“Like soap operas?”
“Sort of. Like little romance movies online with lots more sex and stuff.”
“Do you think he’s trying to sleep his way to a job?”
“I think that’s why he hooked up with this year’s it author. You don’t think it’s because he actually wants to have sex with that skeleton in heels, do you?”
Another group of women arrived at that point and the elevator doors opened, so Kellie didn’t get to hear any more of the gossip.
She didn’t really want to, though, because the more she listened, the more she felt like she might know who they were talking about.
Could that be true? Was Toby only with Brae to use her as a stepping-stone? He hadn’t been very attentive in the restaurant last night, but then when they’d gone to their room, they’d sure made enough noise to make a believer out of Kellie.
Of course, Kellie and Quinn had made enough noise to make a doubter out of her, too.
Well, she wasn’t going to wreck Brae’s happiness by casting doubts on her love, but she also didn’t want to see her friend hurt, no matter how sick with jealousy she was over Brae’s writing success.
Troubled, she let herself into her hotel room. While she showered, she spent too much time imagining what might happen when her own personal Zeus actually came back tonight for the party and then had to rush to get ready. At least obsessing over her temporary fake boyfriend was better than mourning the death of her dream job. After what she’d learned at this morning’s workshops? She wouldn’t have to bother keeping her secret identity secret from Smyrna Spring’s moms-who-lunch any longer, because she’d never get to become that evil author twin of herself. There’d only be a struggling bookstore owner avoiding eviction notices.
Chapter Six
Quinn rode Betty’s sister Sue into the parking garage and parked her in the area reserved for motorcycles. He left his helmet, and the spare he’d brought—just in case—with the valet.
He smoothed his hair back and tucked it into a ponytail. He’d actually considered getting it cut—he didn’t keep it long out of vanity, but because of poor prioritization. He hadn’t had time to get a cut for months, and he hadn’t had time again today. He’d left the grease monkey work to the Darryls, but took a month’s worth of paperwork home with him. Well, at least he’d shaved, and he hadn’t purged his closet of his previous life completely, so he had something halfway decent to wear to this dinner party gig.
Of all the seventy jillion people staying at the Masquerade, he ran into good old Toby at the elevator. Just his luck.
“Hey, how’s it going?” he asked.
“Good. Nice to see you.” Toby nodded, smiling politely and looking away.
Having spent their entire double date with his face in his phone, the dude had no idea who he was, but Quinn was feeling…friendly. “It was great meeting you with Brae last night. I understand you’re an actor, is that right?”
Toby looked at Quinn now, smiling even bigger, though less authentically, now that he realized Quinn didn’t know who he was. “Sure. I’ve been a regular on One Day Until Forever, but I’ve also been on a few primetime dramas.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“I was on NCIS a couple of weeks ago.”
“No kidding?” Quinn didn’t watch the show, but at least he’d heard of it. “What part did you play?”
Toby’s über-white smile lost a bit of its shine and quirked at the corner. Perhaps the first genuine expression other than annoyance that Quinn had seen. “I was the serial killer’s second victim.”
“Oh. That sucks.”
“Not really. I did get a line, because I wasn’t dead until the third scene. It’s the first corpse that really doesn’t get to have much fun.”
“So this movie you’re doing of Brae’s book, that’s your first big-screen movie?”
“My first lead. I’ve been corpses on a few other movies, too.” He laughed.
“What are you working on next?” Quinn asked. The guy was friendly enough, it seemed, when the topic was himself.
“Not sure yet. A few things are up in the air.”
Aaaand that took care of the conversation for the first six floors.
“So are you going to this hero dinner party thing?” Toby asked Quinn.
“Yep. I guess you are, too?”
“Sure. Brae’s already got my costume laid out.”
A cold chill ran down Quinn’s back. “Costume?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s a ‘Bring Your Hero to Dinner’ party.”
“I just thought… I don’t know what I thought. She didn’t say…”
“What’s her book about again?” Toby tilted his head, as though Brae had actually mentioned it and he’d actually listened.
“Uh…something about Greek gods, I think.” He flinched. He should totally know this, especially if Kellie was his girlfriend.
“Huh. Well, I’m sure she’s got something figured out for you.”
Quinn smiled weakly as the door opened on their floor.
“See you in a few.” Toby saluted before he swiped his key card in his hotel room door.
Quinn looked at Kellie’s door. He thought about bailing out. He didn’t know her. He didn’t have to do this. But then he thought about the woman with the wishful eyes—and maybe he considered the soft curves, too—thinking about tossing her dream into the abyss. He took a deep breath and knocked.
By six forty-three, Kellie had nearly paced a strip out of the carpet of her hotel room floor. She’d decided to wear the short white wrap dress that she’d found in one of the shops downstairs, because it had a slight Greek flair and that went along with her book’s theme, but she’d rearranged the way it draped a dozen times.
It was just a date, for crying out loud. Except…she hadn’t had a decent date in quite a while. All guys she had gone out with over the past…lifetime had been buttheads. Mark the Shark, who said he was a history professor but was really a junk dealer. And not fancy antique-type junk. Real junk. It wasn’t the junk that bothered her, it was that he’d lied. And since they were dating long distance, she didn’t know about that until she’d finally gotten suspicious and checked his LinkedIn profile.
And there’d been the accountant from the complete opposite side of Atlanta, Al Hall. Al-K-Hall was more like it. Old Al had told her he worked for a big firm downtown. Which had been true, five years ago. They’d met for coffee, and he’d passed her his résumé when he learned she worked in Smyrna Springs. “Oh, you work up there? There are a lot of partners from Doit, Hack, and Spoon living up there. I should give you my résumé.” Which he’d pulled from a briefcase that also held a pint of Jim Beam. And a fifth of George Dickel.
She really just wanted to meet a guy who was who he said he was, and was near enough to actually meet and spend time with before she invested emotional energy. A guy who might actually live nearby and work for a living—working with his hands would be perfect. Like, maybe, Quinn Anderson, motorcycle mechanic. Who lived in Las Vegas, a million miles away.
She sure hoped he was still going to show up.
But if he didn’t come, that would be okay. She had an alternate date in a cardboard box on the desk: a perfectly good gingerbread man she’d had decorated to look like her biker. If she got stood up by the real thing, she’d just hold her chin up and take the cookie with her. And chew its head off as soon as she got the chance.
Which made her think about tasting Quinn. She was really wishing now that she’d kissed him last night. Or this morning.
Which set her back to pacing.
She was excited to see him, her Zeus.
When he got here, if he got here, he’d be perfect. Just thinking about how sexy he’d been yesterday afternoon when she’d seen him standing there in the hot Vegas sun, soft, old T-shirt with a logo of some bike shop or other, worn jeans that fit just right over those long legs, dark hair tangled and flying in the desert wind, a few days’ beard growth.
She st
opped to fan herself. She shouldn’t let herself think about that too much. She’d get overheated.
How impressed everyone would be with how much her real-life hero resembled her hero Zeus when she read his description at the party. She might not ever publish—or even finish—a book, but she was going to have as much fun as she could at her last romance convention.
The knock on the door nearly startled her out of her sandals. She’d almost convinced herself that he wasn’t coming. Moving toward the door, she adjusted the hem of her dress and made sure her boobs weren’t falling out of the top. Although she also maybe checked to be sure her cleavage wasn’t completely hidden, either.
She peeked through the little thing in the door and saw Quinn’s face, distorted, but still darned handsome.
“Hang on!” she called and swung the door open on her badass biker.
And opened the door to see a man in khakis, a polo shirt, and…were those Sperry Top-Siders?
She looked back at his face. His clean-shaven face. His handsome, hard-jawed, but clean-shaven face. Wow. Who knew he could be even more nipple-hardeningly hot than he’d been yesterday. But— “Where’s your hair?”
“Huh?” He turned his head. “Ponytail.”
“Oh thank God.”
“Excuse me?” Quinn looked confused. And embarrassed?
“Oh, heck. I’m so sorry. Come on in.” She grabbed his hard arm and tugged, and he slowly entered the room. “I’m being rude. You look…nice.”
“And you didn’t want nice.”
When she stood back and took him in—his wide chest filling out that knit golf shirt, like no one in Smyrna Springs ever did, and those Dockers—Oh, goodness. With that ponytail? Yeah. She wanted nice. She wanted nice enough to consider skipping the party and suggesting room service. With condoms.
“Actually,” she said, “you look great. Really, really great.”
“You look nice, too.” He smiled.
Over a weird flutter in her chest, she said, “The problem is, I kind of need not so nice.”
…
Quinn would have been miffed about spending so much time finding unwrinkled pants if Kellie hadn’t looked so apologetic about not liking his clothes.
Actually, he thought maybe she did like the way he looked—and how twisted was it that he gave a damn about that? One of the great things about running his own shop was that he set the dress code. The life he’d walked away from was the life he was dressing for at the moment. He should be relieved that she didn’t like it.
She stood there in her shiny gold sandals that wrapped halfway up her leg—and that was fucking hot; he wanted to follow the straps with his tongue—and she was in a dress that looked like it might blow away if the toga party got too breezy. She had the edge of her thumb in her mouth, as if wondering what to do with him.
He tried to think of what he was supposed to say, a challenge because his dick was asking if it could slip in there next to her digit. Party. They were going to a party. “I ran into Toby in the elevator. He said something about a costume…but I didn’t realize this was that kind of a thing.”
“I didn’t say anything, because I assumed you’d show up looking like you did yesterday. And that’s the perfect thing my book hero would wear.”
“Sorry,” he said. And he was. These khakis were a couple of years old, and he’d filled out a little since he’d bought them. The boys were feeling a little crowded. More so, after seeing her little goddess outfit. But crap. Was this more of her desire to walk on the bad-boy side of the street?
“I guess I could change my hero description from my Zeus book to one of my older stories…”
His stomach clenched with disappointment. “Do you want me to run home and change?”
“No!” She reached out a hand as if to grab him so he couldn’t escape, but then pulled it back to fiddle with her necklace. Her cheeks were a charming shade of pink.
Ah. Okay, she liked this Quinn, too. At least enough to want him to go to the party with her and not leave. “I promise I’ll come back.”
She laughed, and he knew he’d busted her.
“I have an idea,” she said, picking up her phone. “Toby brought three suitcases with him. I bet he’s got some jeans you can wear, and I’ll get a T-shirt in the lobby…”
The little cooler from her car, the one that had held apple juice, was brimming with ice and bottled beer, and she grabbed one, waving it at Quinn, as she said into her phone, “Hey, Brae, can I come over for a minute?”
…
When Kellie came back a few minutes later—after learning way more about Toby’s manscaping habits than she felt she needed to know—she found Quinn scrolling through something on her computer.
She looked over his shoulder and saw amazing motorcycles that defied imagination, each one more impressive than the last. The way he was focused on the screen had her imagining him at work. All about the bikes. What would it be like to have all of that attention on her? On her body?
“Are those your bikes?”
Apparently he hadn’t heard her come in, because he jumped about three feet and let out a vigorous “Shit!”
When he landed, he looked back at the computer screen. “Maybe one of these days. I can’t afford to get this fancy yet,” he told her. “I’ve got the ideas, but the execution takes a lot of time and money. And buyers.”
“The bike you were on yesterday was pretty slick,” she told him. What Kellie knew about motorcycles would fill an index card, but the one Quinn had banged up yesterday had been very shiny with lots of intricate chrome stuff on it.
“That’s Betty. She’s special. When she gets fixed up again, she’s going to have a prime spot in a big custom bike show—but she’s in a more basic class. My version of these type of choppers is still just pixels in cyberspace.”
“Really? Can I see?”
He hesitated, a faint red tinge staining his cheekbones. “You really want to see this shit?”
“Come on, Easy Rider. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
He snorted and hit a few keys, then leaned back.
The first motorcycle looked a lot like the one she’d seen yesterday. It’s what her Zeus rode, too. Or he did now. It was black and purple…even the engine parts were black where most were usually shiny metallic colors. It was very edgy and badass.
The next one was more fantastical. It looked like a dragon, with handlebars that doubled at the beast’s wings.
“Could anyone actually ride this?” she asked without thinking. “I mean—”
But he laughed. “Not sure. I’m going to give it a try, though.”
She looked at more pictures, completely blown away by the imagination and skill it took to put these designs together in virtual reality. “Sorry. I don’t know much about this stuff,” she said after asking the nine-hundredth question.
“I’m glad you asked. My sister convinced me to teach a class at the community college called Biker Basics 101, one of those community interest classes for people without enough to do on Tuesday nights. Talking to you is a lot easier.”
He held her gaze, his smile warm and inviting her to ask him more. Take me for a ride later? We don’t need your bike…
The thing was, she was finding herself attracted to a lot more than his smile and those amazing shoulders, and abs, and thighs, and…he had serious passion for his work and knew a lot about what he was doing. That was hot.
She cleared her throat. “We should get moving. I told Brae we’d meet them downstairs in a few minutes.”
Handing him a pile of clothing, he raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
She smiled hopefully, but said, “You don’t have to.”
He snorted. “What the hell,” and went into the bathroom.
“I’m not sure this is going to work,” Quinn called a couple of minutes later.
“What’s wrong?”
A sound that could have been a growl escaped from behind the door, but finally, her Zeus came out.
“Ya think?” Quinn tugged at the crotch. “John Travolta would have been uncomfortable in these.”
Kellie tried not to look, but it was hard not to notice that—yeah, he filled out the front as nicely as the back. “John Travolta? That old guy?”
“Yeah, and seventies screen idol. Saturday Night Fever? Grease?”
“Oh.” Kellie shrugged. “My parents were kind of country.”
He sighed and tugged at his collared shirt. “Okay, what are we doing about this?”
“Here.” She tossed him a ribbed tank she’d had in her bag. It was going to be way too tight, but that’s what the ribbing was for, wasn’t it? Stretching?
He stared at it a minute, then looked back at Kellie. “If it wasn’t for the fact that you’re from out of town and not ever going to ask me to do something like this again, I’d be long gone. You know that, right?”
That was a disappointing thought, and one that she shoved right to the back of her brain. She smiled encouragingly.
“Fine.” He yanked off the golf shirt.
Was there anything sexier than a guy taking off his shirt? He did that whole one arm over the back of his head and tug it forward thing, so she got a good long glance at his abs—nicely defined, with a sprinkling of dark hair…and then the chest… No manscaping for Quinn Anderson. She had to look away as she thought of him heading to the salon with Toby for chest waxing.
The snort she let out was most definitely accidental.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing, I—” She looked at him. The tank was stretched beyond its limits. “Whoa. You look—” She didn’t have enough air in her lungs to think of the words. Besides, the way her lady parts were perking up—
“I feel ridiculous.”
“I’m sorry. But you look really hot. You know, in the objectify-your-romance hero sort of way.”
“Is there anything else I need to know to be a hero here?”
Accidentally in Love With the Biker (What Happens in Vegas) Page 5