Waking Up in Vegas(60)

“It’s almost noon, Mom. We were out of bacon, and liked the idea of someone else cooking it.”

Her brows shot up at the we, but thankfully, she didn’t pounce on it. She returned her gaze to Jen, with the strangest smile on her face. “I had the same thought, actually. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come into the building ’til four.”

I resisted the urge to snort. My mother lived and breathed her job; she loved it here. I’m not sure she even bothered to have food in her house anymore, since she could eat for free any time she wanted.

“It’s good to see you, Mom, but we were just heading out. I have some research to do for an interview on Monday.” She was looking at me oddly and giving off the weirdest vibe. We needed to escape before she said something truly embarrassing. Because if I hung out too long, she definitely would.

“He’s always all about his job,” she said, leaning conspiratorially toward Jen. “Make sure he takes a little time to enjoy himself, eh?”

Jensen laughed out, “I’ll try.”

Okay, now my skin was absolutely crawling; they hardly knew each other and they were ganging up on me. Besides, the way I’d prefer enjoying myself was not something for my mother’s ears.

I tugged Jen’s hand. “We should go.” I bit off the endearment that tried to slip out. My mom certainly didn’t need any more ammo.





Chapter 17




*Man In The Box*



The ease of the morning was gone, thanks in no small part to my female parental unit.

I couldn’t completely blame my mother for the difficulty, though. When we got home, instead of cozying into my shoulder on the couch, recuperating with whatever comedy was on HBO, Jen headed straight for the garage, hell-bent on sifting through her possessions to separate her stuff into Take Now and Take Later piles.

Meanwhile, I wanted to make just one gigantic stack of Not Fucking Leaving.

I whittled away half an hour, daydreaming that I padlocked every entrance to the garage and flushed all the keys down a toilet to Timbuktu. It would have been a piece of cake to pull off once she was asleep.

I eventually talked myself out of it.

It wasn’t easy, either.



So Saturday bled into Sunday, and things were still off between us. And much as I wanted to fault Jensen, out there sorting through her stuff for the second day in a row, I knew where the blame actually belonged.

Squarely on my head.

I don’t handle rejection well. In my defense, I’ve never been through it before.

To paraphrase my latest Las Vegas Magazine Sexiest Man write-up, I’m quite the catch. And I can agree with that sentiment, even though I’d spent all of my adult years avoiding being caught.

You’d think, now that I was all but on my knees begging her to reel me in, that she’d be happy to do it. But no.

I had to want the one woman who could take me or leave me.

The stupid thing was, she already had me.

The sad thing was, she didn’t want to keep me.

The pathetic thing was…

Well, me.

I heard her out there in the garage, talking to herself. Sometimes she laughed, a few times her velvety rasp got a little louder… but I couldn’t make out a damn thing she was saying.

Not even when I put my ear against the door that separated the garage from the kitchen.

In sheer frustration, I retreated to the bedroom that served as my home office. I had research to do before JT Blackwood showed up for his interview tomorrow.

That’s the excuse that I gave Jensen, anyway, when she breezed in for a drink and came looking for me. I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her that hearing her out there was driving me up the wall.

Nor that it was getting harder to resist punching a hole through the damn plaster.

JT and I had hit it off the first time we’d met, years earlier. Ever since, we caroused every time he was in town, and sort of kept in touch via email.

In the Guy Manual, exchanging the occasional dirty joke via Hotmail counted as keeping in touch. This visit, however, there would be no drunken debauchery.

JT had married a woman named Kori just about a year ago, and to hear him, or anyone else, tell the tale, theirs was a love for the ages. I was happy for him. Finding the one you were meant to share your life with was a wonderful thing. The fact that JT convinced her to stick around in his crazy existence was nothing short of a miracle.

And I sure could use a miracle right about now, myself.

So my research consisted of shooting him an email to ask if any topics for questioning were off-limits. Surprisingly, he hit me back right away, with Just don’t ask about having kids. Kori’s six weeks pregnant, but we’re not ready to tell it to the world yet. It goes without saying (but if I didn’t ask, Kori would smack me), please keep this to yourself.