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

by Teri Anne Stanley

  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

  Quinn 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 her 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.”

  “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 o
f 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.