Levitating Las Vegas by Jennifer Echols Page B

she stood, he didn’t let go of her hand. He held it as they walked up the sidewalk to the house. And just as this was making her uncomfortable enough to pull away, she caught a whiff of alcohol.
    Don’t panic, she told herself. It was 10:30 p.m. He’d worked a suicide that day. It made sense for him to have had a drink before he picked her up. It also made sense for him to hold her hand. They were on a date. He had no idea he was turning her off.
    She swung his hand to lighten the mood. “What will we do while we’re here?” she asked hopefully. She could picture a few dates in Rob’s rented home that wouldn’t be so bad. He might want to show her his favorite movie ever. He might cook her his mom’s famous lasagna. Holly could even eat it. Her stomach rumbled at the thought that they were out of the public eye and her mom would never find out what she put in her mouth.
    He stopped on the threshold, brushed his thumb across her lips, and crooned, “That depends on you.”
    Holly’s throat closed up—not as completely as it had in her imagination during her mental breakdown seven years before, but enough that she touched her collarbone with her fingertips. Though his words weren’t sexual, his tone dripped innuendo. He was moving so fast it made her anxious. As he opened the door and stepped inside, drawing her by the hand, she tripped over the threshold. She caught herself, but her heels clacked ungracefully on the floor inside.
    At the noise, two men glanced up from opposite ends of the open room. In the living area sat Shane Sligh, whom Holly knew by sight. He played guitar for his dad’s Frank Sinatra tribute band in the Peacock Room at the casino. He usually looked the part, too, in a fitted black tux, with his hair slicked down in a retro do. She almost didn’t recognize him now that he’d washed the gel out of his hair. She hadn’t realized he was blond. From a threadbare chair, he eyed her over the neck of his electric guitar, but his fingers never stopped flying over the silent fret board.
    In the kitchen stood Elijah Brown.
    She blinked, thinking she must be wrong. She’d had sex on the brain, and now she’d mistaken Rob’s roommate for her first crush, to whom she’d hardly spoken since she bailed on the ninth-grade prom. He simply looked a lot like Elijah at this distance, peering at her between the top and bottom rows of kitchen cabinets—hair in messy brown waves like a movie star caught on his day off, intense green eyes, lean body in a T-shirt and jeans.
    Then he shifted forward, hanging on to the knobs of the cabinets above. His red T-shirt was partly obstructed by the dish towel over his shoulder, but she thought it read UNLV LACROSSE . Where his sleeves ended, his strong triceps moved underneath his taut skin. It was him all right, and hotter than ever.
    “Mom, I’m home!” Rob called with a smirk. “What’s for dinner?”
    “Tuna Helper,” Elijah said, looking at Holly.
    On the drive over, Rob had made sex jokes and touched her knee, and none of that had elicited a reaction approaching the warm jolt she felt when Elijah Brown called her Tuna Helper. The rush of electricity was followed by a slower flow of emotions: Familiarity. Happiness at seeing a friendly face from high school. Sorrow for the missed opportunity of the ninth-grade prom. Anger at her parents for controlling her life. Curiosity about the coincidence that her ex-crush was her current date’s roommate.
    “Mmmmm. Too bad we won’t join you.” Rob dragged Holly toward a hallway that she assumed led to his bedroom. She hung back while trying to look like she wasn’t. There was no way to extricate herself from this accelerating situation with Rob and simultaneously save face in front of Elijah.
    Not that she had much face to save with him. She only waved to him each night when she passed him in the underground corridors for employees at the casino. He’d graduated from college with her last week. She’d spotted