Accidentally in Love With the Biker (What Happens in Vegas) (12 page)

“God, Quinn, I can’t, I have to, I—” She didn’t know what she needed. She was close, so close. Afraid to go over, afraid not to.

“Come on, baby. You’re the wordsmith. Tell me.” He panted and thrust as he touched her, stroked her, made her whole body shake.

But she couldn’t say it, couldn’t tell him what she felt, because then she’d never be able to take the words back. If she said, “I’m falling for you. I’m going to miss you so much,” it would be true. And real.

Quinn began to mutter… “Tell me you don’t love this, don’t love what I’m doing…”

And Kellie’s brain began to shut down as her reflexes took over, as an orgasm swamped every nerve ending with white-hot light.

Quinn gasped, his own pace stuttering, but kept up his dialogue. “Tell me you don’t love it, don’t need this as bad as I do, that this isn’t everything to you…that you’re going to leave me and never look back.”

There was something in there that Kellie should pay attention to, but then he groaned and began to fuck into her hard, fast, causing another orgasm, impossibly stronger than the last one to wring every bit of sense out of her until he, too, stilled, sagging over her back, supporting himself on shaking arms surrounding hers on the dresser.

There was silence, except for heavy breathing, which took a long time to slow down.

Chapter Fifteen

Quinn pulled Kellie into his arms when he collapsed backward in the vicinity of the bed. Mercifully, he landed them on the mattress—but it didn’t really matter; she was with him.

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?” She snuggled against him, pulling the bedspread over their cooling bodies.

“Just laughing at myself,” he said.

“Come on, spill.”

“Well, I started off this weekend with a mission—to convince you to give your writing dreams a chance.”

“How nob
le of you.” Her dry tone was belied by the little wiggle she gave against his side.

“Yeah. I had no intention of trying to convince you to give
me
a chance. I think I got sidetracked.”

She stiffened, silent now.

Damn. He’d chased her back into her cave. Best try to stay on safer ground for now. “So are you going to keep writing?”

She relaxed fractionally. “I don’t know.”

Ah, hell.
“What? Why? You love this.”

She sighed. “I do, but I just can’t let it be more than a hobby. I can’t afford to take that chance. Even with Brae’s job offer—”

“What job offer?”

“She wants me to work as her personal assistant. She says she’ll pay me a living wage, provide room and board, and give me plenty of time to write, but I can’t leave the shop.”

He felt his mission slipping away from him. She was giving up on herself. He rolled to his side and pinned her with his gaze. “You can’t give up on this. You’ve got to take a chance. Take some risk.”

She sat up, clutching the blanket. “My whole life is a risk. I run a financially failing bookstore that half the neighborhood hates and the landlord wants closed. I have an assistant I can’t afford.”

“So close it down. Take Brae’s job.”

She stared at him, horror etched across her features, and he knew he’d screwed the pooch. “If I left the shop, the kids wouldn’t have anyone to feed their imaginations. To the rest of the world, they’re already statistics waiting for their numbers to come up. If I close the store, they have one less reason to want an education.”

If she said anything after that, Quinn didn’t hear her. He understood what she was saying. He felt the same way about Quinn’s Customs. It wasn’t just about the shop, about the bikes, but about the guys. They needed him. He hadn’t served in the military, but he was damned sure going to help Darryl and Darryl, his two veterans—two great guys who probably couldn’t hold a regular job—keep a job that was essential to their self-esteem.

He stroked her hair, quiet for a few minutes, enjoying the feel of Kellie’s body against his. She made him feel so much. Good, strong, capable. Cared for. And he understood why she’d been avoiding his question about seeing each other after this weekend. It would never work, because neither of them could ever leave their soul behind. Because that’s what it would mean, for one of them to give up their business to be together. And they could pretend to try to have a part-time casual cross-country affair, but…nope. He was already head over heels.

Rising, he fastened his pants and turned to look at Kellie, who was a beautiful, rumpled mess.

“Quinn?”

“I’ve got to go.”

She nodded. “I know.”

He couldn’t just walk out. He sat down and took her hand. Looking at her, at that silky brown hair, her gorgeous green eyes, and that creamy skin, the woman with the big sense of humor and bigger heart, he knew he wasn’t walking away from this without some scars.

“I had a great time pretending to be your boyfriend this weekend, babe. I dunno if you’ll be leaving everything that happened in Vegas here or not, but I’m sure glad I got to be part of it.”

With that, he kissed her soft lips, trying not to linger, but ultimately pulled away. As he got to the door, he heard her say, “Don’t go yet…” but he had to get out of there before he stayed and begged her not to leave, or asked her to take him and his fucking law degree with her.

The door opened behind him as he got to the elevators, but he didn’t look back, and she didn’t call out again. Fortunately, he didn’t have long to wait before the doors opened.

Toby and Brae came out, wrapped in each other’s arms and as in love and happy as ever they could be.

“Hey, buddy,” Quinn said, pulling his wallet from his pocket and extracting a card. “I forgot to give this to you. It’s my brother’s card. He’s a lawyer and can probably take a look at that contract if you want to get out of that deal. See if he can find you any loopholes.”

“I thought
you
were a lawyer,” Brae said, giving Quinn the evil eye, the only way best friends can do.

“Nope. Just a bike mechanic,” he said, waving as the elevator doors slid shut on him, leaving his heart behind.

…

No way.

Call her crazy, but Kellie’s mind changed the instant that door closed behind Quinn. “No fucking way,” she said. She’d just broken her no-cussing rule and there’d been no one there to hear it.

So she cussed again. “Hell no!” No way was she letting him go without taking her phone number, email address, and Twitter handle with him. It might make her miserable at some point down the road, but she had to give it a try. He was so completely worth it.

She pulled off the rest of her shred
ded costume. Forgoing panties, she dragged a pair of jeans up her legs and over her bare butt, threw on a sweatshirt, and shoved on a pair of flip-flops. She grabbed her key card before she ran to the elevator, ignoring Brae and Toby when they called out to her.

Quinn couldn’t walk out on her. He’d made her
cuss
, for God’s sake.

On the way to the lobby, she went over everything that had happened in the past hour. She’d known he was going to suggest a long-distance relationship for hours. And she’d avoided that conversation for hours. She’d been down that road before, gotten the T-shirt, had it shrink and shred on her, sent it to Goodwill.

But then there had been dancing. And sex. Not just sex. Mind-blowing, earth-shattering, making-love type sex—if she wasn’t mistaken. It felt like that to her, even as it had been as fast and dirty as she’d ever experienced. God, he’d
talked
to her all the way through it.

But then they’d talked about her life back in Georgia. Her beloved bookstore. The reason she couldn’t let it go. She couldn’t have a writing career—and still keep the business afloat. Maybe in her spare time she’d write sweet—or even filthy dirty—little romances to entertain herself. But she couldn’t spend the time and energy it would take to market herself.

And she sure couldn’t have a romance hero boyfriend. Not an imaginary time-traveling Greek god, or a real-life artist biker rebel.

So when the elevator doors finally slid open on a lobby, Kellie halfheartedly made her way to the front doors. She reached the inside of the double glass doors just in time to hear the roar of a motorcycle engine over the convention crowd behind her. She saw Quinn ride into the night, through her own pathetic reflection, and waved, even though she knew he didn’t see her.

She went back upstairs and approached her hotel room door. Alone. Not quite ready to face the rumpled, Quinn-scented sheets, she dug her key card out, anyway.

“Kellie!”

Brae and Toby stuck their heads out of their room, like nonidentical conjoined twins, as though their past day’s drama had never happened.

“What happened with Quinn?” Brae asked, her blue eyes wide and sympathetic.

“He’s gone. I guess…I guess it just wasn’t our time.”

From the corner of her eye, Kellie saw Toby take out his phone and fade back.
Chicken
.

“Oh, I’m so
sorry
. He had so much…
potential
. But if he’s determined to be a motorcycle repairman and not a lawyer, I supposed you’re better off without him. It’s just too risky to be with someone like that, no matter how sexy he is. Or heck…maybe
because
of how sexy he is.”

Huh?

Kellie tooked at Toby, with his blond, all-American, prep-school good looks. He didn’t really do it for Kellie, but certainly a large segment of the female population liked him, or he wouldn’t be Mr. Lustful Lover.

“Toby’s different,” Brae said, waving in his direction. “
We’re
different. You’d be worried about Quinn all the time if you were with him. I mean, who wouldn’t? Rhonda Responsible and a big bad biker?”

Kellie just stared. Is that how Brae thought of her? Rhonda Responsible?

“So anyway, it’s just as well. Now you have one less barrier to coming to work for me, right? What do you say?”

“I—”

“Oh, we’re going to have so much fun. You’ll love it… You’ll only have to beta read and edit stuff for me half the day, then after you take care of all of my correspondence, you’re free to do whatever writey stuff you want to play with.” She started to list the projects she wanted to work on, but Kellie was done.

She straightened to her full five two, flip-flop soles included.

Her friend wound down, realizing that Kellie wasn’t with her.

“No.”

“What?” Brae’s eyes clouded, and Kellie glimpsed the lonely girl she’d befriended all those years ago. “What do you mean, ‘no’? Why not?”

Kellie took a breath. Let it out. “I mean, no. I’m your friend, Brae, and I love you to death. But I’m not going to come and work for you. I’m not going to help you write your books. I wrote so much of the last one that I put my own work on a back burner, and I’m not going to do that again.”

“I thought you loved working on
Lustful Lovers
.”

“I did. But it’s your book—that I rewrote and rewrote for you until it was readable.” Kellie couldn’t believe that had come out of her mouth. But honestly, it felt pretty good.

Brae stomped her foot, squishing any hope Kellie had that the diva she’d become would let her former self—the best friend—survive. “You probably spent so much time on it because your own ideas aren’t good enough to hold
your
attention, much less an agent or editor’s.”

Kellie gasped, but then…maybe Brae was right.
Probably
, she was right. She was the one with the big book and movie deal, wasn’t she?

“Thanks. You know what? I came here to decide if I was done with romance, and I think I’ve made up my mind. I wish you the best of luck, though.”

Brae gaped.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to pack.” She turned and let herself into her room with as much dignity as she could muster, ignoring the “Kellieeeeee…” that followed her inside.

Forty minutes later, she shoved her stuff into the back of the little car she’d rented and headed for the airport.

She got through security before she remembered that her flight wasn’t for another eight hours.
Crap.
She really needed to keep her mind occupied, because she was having fantasies of Quinn climbing over the heads of other travelers to get to her so he could tell her he loved her.

Neither the free books she’d picked up at the conference nor her own work-in-progress interested her. She tried to watch the news in the little restaurant and bar near her gate, but couldn’t focus.

Instead she picked up a notebook.

Maybe she’d start a to-do list. But all she could think about was putting “Get over Quinn” at the top of page one. Especially since he didn’t seem to be busting through airport security to convince her to stay in touch with him.

Idiot. She was an idiot.
Get over him
.

What was there to get over? He’d been in her life for all of three days Somehow, though, they’d been the most significant hours of her life. She thought of meeting him, the instant attraction she’d felt—beyond thinking that she recognized him as her Zeus. How he’d been so interested in talking to her about her authorial aspirations. He hadn’t laughed at her or given her some canned thing like, “Wow, that’s really great, you should do it just to say you’ve done it, you know?”

The way he’d looked into her eyes as he came, when he spoke to her, told her how he felt.

A tear splashed onto the page, smearing the ink. She’d written his name there. Complete with little broken-heart arrows.

Maybe the best thing to do would be to just write about what happened with Quinn. That would help purge him from her system, and she could get home and start fresh and ready to take on all the stuck-up jerks of Smyrna Springs.

Chapter Sixteen

Q
uinn tweaked the outline of the computer-generated gas tank again, trying to make it look more like a peach. When it morphed into a grapefruit instead, he gave up and closed the program. He didn’t need to design a girlie bike anyway. Especially not one with a Georgia theme—he would never be able to let anyone but Kellie ride it, and that would never happen because she was gone for good.

Unfortunately, Betty was in perfect shape now for the show, and he had no reason to go into the workshop and get his hands dirty, which would at least keep his brain partially occupied. Instead, he clicked the bookkeeping software he used and opened a folder he’d been ignoring.

“Quinn, you’re driving everyone fucking nuts here, man.” Darryl A. stood in the office doorway, enormous arms crossed over his chest, glaring.

“I’m sitting here trying to pay bills, and we actually have money to do that this month. How can I possibly be bothering anyone in my
own shop
?” he growled.

“Well, first of all, Betty has been getting some serious buzz since the Bike Fest advance catalog came online, and you haven’t smiled once.”

Was that true? He tried to smile now, but it felt weird, so he quit. “Well, I am
really happy,
man. But you and Darryl deserve most of the credit. You’re the ones who put in the hours to get her in shape in time.”

“And that’s another thing.”

“What?”

“You haven’t left the shop except to go home and sleep and shower in a month. At least we think you shower. The sleeping part is debatable, because you look like shit.”

“Yeah, stinky, sad, fly-covered shit,” Darryl B. said, walking through, wiping his hands on a dirty rag.

“Shut the fuck up, B.,” Darryl A. said, giving his buddy a playful whack on the back of the head.

“Hey! You dent my steel plate, you’re gonna owe me a new one,” he complained, rubbing. But Darryl B. stopped, and his normally faraway expression focused on Quinn. “You miss that girl, don’t you, buddy?”

“Huh? No.” Kellie? He hardly thought about her. “Who’re you talkin’ about?”

“Awful quick to deny missing someone you’re not sure who we’re talkin’ about,” Darryl A. said.

While Quinn sorted through the logic of that statement, the door beeped, admitting a customer to the outer office.

Darryl B. disappeared to see who it was. Quinn heard a female, and started to stand before he caught himself. He only did that every time he heard a woman’s voice in the outer room.

Darryl A. wasn’t done with him. “You’re an absolute mess, my man. Call the girl. Or get on a plane. Georgia doesn’t require a passport.” The mechanic started to leave, but stopped when he looked into the showroom. “Uh, Quinn…”

He backed up to let Darryl B. through, followed by…Quinn’s mother.

“Mom?”

“Hello, sweetheart,” she said, dragging her hand over the motorcycle magazines that were stacked on a stool. He expected her to inspect her invisible white glove for dust, but she just smiled at him.

The guys beat a hasty retreat as soon as they could get through the door, and he was left alone with his mother. The air reeked of discomfort, but not, surprisingly, whiskey fumes.

“What brings you here?” he asked, wary.

“I came to see your…work.” She looked around the office, raising an eyebrow at a calendar of competitors’ bikes—complete with barely-clad models.

“Well, wow. That’s, um, that’s cool.” He stood and grabbed a bottle of water from the mini-fridge next to his desk. “Do you want a drink?”

She looked at the water and then back at Quinn. Rolling her eyes, she took it from him, opened it, and swigged. “I suppose that’s the best you’ve got here.”

“I can make some coffee. The guys finished off the last of the morning pot a while ago.”

She waved a hand at him. “Never mind. I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop and see what’s so fabulous that you do here.”

“Okay, well, I can give you a tour.” He was flummoxed. His mother had never shown an interest in his motorcycles before. He didn’t completely trust her reasons for being here, but he was going to show her what he did, anyway.

Surprisingly, she asked some reasonable questions about his designs and methods. She even made a suggestion about a color scheme that Darryl A. was discussing with a customer, much to Quinn’s terror. And the customer liked it.

But it was a small shop, and the tour didn’t take long.

“So, that’s about it,” he said.

“It’s nice,” she said. “Thank you for showing me around. I see…I see that you love this work.”

He didn’t know what to say, so he nodded.

“Do you love it more than that girl you brought home a few weeks ago?”

“Uh…” He hadn’t been home since then, dropping his tuition check off with his dad at the office rather than to see the whole gang together. And since his dad was almost always at work— “Is everything okay? Is Dad okay?”

She smiled sadly. “It’s the same as it’s always been. Your dad works his buns off because he thinks that’s what I want.”

“
Isn’t
that what you want?” He didn’t know what made him so blunt, but she’d always been so critical, so demanding—he figured he’d never get another chance.

“I don’t know. I thought it was. But then you came with that girl. And the way she looked at you, and the way you looked at her, and I thought about your dad, and how he wanted to be an engineer. A train engineer, of all the crazy things in the world.”

“Mom…” He needed to tell her that Kellie wasn’t going to be part of his life. That whatever melancholy had invaded her because of someone she thought he was involved with wasn’t real.

But she beat him to a different punch. “Rachel and your brother are getting a divorce.”

“Wow. That’s, um—”

“About damned time,” she said, slugging down the last of the water and crushing the bottle. “Thank God I don’t have any more sons for her to screw with.”

Quinn laughed.

“Well, I need to get home. It’s almost cocktail hour.”

“Mom…”

“Oh, stop. Maybe one of these days your dad will retire and I’ll have someone to talk to. Meanwhile, I think I’ll drink.”

His heart broke for her, but he was so blown away by her visit, he was in no position to drag Darryl A. out of the garage to stage an intervention, or a twelve-step talk, or whatever the hell that would be.

Before she left, she said, “Just remember, son. If this is the job you love, don’t let it be more important to you than that girl.”

“Mom, she’s gone. She left. That wasn’t real, I guess.”

“Bullshit. Go find her.”

She shoved through the door and into the brilliant Nevada sky, leaving Quinn standing with his mouth open. What was with everyone today?

…

Kellie paused, staring at the monitor of the bookstore computer. Was she really going to do this? She looked around her office, but the spider plant didn’t offer any encouragement, and neither did the stuffed armadillo sitting on the windowsill.

She reread the query letter for the sixteenth time. This was crazy—after months of fighting with the Zeus project and getting nowhere, she’d written
The Biker and the Librarian
in one long, caffeine-fueled week. And she liked it. Felt
good
about it. She was even okay with having to make the heroine a librarian. “Children’s Bookstore Lady and Romance Author” had too many characters to make into a promo tweet.

In spite of how miserable she was about the way she and Quinn had ended things, and the things she’d said, she’d discovered that she did still want to be a writer. She
was
a writer.

If only she was a writer with her own happily ever after. She’d thought about calling Quinn a dozen times, but what would she have said?
You’re right, I want to write, but I’m not brave enough to give it everything I’ve got
. Besides. He didn’t want to be with her, long distance. It hurt. Horribly. But he’d had the sanity to recognize that bad idea when she’d lost her mind for a few moments. Minutes. Days… She looked at her phone again.
No
. An airline ticket was way out of the budget for both of them. And relying on phone sex—

“Um, hold on, I’ll check and make sure Miss Dalton is here,” Rocky said—loudly—from the front room of the bookstore.

Oh, heck. That was his “the landlady’s here” warning voice.

Kellie stood, girding her loins for whatever was to come.

“Miss Dalton,” Mrs. Juanita Jones sneered. “I’ve come to tell you to pack your things.”

Her loins weren’t quite girded enough, because it took a few moments to get her stomach to settle enough to speak. “Excuse me?”

“I’ve decided to exercise the sale option in your lease. The one that says that if I decide to sell the property, you have to move if I say so.”

Kellie mentally calculated the cost of another call to her lawyer. Usually these clauses that Mrs. Jones came up with were bull hockey, but she’d make Kellie go under, just from paying the attorney to protect her interests.

“Who are you selling to?”

“I haven’t decided. But I’d like to be able to sell an empty property.”

A viable tenant made a commercial property more attractive to potential buyers, but her heart wasn’t in explaining it.

“I’ll send you the paperwork tomorrow. Have a good afternoon.” And the bitch was gone. Well, everything except that horrible perfume that she got by the gallon at the dollar store.

Rocky came in as soon as she was gone, opening a window and turning on the fan, even before Kellie had recovered from this latest body slam to her life. Maybe she should just pack it in. Two minutes ago, she’d felt so good about finishing her manuscript and preparing to send it off.

“Kellie?” Rocky stood in front of her now, eyebrows gathered in the middle of his perfect forehead. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure something out.”

“Thanks. Can I…can I have a few minutes alone?”

“Sure, sweetie.” He pulled the door closed behind him when he left.

She sat down and looked at her computer, at the flashing cursor, beckoning h
er to
do
something.

She just wasn’t so sure what that should be. Should she give up the shop? Try to find another storefront? Buy a bookmobile and have a mobile store? That might be good. She could set up shop right out front…that would show ’em. There was no way to know what was the right thing.

She picked up her stuffed armadillo. “What do you think, buddy?”

He stared back at her with his blank glass eyes.

“You’re no help.” Screw it. Being Miss Nice Guy wasn’t doing her any good. She was just going to have to take charge of her life and do something, even if she did it wrong.

“There’s someone else here to see you, Kel.” She jumped, and turned to see her assistant’s still-worried face. That was not good. She prayed that Mrs. Jones wasn’t back to drop one more bomb.

Rocky shrugged apologetically and retreated.

“Hi, Kellie.”

“Brae!” She stopped short of running to hug her.

She looked amazing. She’d even gained a little weight and had color in her cheeks. Toby stood behind her, with his hands on her shoulders, supporting his new wife, who looked nervous as hell.

Damn. Someone else Kellie had wanted to call, but hadn’t had the nerve to talk to.

Clearing her throat, she asked, “What brings you to town?”

“We heard you needed us.” There was a pleading tone to her statement, a
please say you need me
quality that nudged Kellie across the room. What was going on here?

And…? “You heard what?”

“I called them.” Rocky piped over Toby’s shoulder, from the fantasy section, where he’d resumed shelving books.

“Why?”

“Before the last ten minutes, I would have said it was because you’re lonely and need someone beside me to talk to. But now I think you need friends for more than company.” He stopped, then added, “And I didn’t know if it was a good idea to call that guy you wrote about in your book.”

“That guy I—you
read
that?”

“You turn off the monitor but don’t close the program, sweetie. I have to use the computer when you aren’t here. How could I help but read about his long, thick pulsing—”

“Okay, I get it.” She’d be embarrassed to death later. She looked at Brae again. “I’m…” She was at a loss. She was lonely. Brokenhearted. Missing her friend almost as much as she missed Quinn.

“So I’m here to help you. To offer my assistance at getting your life in order.”

“Brae, wow. I appreciate this, but I still can’t be your pers—”

“I don’t want that.” Her shoulders slumped. Toby gently shoved her the rest of the way in the office and closed the door. “Kellie, I’m sorry for being such a self-involved jerk.”

What could she say to that? Brae had been self-involved. But… “I wouldn’t say you were a jerk.” Much.

“I’ve had some time to think. Toby and I both have. He got out of that contract with Joyce, but his career isn’t exactly picking up where he left off.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He’s not. And I’m not, either. He realized he hates acting.”

“Oh! So what does he want to do?”

“Well…” Brae smiled. “He definitely wants to be a dad.”

“Omigod, you’re pregnant?” Kellie flew to her friend and hugged her. No wonder she looked so good and rosy and healthy. “That’s incredible!”

“Yeah. It is. We’re due in six months. But meanwhile, he wants a job. We had originally planned to live in Vegas or L.A., but with the baby coming, we’re thinking about something more…settled. Especially now that he’s not going to be acting.”

“Where are you thinking of moving?”

“Actually, driving through this neighborhood was like stepping back in time. It’s so quaint! All these little shops and the restored houses. We were thinking we might even look here.”

Kellie didn’t know how she felt about that, and it must have shown on her face.

“Unless, of course, you don’t want me in your life,” Brae added. “I’m not going to force myself on you.”

“Oh, no! It’s nothing like that,” Kellie assured her. “I would love for you to live here. It’s just that so many of the people that are moving into this area are such snobs and are trying to change it into an upper-middle-class area.”