SLOW PLAY (7-Stud Club #4) - Christie Ridgway Page 0,53

to smithereens. Burned the whole thing down.

Now she was going back to Vegas.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, what to do about that, if there was anything he could do.

I missed Sawyer Beach. Dreadfully at times.

Before I left, I felt dangerously close to becoming too much like my mom.

“Mad?” A woman’s soft voice. A hand on his elbow.

He started, hoped, then turned to see…

Not Harper, but another female with a warm smile on her face and a warm light in her eyes.

Some sixth sense prodded Harper to look up from her second helping of truffle mac ‘n’ cheese. Her gaze wandered the room and quickly lighted upon Mad, who stood close to a pretty woman with ripples of nut-brown hair flowing down her back nearly to her waist. She had her faced turned up to his, her expression…adoring?

“You better go rescue him.” Sophie dropped into the empty chair beside Harper.

“Um, who?” she asked, trying to play it cool, even as she watched the stranger put a slender hand on Mad’s belly. Who put their hand on a man’s belly like that?

“I don’t know her name. But when she approached Mad he sent me one of those save-me looks men reserve for discussions of baby birthings or knitting patterns.”

Harper bit back her laugh. “But you left him anyway?”

Sophie’s normally sunny expression darkened. “I’m not feeling real charitable toward the male species at the moment.” When Harper, concerned, leaned closer, the blonde held up a hand. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

She settled for nudging the platter of pasta toward her friend. “Eat carbs. You’ll feel better.”

Sophie dug in with her fork, not even bothering to scoop some onto her own plate. “Go rescue Mad, please, or else I’ll feel guilty.”

A glance confirmed that the man had put some distance between himself and the woman.

Then the stranger put her hand on him again. This time, an inch closer to his waistband.

She had to be touching his navel!

Albeit over his shirt, but the action got Harper out of her seat. Her eyes on the pair, she made quick work of the distance between her table and the pals-y looking pair. She was still a couple of feet away when Mad’s arm shot out, his hand snagged Harper’s wrist, and he reeled her close.

She stumbled, bumping against his side. “Well, hello to you too,” she said.

“Right. Hi.” In a single glance he sent a message, no, make that a long soliloquy, about freedom, deliverance, hope, and possibly reward.

With a smile, she turned to his companion. “Hello, I’m Harper Hill.”

“I’m Ashlynn Moore.”

They shook hands, while Mad retained possession of her left wrist.

Ashlynn noticed. “You and Maddox are…friends?”

“Very old friends.” She looked inquiringly at the other woman. “And you know him because…”

“He saved my life!” Ashlynn declared.

Well, that was dramatic. Wait until she told Sophie. “I have to say I’m surprised. Mad is such a straight arrow I don’t think he’d even fix his own grandma’s parking ticket.”

“Well—”

“Of course he did change my tire recently. Though once I asked him to buy me a bottle of champagne so I could give it to a twenty-one-year-old friend, but I was only nineteen at the time and he refused, which was kind of starchy, am I right? So you see I can attest to the fact that he’s nowhere near perfect. I know it’s a disappointment, because on paper and your phone’s camera roll he appears pretty spectacular, but—”

“He literally saved my life.”

Harper’s mouth stopped moving. She glanced at Mad. Who shrugged. “Literally saved your life,” she repeated.

The woman had a flawless olive complexion that glowed like someone who’d undergone a religious conversion. “When he arrived on my doorstep one day with a couple of uniformed officers and told me they’d had me under twenty-four-hour surveillance for my own protection, you can imagine my confusion.”

Harper could only put her hand to her throat, imagining just that.

“And fear! Because Maddox then didn’t look like Maddox now. His hair was mussed and his face whiskered, and his clothing was scruffy. He looked rough.” She tilted her head. “I would have thought a hit man would wear bespoke suits and Prada loafers, wouldn’t you?”

“I would,” Harper said, ignoring Mad’s squeeze of her wrist.

“But that’s not how it was. And he convinced my estranged husband—we’d been separated about a year at that time—that for three thousand dollars he’d put a bullet through my head.”

Horrified, Harper reared back. “That’s terrible.”

“But wonderful that it didn’t happen.” The beautiful stranger turned