One Night in Vegas

By C. M. Stone

Eliza DeMatteo returns to her hometown of Las Vegas on vacation knowing her matchmaking older brother is probably going to try and set her up with his best friend. But Eliza already knows plenty about sexy cowboy Christian Yerrick, the man who crushed her heart when they were kids. In fact, she's determined to avoid Chris completely...until she runs into his truck on the Las Vegas freeway.

Chris has his own misgivings about seeing Eliza. His lingering feelings for her trigger all of his issues with relationships. Especially long-distance ones, which is the only kind of relationship they'd ever have. Still, there's no reason they can't enjoy New Year's Eve together. But when the fireworks between them burn hotter than the Vegas Strip, Chris and Eliza know they only have one night to get it right. Because this time, what doesn't happen in Vegas could haunt them forever...

Each book in the Gambling Hearts series is a standalone, full-length story that can be enjoyed out of order.
Series Order:
Book #1 One Night in Vegas
Book #2 How to Save a Surgeon

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Dec 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781633751606

Book preview

You can’t avoid fate…

Eliza DeMatteo returns to her hometown of Las Vegas on vacation knowing her matchmaking older brother is probably going to try and set her up with his best friend. But Eliza already knows plenty about sexy cowboy Christian Yerrick, the man who crushed her heart when they were kids. In fact, she’s determined to avoid Chris completely...until she runs into his truck on the Las Vegas freeway.

Chris has his own misgivings about seeing Eliza. His lingering feelings for her trigger all of his issues with relationships. Especially long-distance ones, which is the only kind of relationship they’d ever have. Still, there’s no reason they can’t enjoy New Year’s Eve together. But when the fireworks between them burn hotter than the Vegas Strip, Chris and Eliza know they only have one night to get it right. Because this time, what doesn’t happen in Vegas could haunt them forever...

Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Find love in unexpected places with these satisfying Lovestruck reads…

Tempting Her Best Friend

Tell Me Something Good

The Surrogate Husband

Sleeping with the Boss

Flirting On Ice

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by C.M. Stone. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

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Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

Lovestruck is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

Edited by Heather Howland

Cover design by Heather Howland

Photography by Shutterstock

ISBN 978-1-63375-160-6

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition December 2014

To all my fellow Vegas babies. We’re probably the only people in the world who grew up complaining, there’s nothing to do in Vegas!

Chapter One

Hey. I’m just heading back to the hospital now. Eliza DeMatteo settled into the cool, faux-leather driver’s seat of the borrowed Chevrolet Impala SS. Already nine years old, the Impala wasn’t what she expected her surgeon brother to own, but it was a vast improvement over the crumbling Honda Civic it replaced. Light-years ahead of her own current lack of a car, too. Let me get you on speaker phone.

I’m really sorry, but I’m not going to be able to meet you. Her brother Jackson sounded tired, weighed down by the crush of the world on his shoulders. Some of that weight settled in her stomach as she guessed what was coming next. There was an accident on I-95 with a bus. I can’t leave.

Bingo. Fighting down her disappointment, Eliza pursed her lips and felt a weak spark of relief amidst the misfortune. Not that he was canceling, but that the conversation was happening over the phone so he didn’t have to see her disappointment. Her older brother was a trauma surgeon, still paying off more student loan debt than she could fathom. Staying with him in Las Vegas during her holiday vacation had been his idea, but she’d barely seen him since arriving. Yet how could she even complain? Her missing her brother was nothing in comparison to people dying and being maimed.

Of course, don’t even worry about it. I’ll figure something out for the night. I just hope people are okay.

No, you don’t have to figure something out for the night. Chris is going to meet you at the hospital so you can drop off my car. I changed the dinner reservation to his name and told him I’d pay him back. Go out, have fun. Drink all the champagne you like. I’m paying.

Her heart skipped a beat. Christian Yerrick?

Yeah. He’s really eager to see you after all these years.

Chris Yerrick was eager to see her? She tried to imagine that, but it just wasn’t working. The last she’d seen of him had been an awkward good-bye a few weeks before he’d left for college. Truth was, she barely remembered what, exactly, they’d said. Everything that had happened leading up to that good-bye was what her memory clung to.

Her brother and his best friend Chris were two years older than her, and had been on the cusp of starting their adult lives while she was still stuck in high school. What happened had been stupid, but she was sixteen. Wasn’t she entitled to be stupid at sixteen? And wasn’t she supposed to be smarter now? She bit her lip, wrestling with herself. I don’t know if that’s the best idea, Jackson. I’d feel really awkward about seeing him after all this time.

You know, he’s still single. Temptation hung off every syllable, as if Jackson were some sort of matchmaking devil after her soul.

Oh God. You’re not actually trying to set us up, are you? Her stomach flip-flopped at the thought. Going through that embarrassment and rejection all over again wasn’t an option. She’d die. Her heart would just stop, or her brain would spontaneously melt into a bloody Jell-O mold or something.

I’m just saying. It’ll be fun, okay?

No, I really can’t. Call him and tell him I’m not going. I’ll pick you up from the hospital myself when you’re free.

Jackson made an annoyed sound. Fine, I’ll text him when I can, but I’ve gotta go.

Okay, I love you. Good luck tonight.

Love you, too, Eliza.

Leaving the mall parking garage behind, she marveled at how everything had changed so much and yet remained exactly the same. It didn’t matter that it was New Year’s Eve. It was still Vegas and that meant the sun was shining brightly in a cloudless sky as it sank into the west. At a glance, she could tell who was a tourist and who was a local. The natives were all bundled up as though they were preparing for an Arctic expedition, because anything below sixty degrees was frighteningly chilly to them. The tourists were mostly wearing light jackets or going without, and far too many of them looked uncomfortable when the wind cut through them to the bone. There was a cold to the desert that was entirely different from the snow she dealt with in Kansas City. Her arms could be cold while her underarms were drenched with sweat.

Buildings had been torn down and replaced by shiny new ones. The freeway system that confused and terrified her as a new driver had developed new layers of chaos. Instead of feeling like she’d come home after ten long years, it made her heart hurt. Her home ceased to exist when her parents moved her across the country her senior year