Accidentally in Love With the Biker (What Happens in Vegas) (13 page)

“Why is that bad? Shouldn’t it be good for your business?”

“It would be, except that my business is also about feeding the minds of the kids from the parts of town that aren’t so nice. And the new people are trying to drive those people away by shutting me down.”

“No! You can’t let that happen!” God bless Brae and her commiseration indignation.

“If I can keep my landlord from pulling the rug out from under me and sell enough books to pay my salary, I might have a chance.”

“I guess that blows my idea of getting Toby a job here out of the water, huh?” Brae put her chin on her hand.

Really? Toby, working at her bookstore? Actually, she could kind of imagine it. But there was no way she could pay him. Kellie propped up her own face and stared at her desk. At the rent notice.

“Hey, Brae, I have an idea.”

“Yeah?”

“How would Toby feel about real estate management?”

“I think he might feel pretty good about it. Especially if he’s got an agreeable tenant.”

“I happen to have heard a rumor that this building will be on the market soon.”

“Well, then, we’ll go ask him right after you hit send on that query letter I know you’re all nervous about.”

Kellie not only hit
send
, but also
print
—on both the manuscript, and a little note she’d composed to go in the hard copy she was going to mail to Las Vegas.

…

Quinn dumped an armful of soup cans and ramen noodles on the grocery store conveyor. As he grabbed a couple of packs of beef jerky to
add some protein, a magazine cover caught his eye.
NOW
magazine hosted none other than the recently wed Brae and Toby sprawled together on a bed—naked, except for piles of paperback books piled in strategic locations. The headline read,
Lustful Lovers and Romance Readers: In Love with Love
.

He hovered, warring with himself. He shouldn’t buy that crap. He didn’t need to torture himself. It would just make him miss Kellie, whom he wasn’t missing as much now as he had been— Who was he kidding? He thought of her as much now as he had the day she’d left, pretty much constantly. But she’d made it clear she wasn’t interested in a relationship if they couldn’t see each other often. He’d yet to scrape up enough money for bus fare, let alone airfare.

When he tossed the magazine on the counter, the cashier smiled. “Does your girlfriend read a lot of romance?”

He crossed his arms so that his tattooed sleeve was on top, snake staring at the woman. “Nope. I’m the romance reader.”

“Oh. Well.” She smiled again, less indulgently this time, and rushed his purchases over the scanner.

Stalking to Sue, he stashed his groceries—and magazine—in her saddlebags. What the hell was wrong with him? He’d been even more unsettled than usual since his mother’s visit the other day.

He’d gone to see his dad, dropping off a check as an excuse to visit. Dad had seemed the same as usual. But on the way out, Quinn mentioned that his mom had stopped by the shop, and that she seemed a little bored.

His dad sighed, running a hand through his thinning hair. “Yeah. Maybe I’ll turn some of these cases over to your brother. Take some time off.”

“Take Mom on one of those cross-country train rides,” Quinn suggested.

His dad looked intrigued, but then shook his head. “She’d come up with a reason not to go.”

“You won’t know unless you ask her.”

“I guess I could take a chance. Nothing to lose, huh?”

Quinn was sad that asking his mom to go on vacation was a risky proposition for his dad. How had their lives gotten so rigid?

He supposed they’d gotten stuck in their own roles, protecting themselves, and were afraid to put something out there now? God, he hoped he’d never get in that kind of a relationship, where he was afraid to tell his woman how he was feeling and let her return the favor.

Quinn froze in the act of throwing his leg over the seat of his bike.

Was that what he’d done? Chickened out? Let his past control his future? Had he missed the opportunity to take a chance with his heart? He told himself that he was doing what was right—walking away so that she didn’t have to decide between him and her life in Georgia— but he hadn’t even given her a choice, had he? Like some big take-charge dickhead, he’d made the decision for her.

Lowering himself to the saddle, he fired up Sue and headed back to the shop. He had to be here for the bike show this coming weekend, but then maybe he could get away for a few days. Take Sue—or Betty, if he hadn’t sold her—on a cross-country trip. Toss his heart out in the Georgia clay, see if there was a chance Kellie might be interested in giving them a second chance.

The mailman was just leaving when Quinn pulled into the lot of his shop. “Brought you a bunch of stuff today.”

“Yay, more bills.”

“There was a hand-addressed package there, too. Maybe it’s a bomb, or some anthrax.”

“That would be a nice change.” Quinn loved that he’d scored the only mailman in Vegas who moonlighted as a Goth comedian.

He went inside and picked up the package—a bubble mailer with a Georgia postmark.

Darryl A. said something to Quinn about some phone messages, but he ignored him. Instead, he took the package into the office, shut the door, and started to read.

Quinn:

I did it. I finished a manuscript. And I sent it to some agents and editors. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but I thought I’d let you know that I didn’t leave everything in Vegas—I brought home the desire to take a chance.

I think about you, and…I hope you’re doing okay. I wish…I hope that if you read my story, and find anything that doesn’t ring true about motorcycles, or Las Vegas in general, you’ll let me know.

XO,

Kellie

Chapter Seventeen

The flight from Atlanta to Vegas took forty-nine hours. At least, that’s what it seemed like in Kellie-on-her-way-to-see-Quinn time. She’d managed to give it two days from the time she’d mailed the manuscript before she called Delta and booked a very, very slow flight.

She should have called him and said that she was on her way. What if she got there and he was cozied up with a new woman? Everything would be super awkward. At least if she’d called, if he was seeing someone new, he would have had time to—what? Stash her away? That was ridiculous.

She could very easily get there and find that he’d gotten together with someone new and was still snuggled up with her, and didn’t care if Kellie was uncomfortable when she stopped by, because, hello! She’d bailed on him. After he’d bailed on her. For bailing on him.

Or something.

She didn’t know anymore.

And that was why she’d decided to get on the damned plane and fly out here. She had to take the gamble that he’d be available. And in town. And willing to see her.

“Flight attendants, prepare the cabin for landing,” said the pilot, or Mr. Sulu, or whoever was in charge of that stuff.

Suddenly, Kellie needed another hour or two before she got to the ground.

What was she doing? She had no idea.

But fifteen minutes later, the wheels of the plane hit the runway and the announcement was made that passengers could fire up their electronic devices.

Kellie’s finger hovered over the airplane mode button. Should she call now? Let him know that she just happened to be in town and was going to drop by?

She would check her email while she decided. Maybe by then that desert monsoon she’d wished for would finally be happening and the decision would be taken out of her hands.

But when her account loaded, her worries about visiting Quinn were sidetracked.

It took her another forty minutes to get a rental car—which she desperately needed, because she had to get somewhere quiet to make a phone call.

It took a few minutes extra for the rental agency to change her paperwork, because by the time she’d gotten there, she’d reread the email six—okay, ten—times and decided on a Mustang GT instead of the economy Fusion.

Once she was in the car, in the parking lot, with the windows up and the air-conditioning cranked, it took four tries to get the numbers right. The call finally went through.

“JGA Warren and Associates.”

“Hello, this is Kellie Dalton. I’m calling for Cathy Perkins.”

Her hands were so sweaty she almost dropped the phone when Brae’s agent came on the line.

“Kellie! I’m so glad you called. Hopefully you will be, too, after we talk.”

Half an hour later, she managed to pull out of the parking lot, but then had to stop again, because she’d forgotten to enter the address of Quinn’s Customs into the GPS.

It only took her three tries to get
that
right. But she finally got on the road, and she was pulling into the surprisingly tidy parking lot twenty minutes later. Not nearly long enough to figure out what she wanted to say.

…

“Hey, boss, there’s someone here to see you.” Darryl B. stood grinning in the door of Quinn’s office.

“I’m kinda busy right now, is it important?” He looked back down at the pile of papers in his lap
. He had about twenty more pages to go, and really needed to find out how this story ended.

“Might be important. Guess that’s up to you.” Kellie’s voice was hesitant, but as smooth and lovely as he remembered.

“Shit!” He stood and the remaining pages of the manuscript slid to the floor with a
plop
. “I mean, hi.”

Her soft brown hair was short, all choppy and windblown, but her big eyes were just as green—maybe greener. And the porcelain skin of her face and neck led down to curves that begged for his hands…

Her hands fluttered. “Sorry to stop by unannounced. But I was in the neighborhood?”

“Were you?” His response sounded terser than he intended because his jaw was so tight and his heart was pounding. She wouldn’t have come all this way to break his heart, would she?

“I’m sorry, I—” She stepped back a pace, the hopeful look on her face fading.

Oh hell
. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said, moving toward her. Jesus. He felt like a sixth grader.

She looked at his hands, so he did, too. He clutched the remaining pages of her book like they held the winning Powerball numbers.

“Yeah. I, uh, got your book. Today.”
There you go, let her know you dived right in like it was a Coke and you were in desperate straits wandering the desert.

Licking her lips, she asked, “So. Have you found anything I got really wrong?”

What should he say? That the hero shouldn’t have let the heroine go all the way home before going after her? That he should have made sure she knew he was insecure and let her decide for herself if he was good enough for her?

He cleared his throat. “The hero has eight-pack abs, at least. Not a wimpy six-pack.”

One side of her mouth curved up, and he really, really wanted to kiss her there. “Eh. Maybe, but I was trying to be realistic. Most motorcycle mechanics probably don’t have quite the physique you do.” She turned and stared pointedly into the shop, where Darryl A.’s gut was on the verge of stretching his 3X T-shirt past its limit.

She sobered and looked at him again. “Anything else?”

“I don’t know,” he told her, turning to put the pages on his desk so he could wipe his palms on his jeans. “I haven’t gotten all the way through. I don’t know how it ends.”

“It’s a romance,” she told him. “The hero and heroine work it out and live happily ever after.” The side of her thumb made it all the way to her lips before he grabbed her hand and pulled her toward him.

“How do they work it out? He can’t sell his shop and start again on the other side of the country until he’s paid off a lot of debt. He could…” Jesus, was he going to say this? For Kellie, he would. “He could keep the bike thing as a hobby, and take the bar exam.”

She yanked her arm away from him then and pushed his chest so that he had to take a step back to keep his balance. “The hell he can! There is no way he can stop being a motorcycle artist. They can see each other and be a couple and be in love and make it work and have their jobs—the jobs they want. He is not giving up his dream. No
fucking
way!”

Quinn held up his hands and started to laugh, which seemed to make her even madder, but she quickly wound down, put her hands on her hips, and glared at him.

“You said the F-word.”

“I fucking did fucking say the fucking F-word. And I’ll fucking say it fucking any time I want.”

“Wow.” He admired the way her bosom heaved for a moment. “So, Ms. Happy Ending. How does it all work out? Does the heroine inherit an airline and decide to take her bookstore back and forth across the country with her?”

“Close.”

He threw his hands up. “Come on, what gives?”

“Well, Toby quit acting professionally for now, Brae’s pregnant, they moved to Georgia, I convinced them to buy the building where my shop is, and they’re my new landlords. They’re opening an actor’s and writer’s studio in the other half of the building. And I decided that as long as I have a landlord who’s not going to sell the building out from under my business, I could promote Rocky and spend some more time writing.”

She grinned then, and gave a little hop-step happy dance. “And, I submitted that”—she pointed at the manuscript—“and got a call on my way here. I’ve got an offer for it and a request to make it into a three-book series.”

“Holy shit, babe! I knew you could do it.”

Quinn picked her up then, twirled her around the tiny office, and kissed her hard. Then he kissed her softly. And then he kissed her just right. For a long, long time.

“So. Where do you plan to set up shop for this fancy writing career?”

“Well, I’m not sure. I think I could probably do it from anywhere. It would be nice to work somewhere that I wouldn’t have trouble doing research. You know, especially for the sexy parts.”

“How ’bout that. You know, I’d be more than happy to offer you help with any research.”

“Really? That’s awesome. Especially because my second book’s about a kinky sex club.”

A shiver ran down Quinn’s spine. “Really? Well. As long as I can get leather pants in my own size and not borrow Toby’s, I supposed I could act out some scenes with you.”

Her smile broadened. “You won’t need the leather pants, just a studded collar. The heroine is the dominant in the relationship.”

“Oh, fuck.”