm, but for the moment, the sky was a bright blue and all around her, trees dipped and swayed in the wind. Jenny walked out onto the boat dock and watched as the river churned and sloshed below her.
    “It’s a good spot.”
    She turned her head into the wind to look back at the shore. Mike was headed her way, hands tucked into the pockets of his black leather jacket.
    Nodding, Jenny shifted her gaze to the river again. “I was just thinking that. There are so many trees on the grounds, you could almost forget you’re in the desert.”
    “Yeah, now,” he said, a chuckle in his voice as he came closer. “Wait until summer.”
    She smiled. Temperatures in the desert regularly topped out at one hundred twenty and more during the summer. But as the locals liked to say, It’s a dry heat. “Agreed. But you can go in the river to cool off.”
    “Or the hotel pool,” he said as he joined her at the edge of the dock.
    “True.”
    Upstream, there were flat-bottom boats, owned by the hotels, taking tourists for river rides. The windows and gold trim on the hotels winked brightly in the sunlight. But here, standing in the shadows of the nest of trees edging the river, it was as if they were alone.
    “I wonder why the previous owners couldn’t make the hotel work,” she mused aloud. “It’s a great spot. Wonderful views, plenty of trees, a gorgeous pool—”
    “No gambling.”
    She looked at him. “What?”
    “The hotel.” Mike squinted into the sun. “The old owner didn’t approve of gambling so the hotel didn’t offer it.” He shrugged. “A hotel with no casino in a gambling town isn’t going to survive. Plus, he didn’t have smoking rooms, either.”
    “That’s important?”
    “Again, a gambling