I dug in my purse saying, “I’ll give you my card. You can have it on file but when we check out, we’ll pay in cash. Cool with you?”

The clerk’s relieved eyes slid to me and he nodded.

“Room safe,” Walker stated at this point.

“Of course,” the clerk murmured on a bow of his head toward Walker. “All our rooms have safes. We’ll set that up for you.”

Walker stared at him half a second then his eyes did a sweep of the immediate area.

I handed the clerk my card, filled out the registration form, took my card back and the clerk handed Walker our little envelope with its keycards, wisely not noting that my credit card said Alexa Berry and not Alexa Walker. After I filled out the form, as he processed us, I tried not to think where Ty Walker would get cash to pay for a swanky Vegas hotel room considering he walked out of prison not twenty-four hours ago with nothing (that I knew of) but the clothes on his back. He didn’t even have one of those big plastic Ziploc baggies in his hand holding his belongings that recently released prisoners on TV shows were given.

Nothing.

But that duffle.

A duffle packed by Shift.

Shit.

“Room six twenty-three. You’ll find the elevators over there.” He pointed to his left but Walker was already walking that way.

I smiled at the clerk, expressed mumbled words of gratitude, grasped the handle on my bag and followed Walker.

He tagged the button before I got there and I stopped close to him.

“Hubby, we need to chat,” I said quietly, his chin dipped into his neck to look down at me, his face still as impassive as ever and then his head turned and he looked over his shoulder.

When he kept looking, his eyes honing in on something and staying there, I turned to look too.

He was looking at a man who was standing at the reception desk. He was super slim and when I say that I mean bag of bones thin. It was a wonder his clothes stayed on him, he was so skinny. He had light brown hair with a hint of red in it but he didn’t have much of it. It was thin everywhere, seriously light on the top and clipped super short. He wore glasses. His features were pointy. Considering he wasn’t much to look at, I was surprised to see his clothing was of very good quality and suited him as best they could given his stature.

And he was looking right at Ty Walker, as bold as you please, checking in at the reception desk but staring at Walker at the same time looking knowing in a way that made something unpleasant crawl along my skin. If he sneered, I wouldn’t have been surprised. But it did surprise me that this obvious weakling was so bold considering he was a third of the man standing at my side (and a third was being generous) and the man standing at my side could easily break him in half.

But he was.

In your face bold.

How weird.

“Do you know him?” I asked as the elevator chimed and then it happened.

Ty Walker touched me for the first time (that was, the first time he touched me when he wasn’t looking for needle tracks at the same time annoying me).

His fingertips went into the small of my back and they pressed forward so I moved into the elevator rolling my bag behind me. His hand dropped away, he turned to face front and automatically I did too as he leaned to the side, tagging the six button and after those few annoying seconds an elevator stays open for whatever reason it does, the doors slid closed.

But I barely registered any of this.

Because I could feel five, hot marks burning into the small of my back where he touched me. The touch was light and it didn’t last long but I still felt them burning. They were like a brand searing into my skin.

As the elevator went up, I waited for them to fade, I wanted them to fade but they didn’t fade. They stayed burning hot and deep and I’d never experienced anything like it. I didn’t even know what it was. I just knew it was profound. I knew it was life-altering. I knew somehow that, even if the burn was to fade, I’d never forget that elevator ride my whole life.

The elevator stopped, the doors slid open and, my mind still on the burn, I didn’t think as I followed him out, down the hall to a room. He used the keycard and entered, not holding the door open for me.

Mindlessly, I pushed the door open as it started to close and followed.

The door closed behind me.

He dumped his duffle on the low, wide shelf opposite the bed that was meant for luggage, one side of that shelf going up with three drawers under it, a big, flat screen TV on top of it, the other side doing the same with a cabinet under it probably containing a mini-bar, an attractive leatherette holder on top holding the TV remote.

Then he immediately zipped the duffle open. I came to a halt at the mouth of the hall that led into the room and righted my bag on the floor at my side.

My mind went off the slowly fading burn of his touch at my back as it registered on me it was a nice room, really, really nice. It was large, larger than I expected, larger than I knew hotel rooms could be. The furniture was stylish, the wood gleaming, all of it obviously exceptionally clean. There was a downy comforter with an attractive cover on the huge bed, not a thin bedspread. There were even toss pillows. Two sweep-lined armchairs at either side of a table at the back in one corner by the window, a standing lamp rounding out the seating area, an elegant desk with a lamp on top facing the room at a diagonal in the other corner

In fact, I’d never been in a nicer room.

Actually, I’d been in very few hotel rooms at all in my thirty-four years.

Ronnie had promised a lot of good times in fabulous places and, before he gave me his empty promises, there was a time in our life when his future was so bright, this room would have been a joke to us. Our future held travel all over and everywhere we’d have the best of the best. The best rooms. The best food. The best champagne. The finest clothes. Sweet rides. Big houses. Cleaning ladies. We were going to live large. He told me I would drip gold. He meant it. He loved me that much, I would drip gold. He would make that happen for me.

Then he f**ked it all up.

I didn’t need gold, I just needed him. But still, he f**ked it all up in the end; he f**ked it up so badly, I didn’t even have him.

I came out of my reverie when I heard something hit surface and my eyes focused on Walker.

Then I felt them get wide.

He’d dug into the bag Shift packed for him and he was currently putting fat rolls of crisp, fresh bills wrapped tight in rubber bands on the wood above the mini-bar cabinet attached to the luggage shelf. The first roll had a twenty on the outside of it. The second, another twenty. The third, a fifty.