Waking Up in Vegas(61)

I chuckled that both of our ladies shared the slapping gene, then gave myself a hard mental kick–if Jen were my lady, she wouldn’t be out in the garage, rifling through everything she owned in preparation to leave me.

I queued up Slanker Knox’s latest album, putting it on repeat so the songs would be ingrained by tomorrow, and played computer solitaire until Jensen yelled down the hall that she was ordering a pizza for dinner. She had the audacity to ask if I had any special requests.

Well, duh. But since what I wanted had nothing to do with deep-dish, I just told her I was in the mood for anything but for mushrooms.





I don’t want to bore you with the excruciating evening. I guess examining the piles of her household put her in the mood to yammer non-stop about her wish-list for her next dwelling. I only interjected once, when she was carrying on about living rent-free with her parents and how it afforded her time to find ‘just the right place.’

I reminded her that my home was sans rent, as well, and that she didn’t have to move hundreds of miles to obtain that particular perk.

She scooped up Angus and went to her room without saying another damn word.

I wasn’t sure how to take that. Was she upset that I’d popped her happy-bubble? Or was it because she was running out of reasons to justify leaving? Could be that, like me, she was tired of rehashing the only quasi-valid motive I couldn’t punch holes in–the fact that her parents were there and not here.

I needed to figure out how to make here—with me—be the more appealing place.





Chapter 18




*Pour Some Sugar 0n Me*



At quarter to nine, Jen went down to pick up the box of Krispy Kreme from the reception area. I’d never known JT to have much of a sweet tooth, but then, the doughnuts weren’t for him.

He’d sent me an email around eight, asking for a bunch of plain glazed; apparently, his wife Kori was jonesing for fried dough.

Which, of course, I couldn’t tell anyone about. So I just trotted forty bucks up to Carmen in reception to see if she could sweet-talk anyone into fetching a few dozen before the interview.

Who was I kidding? The sales people probably duked it out for dibs. That department had a serious sugar problem.

Jensen came back in and I thought she was going to drop the whole boxful all over the floor. Her eyes looked a little wild, and was she hyperventilating?

“Nervous, Jen?” I nearly laughed out loud. JT Blackwood was about the most down-to-earth, normal-guy rockstar I’d ever met.

“Shut up,” she muttered, sliding the polka-dotted box onto the counter by the coffeepot.

“He’s a regular guy.”

“I know that. It’s just...” Mumble mumble.

“What was that, Jenny-Jen?” I smiled for the first time since the Hangover Buffet. I hadn’t gotten to tease her in days, and it dawned on me how much I’d missed it.

“I had a crush on him in college!” she burst out, turning about eleven different shades of red. “Happy now?”

The laugh popped out before I could stop it. “You and about a million other women,” I quipped.

I wasn’t surprised when she belted me on the shoulder.

“Yeah, well, those million other women aren’t interviewing him this morning,” she grumbled, fumbling with the bag of coffee and spilling grounds everywhere. “With his shiny new wife in the room, no less.”

I hadn’t met Kori yet, but I knew her background, from both JT and the tabloid fodder that swirled like a cesspool when they got married. “Until eighteen months ago, she was an ordinary working stiff like everybody else. Quit stressing.” I got up to interrupt the coffee-slaughter.

I put my hand on hers to take over, and found it was actually shaking. I also noticed the lightning bolt that shot up my arm and through my chest to land in my balls.

I shrugged off my reaction; I didn’t have a choice. A larger-than-life rockstar would be here any minute and he didn’t need to walk into the middle of a discussion (quarrel) between me and Jen.

That turned out to be a wise choice–the legend in question strolled through the studio door before the coffee had finished brewing.

“Tack, you dodgy bastard, how the bloody hell are you?” In typical JT Blackwood fashion, he shook my hand and used it to yank me into a quick one-armed embrace. Before greeting Jen, he introduced us to the pretty blonde woman near his side.

As I shook her hand–she definitely gave off the I don’t hug people I don’t know vibe–she gave it a squeeze and her warm smile broadened. Her dark blue eyes held a merry twinkle as she said, “So you’re the wicked one. I can see that Las Vegas didn’t stand a chance when you two decided to hit the town.”