Waking Up in Vegas(6)

I made it up to her with a late dinner.

And a little hair-pie for dessert.

She had to work in the morning, so we called it an evening at midnight. I went home with her name stuck in my head and her number in my cellphone. Unusual? Yes, absolutely. But so was Mona. At the risk of sounding full of myself—oh to hell with it, I know I’m good—I made her live up to her name.

We set up another date for Friday, which I’d blamed on our night ending so early. I don’t know why I found her intriguing. She was funny and intelligent, but so are many of the women I meet.

I’m sure it was only because we hadn’t had actual sex. Yet.



Mona and I danced and drank for a while at the Hard Rock, then went back to her place for a night of naked oral exploration. Saturday, we stayed in, drank wine, and screwed like bunnies.

Then she had to go and wreck the evening by asking about plans for Sunday. I told her I had plans already (I did—my back yard won’t mow itself). On Sunday morning, I had to put in an emergency call to my usual florist for a rush delivery. He’s a great guy—he already knew what I needed, and what the note should say.

A dozen yellow roses with a card stuck inside, thanking her for a memorable weekend and an apology that things won’t work out.

And they won’t.

Mostly because I don’t want them to. Playing the field suits me just fine. No boredom that way.

I’m glad I never gave her my cell number.

Sunday was my usual—gym time, yardwork, and laundry.

Quit snickering; washing machines are not a mystery to men. It’s just that if women are around, there are many things we can avoid doing if we do them wrong often enough and badly enough. Loading the dishwasher backwards, putting pots and pans away in the wrong places (I perfected this trick with my mother); turning everything in the dryer into toddler clothes (that one didn’t work—she made me wear the pink underwear and the too-short tees), and any number of other things.

We don’t do it because we’re sexist. Straight up? We’re lazy and doing that shit’s boring. Things around the house that require power tools or loud gasoline engines? We’re there. But tell me to sew a few stitches that ripped out of the hem in my pants, and I’ll get out the duct tape.

It’ll even stick through several washes.

I can’t think of a single thing that you can’t mend with a strip of duct tape.





Chapter 4




*Just a Girl*



I arrived at the radio station on Monday morning at five-fifteen. By six, I discovered the one thing that duct tape couldn’t fix.

Unless maybe I used the whole roll.

But once again, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Jensen MacKenzie seems to have had that effect on me from the beginning.



Starting over:

I arrived at the radio station on Monday at five-fifteen. I had intended to welcome my new bud and co-host with a fresh pot of coffee, since bonding over beer and hot wings was frowned upon in the workplace. Besides, I’d somehow run out of java at home and couldn’t find my back-up bag.

As I headed up the walkway to the security entrance that we use after hours, I saw someone looking through the tinted glass of the door, holding a hand over his eyes to cut the glare from the overhead light.

With the shoulder-length hair, short stature, khakis, hoodie, and white athletic shoes, I figured it had to be one of the usual punky kids who occasionally came by, trying to use our parking lot as a skate park. He was probably trying to see if there was anyone inside who might stop him. Awful early for a high-schooler to be out, but hey, this was Las Vegas.

“Hey, kid!”

The figure straightened and turned around slowly.

The first thing I registered was the sizable rack visible under the unzipped hoodie. Oh, calm yourself. Guys notice these things. Besides, her shirt hugged her all the way down to the hips.

Christ. Reminding myself that I was ogling a (rather overdeveloped) teenager, I dragged my eyes up to her face.

By then, I was close enough to see that, while she was young, she was definitely not a kid.

With her big eyes and pointed chin, she looked like a skater-pixie. Especially with the way she was pursing her lips while she looked at me.

“The station won’t open ‘til eight. There’s a Starbucks just down the street you can camp out in ‘til the receptionist gets here to give you whatever is that you’ve won.”

Those lips unpuckered, spreading into a wide grin. She threw back her head and laughed, a rich, full-bodied sound that, for some odd reason, made me think of mahogany.

Or maybe it was because the throaty edge to her voice gave me some serious wood.

I was now a few steps away from the door, reluctant to swipe my access card in case she tried to duck under my arm and get inside. I also wasn’t quite sure I wanted to end this odd conversation. Even though it had been completely one-sided.