McQUEEN: Las Vegas Bad Boys (21 page)

“Wow,” I say. “That’s amazing.” I don’t add anything else to my response because, to be honest, I know nothing about MMA except that Rhonda Rousey is my spirit animal and that JoJo is equally as badass.

“Yeah, I’m pretty pumped.” JoJo gives a little shoulder shrug, then points toward the waiter who’s just arrived to deliver another round. “You want anything?”

Meeting the eyes of Lara, a waitress I’ve met several times, I give her a little wave. “Hey, Lar, can I have, um, uh. Hmm.”

I hate this part of ordering. The part where I’m supposed to know what I like. No matter how many times I go out with this crew, I still fumble. I flip the page of the menu trying to remember what I like.

Cocktail menus are ridiculous in this town, and I’m not just balking about the concept of eighteen-dollar martinis. It’s the fact that the menus are like
The Goldfinch
. Too long, overwhelming, and only like 7% of the population actually reads it.

Next to me, Jack notices my hesitation and speaks up. “She’ll have a French 75.”

Now some girls—ahem, Emmy and Claire—might get all bitchy about a man ordering for them. But for me it’s like a nice, hot bath. Instantly relaxing.

“Thanks,” I say, once Lara has walked away. “I hate ordering. It’s so stressful.”

“Eh, no worries.” He smiles effortlessly, and I want to hit my head against the table. Who tells a man who happens to be one of the most famous musicians in the world that ordering is stressful? I mean, could I come across as more lame? As more pathetic? A guy like Jack wants a confident, self-assured, modern woman. Not a girl who has literally never downloaded an app.

That’s mostly because I use cheap phones purchased at Wal-Mart, but also because the constant pings notifying you about messages and tweets and likes are just a teensy bit overwhelming. I don’t get the appeal. Life is confusing enough as it is, without having to explain everything I’m thinking to the world 24/7.

Also, the part about not wanting my past to catch up with my present keeps me away from social media. I just feel like Candy Crush is one step away from a LinkedIn Tumblr full of sub-reddits.

I know what these things are because I keep up to date with this stuff, mostly at the library computers—remember, not wanting to look like I’m out of the loop? But just because I know, doesn’t mean I need to engage.

“You still there?” Jack asks, looking at me.

I laugh nervously, remembering that I’m here with Jack, and all my friends, and don’t actually need to be living inside my head.

“I’m here.”

“Good,” he says, smiling. “So is your drink.”

“What?” I shake my head, not following.

“Your French 75.” Lara hands me a flute with a floating cherry and I take it gingerly. It looks so pretty.

Emmy leans away from Ace, who she’s been basically lip-locked with since I arrived. Because, even though they live together, apparently they haven’t had enough alone time today.

She raises her glass. “To love,” she says to our group. We’re gathered around a lounge area, complete with a coffee table, and she stretches her glass across the table and clinks it against mine.

Next, I clink glasses with Claire, who wiggles her eyebrows toward the hottie on my right. I bug out my eyes willing her to stop. She does, giving me kissy lips as an apology.

I settle back on the couch, smiling at my friends. JoJo and McQueen are basically making love with their eyes across the room and I feel like I’m interrupting something.

Claire and Landon look about five minutes from dry humping, and Ace seems to think that, as the owner of this casino, he can grope Emmy wherever he likes. Which, I mean, I guess he can.

I look away and meet Jack’s gaze. Instantly I drop my chin, but he takes hold of it playfully, raising my face to meet his eyes.

“I’m offended,” he says. “You’re not gonna toast the night with me?”

“Oh, sorry,” I say, mumbling. “Of course I will.”

He holds up a tumbler of whiskey on the rocks. “To—”

But before he can finish, all eyes in the bar turn, witnessing Ashley Fast, who is now standing two feet away having a complete and utter freak out.

I
ended
up staying at my parents’ place for two entire weeks. Wrote a ton of new shit—which, yeah, will most likely never see the light of day since it’s emo as hell, but shit. I needed out of whatever shit storm Ashley wanted to throw my way.

And looks like my instincts were about right. One day back in Vegas and Ashley is already here, at my feet, ready to beg.

Or pounce.

Honestly, I can’t tell, and she’s only a few feet away. Obviously our relationship was doomed.

What I don’t get is why she wants to make such a spectacle of things. It’s as if she wants the media to rip our relationship apart.

“Hello, gang,” she says, smiling, but I can tell she’s biting back an awful lot. “Jack, would you mind if I had a word with you?”

I look around the table. Ace, Landon, and McQueen are already snickering. They probably think this girl still has my balls in her grip, because the truth is I took my damn time breaking up with her.

They need to know she and I are through.

And apparently she needs to know it, too. You’d have thought the two weeks of me ignoring her calls and texts would have been clear enough.

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen,” I tell her.

She gives a sharp laugh. Okay, so she wants to pounce. Which means I need out of here stat. Kirby told me in a conference call today that I need to wrap this drama with Ashley up, and fast. Kendrick Music Group isn’t pleased with the press I’ve been getting.

Neither am I. When I left for my parents, I didn’t expect Ashley to sell our “sex secrets” to a magazine. Even for her, she’s gone overboard.

“Jacky,” she says, using a pet name I despise. “We need to work things out. Privately.”

“Nope.” I hold my ground.

“Why? Do you have plans or something?” She lowers an eyebrow at me. “Looks like another night of BS-ing with the exact same people you hang out with every night. I seriously need to talk.”

“I honestly have nothing to say to you. And, yeah, I do have plans.”

“Yeah, right,” she says, scowling. “For someone as high profile as you, you sure like to hang out with some lowlifes.”

Ace clears his throat, and I know if I don’t get her the hell out of here, Ace is gonna be mad as hell. And while he wouldn’t throw a punch at Ashley, he’ll gladly throw her ass out of his club and onto the curb, giving the middle finger to the music career that she has here.

But I don’t need him to fight my battles.

“I do have plans.” I look around at the couples, hands entwined, and I know just how to piss Ashley off more than anything. She wants to talk trash about my boys and their women? Well, she has another fucking thing coming. “I have a date.”

She pauses, and I know this has caught her off guard. No doubt she’s assuming I’m coming back to her, just like I’ve done every time we’ve broken up over the past twelve months. But she’s wrong. We’re never, ever getting back together.

Crossing her arms, she looks me up and down, trying to call my bluff. “Who’s your date, Jack?”

I cough, hoping this girl sitting beside me is willing to play along. The rest of the party is coupled up, and the truth is I don’t hang out with any other women in Vegas besides the ones right here.

“Tess,” I tell Ashley. Then, reaching for Tess’s knee, I squeeze it. “Tess and I have plans tonight.”

Ashley’s jaw almost falls to floor. I may not have known if she wanted to fight or flee tonight, but I sure as hell know she didn’t expect me to be going out with a cocktail waitress after dating her.

Good. It’s about fucking time I left her speechless.

“Tess,” I say, standing, reaching out a hand to help her up. “You ready?”

Tess looks up at me.
Please play along
, I silently beg.

She smiles. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

* * *

A
few minutes later
, we’ve crossed the casino floor of Spades Royalle and slid ourselves into a sleek, black limousine. She sits across from me.

The driver speaks through the lowered partition. “Where to?”

I look at Tess, whose clear eyes are as wide as an owl’s. We haven’t spoken a word since I took her hand in mine and practically ran away from the crowd at the whiskey bar. I hadn’t realized paparazzi had already spotted Ashely and me, and a group of people had stopped to watch us fight.

“Are you okay?” I run my hands through my hair. “I feel like shit for dragging you into this.”

Tess bites her bottom lip, then shrugs, a smile spreading across her lips. “I’m good. I just hate it when the paparazzi show up.”

“Let me make this up to you,” I tell her. “Then you won’t think I’m such a dick.”

“I don’t think you’re a dick,” she says vehemently. “I think ... never mind.”

I cock my head toward her. Our knees touch. “Tell me, what do you think?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, waving her hands in front of her face. “But you can make it up to me. I just got off work and am literally starving.”

I grin; I like a girl who admits to having an appetite. “You like tacos?”

“I love tacos.”

“Perfect.” I lean toward the driver. “244 West Cascade.”

“You got it,” he says, raising the partition.

I roll my head from side to side, exhausted by this city only five hours into my return.

“You okay?” Tess asks.

I run my hand over my jaw, taking her in. I kind of feel like shit that I’ve never paid her much attention. There have been a handful of times she and I have been at dinner with the crew and sat side-by-side—and, hell, we spent a week walking the fucking English countryside for Landon and Claire. But I’ve never really looked at her as anything besides Emmy and Claire’s friend.

I’m not a player like the other guys. I like plenty of adventure in the bedroom, but I’ve always been a one-woman man.

No matter how much Ashley wants to complain about me, one thing she can never say is that I was unfaithful.

Which means I’ve never given Tess my full attention.

But now? Damn. I can’t seem to look away.

She isn’t classically beautiful, with long limbs and blonde hair. Tess is average by all standards measured in the Vegas celebrity world. A thin girl, who doesn’t come off as a seductress with moves and experience.

No, Tess looks wholesome, pure. Refreshing in a way that feels free and fucking alive. Her eyes are bright, the clearest blue I’ve ever seen. Her lips are covered in subtle pink lip gloss that makes her mouth look full and unkissed … and, damn, my cock is twitching in my pants just thinking about those lips and where they might go.

It’s been too damn long since I’ve had a fling, a single night to remember, a single night letting me forget.

And every damn time she leans forward to speak, in that flowy top she’s in, I can see straight down the front of it, past her tits, all the way to her tummy. The fact that she isn’t wearing a bra gets me hard every time I glimpse those C-cups. They’re fucking taunting me with their perfectly-sized tight nipples.

The thing is, she doesn’t seem to have a clue how attractive a woman who is willing to go with the flow, without agenda, is in a town like this. Across from me in the limo, she looks at me with sincerity.

I decide then and there that tonight I’m giving myself a fucking break. I’m gonna take this girl to dinner, and then she and I can have the one night stand I deserve.

And, damn, she deserves it too. She’s a nice girl who works hard and needs a night with me to remember that we’re young and alive and can fucking do whatever the hell we want.

She’s fucking gorgeous, and tonight I’m giving her a night she’ll never forget.

* * *

It isn’t a secret that I’ve wanted to jump Jack’s bones for the past four months. Pretty much starting the moment I met him.

Because, well, those eyes alone. But then there’s the soulful way he takes in a room, a situation. He may have taken a stand and told Ashley off tonight by pretending he and I were a thing ... but I could tell by the way he took a sidelong glance at his buddies, that the real reason he blew her off was because he didn’t want his friends to have to fight his battles.

And the fact that he wouldn’t put up with anyone putting any of us down? Well, I’ve never been up close and personal with a man like that. The guys back home saw me as a piece of meat—an indentured servant, really. But Jack doesn’t see anyone like that.

There’s no doubt in my mind that everyone left at the whiskey bar is talking about my massive hard-on for Jack. And, whatever, I won’t be mad at Emmy and Claire for letting the cat out of the bag ... I mean, anyone could have taken one look at my face and known I had exactly zero hesitation about walking through the casino with my hand in his.

“So, Tess,” he says, as his eyes rake over my body. “Since we told Ashley we were going out, we might as well treat ourselves to a date.”

“A date?” I gulp.

This is actually happening.

I legit wish I’d showered after my shift, and shaved. Dammit. I mean, okay, maybe it’s a tad bit presumptuous to think Jack would be getting his eyes or hands anywhere near the must-shave zone ... but whatever. Being in this inner circle of the Vegas elite has resulted in plenty of my fantasies coming true. Why not my sexual one, too?

Jack shrugs. “What, does a date with me sound bad? Fuck, am I that out of touch with reality?”

I shake my head. “A date with you does not sound bad. It sounds ... wonderful. Just, well, first of all, you have to know I’ve had a massive crush on you since we met? Right?”

He laughs. “Uh, sorry, Tess. I live in my head most of the time.”

I feel my cheeks flush. “Then that was some definite oversharing on my part.”

“I like it. It’s refreshing.”

“Why? Ashley seemed to have no problem telling you like it is, or was.”

Jack stretches out his legs in the limo, his feet propping on the cushion beside me. “Ashley’s a manipulator. She wanted everyone to see us, so long as we used a good filter.”

I grimace, not really into babe-bashing. “Seems a little intense to say she tried to make everything perfect. I mean, I remember at Landon and Claire’s wedding she didn’t even bring a couture dress for the reception, which I found to be very tasteful, to not take away from Claire’s day. Though, to be honest, it was sort of a disappointment. She always looks like she just stepped off a runway.”

Jack smirks. “Yeah, but she didn’t pack a designer gown because she thought the whole thing was beneath her, and she was pissed the whole time because I canceled our trip to Barbados to attend the ceremony.”

I twist my lips, feeling awkward that we keep talking about his ex-girlfriend.

“Maybe let’s not talk about her,” I suggest. “I mean, if you need to like, hash it out, I’m here for you. But it might be more fun to sort of pretend that she doesn’t exist for one little night? If it causes you stress?”

He nods curtly. “You are so right.” He grabs the bottle of champagne that is sitting on ice on the minibar, and pops the cork. Champagne overflows, and we laugh as the sticky sweetness covers the carpeted floor of the limo. He fills two champagne flutes with the bubbly.

Looking at me with an unconcealed smile, he says, “Let’s finish that toast we never got to finish at the whiskey bar.”

We raise our glasses.

“To tonight,” he says with his voice low and gravelly, as if preparing for an epic journey we are embarking on together. As if our toast is somehow sealing this night as some special, untouchable escape from real life.

“To tonight,” I repeat in a whisper, clinking my glass against his.