Free One Night in Vegas (Entangled Lovestruck) (Gambling Hearts) by C. M. Stone Page A

enjoy what time they had left. “Which way do you usually go when you ride out here?”
    There was a faint tightness to his voice. “Here, I’ll show you.”
    He gave Keifer a nudge to speed up, which Molly automatically mirrored to keep them moving together. At a fork in the trail, Chris led them down to the right. Soon they were climbing into low hills, moving farther and farther from town. Keifer seemed a bit less certain about the uneven ground, but Molly picked her way through confidently. Eliza marveled at what a good little horse the mustang was turning out to be, even if she wasn’t as visually striking as the thoroughbred. It was easy to see why Chris had fallen in love with her.
    “This up here is either where bootleggers used to hide out or else a shanty town from the Depression,” Chris said, pointing to a little cave set in one of the hills.
    “Really?” Eliza frowned and urged Molly forward so she could get a better look.
    There were bits of rusted corrugated metal that must have been used for roofs at one time and she saw the broken remains of large brown glass jugs. Bleach bottles from the 1930s, if she remembered correctly, but they had also frequently been repurposed. Sometimes to hold water and sometimes to hold liquor. She couldn’t imagine being so desperate as to use a bleach bottle to drink out of, but there was a lot about those days she couldn’t fathom. Her heart began to race at the thought of this being some new discovery.
    “Does anybody else know about this?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
    “I’d hate to ruin your riding trail, but I should probably let the park service know. Just in case there’s anything of historical value that needs to be preserved.”
    “It wouldn’t ruin anything, but if it becomes a national monument, I hope you’ll name it after me.”
    There was a hint of humor in his tone. Relieved, Eliza chuckled. “Unlikely. There’s another little settlement like this just over the pass on the Nevada State College campus. All they did was set it aside so people could do surveys and learn what they could.”
    “Then I’ll consider that my good deed for the day. Preserving valuable knowledge about desert moonshiners.”
    A thousand different possibilities raced through her mind as she considered that. Nevada hadn’t felt much like home during the past few days while barely seeing her brother and being too nervous to call old friends, but that feeling of belonging had sneaked back on her over the course of the night while in Chris’s arms. Eliza could picture herself transferring to the local park service unit, working by day to preserve the site and then unwinding with Chris and his horses and whatever adventure he’d just cooked up.
    If only he were interested.
    As if he could hear her thoughts, their eyes met and the hint of warm humor in his eyes melted her. The need to touch him and hold him, to figure out what it all meant between them, was suddenly overwhelming. She leaned toward him and heard the creak in his saddle from him leaning in to meet her, but before she reached him Keifer shifted and took a few steps forward and to the side. A flash of annoyance passed over Chris’s face as he straightened. “Let’s keep going. This trail I use wraps around here before meeting up with the other one again and taking us to the corrals.”
    She followed along at a more sedate pace than before, drinking in the hills and the sky and the brush that her horse occasionally tested for edibility. After a few minutes, she heard the chirp of a text message in the pocket of her jacket. She shifted the reins out of her right hand so she could pull it out and check.
    “Jackson says he managed to get a little bit of sleep. He’d like to have breakfast with us if we’re still together,” she called over to Chris.
    With his back to her, all she could see of his response was his head bobbing in a nod. “You’re still here, so I guess we’re still