Then he stood there staring at the note thinking how much he liked the name Alexa Walker.
Then he stood there staring at the salutation of the note and thinking the bitch was a goof but also thinking he liked that.
Then he stood there staring at the handwriting of the note and memorizing her scrawl which was not girlie or precise but spiky, the cursive words often disconnected and they had no slant, she didn’t lean this way or that, she sat comfortably in the middle.
Then he folded the note and dropped it to the bed. Twenty minutes later, having showered away the sweat from his workout, shaved, dressed in jeans, a white tee and his boots, he went to the bags on the desk, grabbed his new shades and then he went to the note on the bed and shoved it in his back pocket. Then he grabbed the keycard.
Then he went to the pool.
His first thought after hitting the late morning Vegas sun was that he did not want to be in the hot as f**k late morning Vegas sun. Five seconds later, halfway through a scan of the bodies around the pool, he forgot about the hot as f**k late morning Vegas sun because his shades had pinpointed his wife.
String bikini the color of raspberries. Hair still in that mass of thick, wild curls but bunched up at the top back of her head, long locks having escaped and trailing down her neck. Skin glistening with suntan oil. Mostly exposed body better than he expected and he’d expected her body to be pretty f**king great. She had her shades on and tipped down to a magazine spread in her hands, her knees bent, soles of her feet in the lounge, towel draped over the back.
He moved toward her and tagged Bag of Bones at her ten o’clock making Walker wonder if he’d been wrong about the guy. He’d suspected closet g*y. Since the f**ker had chosen to trail Lexie and not Walker, maybe not.
She sensed him when he was twenty feet away, her head came up and he knew she knew Bag of Bones was there because, the second her shades hit him, her gorgeous face split into a blinding smile.
She flipped her magazine closed and tossed it to a table beside her that held a rapidly melting iced coffee drink.
Five feet away, she called, “Hey, hubby.”
There it was again. Fucking goofy but the way she did it, he had to admit, also f**king cute.
He jerked his chin up and the instant he arrived at her side, her hand shot out, closing around his and tugging. He didn’t resist her pulling him down to sit on the side of her lounger as she shifted her h*ps and legs so her bottom half was resting at an S on its side in order to give him room and she curled her thighs around the back of his hips.
“Woke up alone. Where’d you go?” she asked, her hand still in his, her head tipped back to look up at him and he was glad he was wearing sunglasses because, at her question, his eyes moved from her tits to her face and he didn’t think she noticed.
“Workout.”
“Dude,” she said low, her mouth still curved up at the ends.
Dude. Yeah, total goof.
“Dude?” he prompted when she said no more.
“We’re in Vegas,” she stated.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Is it legal to work out in Vegas?” she asked, her head tipping, the bunch of hair at the back of it shifting with the movement.
“They got a gym so I’m guessin’… yeah.”
This got him another bright smile then her shades did a head to lap and back again before she observed, “You aren’t in swim trunks.”
“Lexie, I’m half black. My tan is permanent. I don’t need to work on it.”
“Right,” she muttered, still grinning.
It was then he cast his mind back to try to pull up Ronnie Rodriguez. Rodriguez had f**ked himself the middle of his sophomore year but saw a shitload of playing time the season and a half before he did it. Therefore Walker could pull him up but not much except the fact the brother was lean, tall and black. How he got the last name Rodriguez, Walker didn’t know. Then again, Shift had the last name Martinez and he, too, was black. Maybe it was some Texas thing.
What Walker did know was that a lot of white bitches didn’t mind playing with black but they sure as f**k didn’t take it home to Daddy and black was black even if it was full, half or a nuance.
He also knew Lexie didn’t have a Daddy but if she did, she’d take black home and, he figured, with her sass, Daddy didn’t like it, she’d tell him to go f**k himself.
On this thought, he asked, “Had breakfast?” and she shook her head.
He turned his and saw the outside restaurant at the side of the pool.