Rough and Tumble Read online

  Arden nudged her arm. “Hey, just keep reminding yourself that you’re gonna call in to the job and use up all your sick days. Make that motherfucker ex-boss of yours fire you. Call his bluff and force him to give you some severance . . . or a decent send-off. You’ve got that sex-starved turd by the balls.”

  “I should’ve grabbed his balls while I had the chance.” And twisted. Hard.

  “You put them on ice. That was good enough.”

  Sofia sat on the other side of Arden, putting her iPad on the bar, accessing her blog’s input page. “We’re here for you, Mol, but there’re going to be a lot of hoops to jump through if you pursue this sexual harassment thing. . . .”

  Arden interrupted. “What, are you trying to discourage her?”

  “No,” Sofia said. “I’m in human resources. I know about this stuff. It won’t be easy.” She leaned around Arden and smiled. “But that’s why friends can come in handy.”

  Molly tried to breathe, returning their grins. Things were going to be okay. At some point. But what if Genhaven did call her bluff and fire her because of an avalanche of more trumped-up errors? As it was, she planned to be in the hotel room half the time with her laptop, working her contacts, crossing her fingers for a new job. . . .

  Arden gestured toward Molly’s hair. “You think we’re at a cotillion or something? Loosen up, girl. Key word, fun.”

  Molly touched the low bun she’d wrapped her hair in before they’d hit the road early to get through most of the desert before the heat really boiled the interstate. Old habits died hard. “It’s cooler with it off my neck. I’m fine.”

  “Have it your way.” In the next breath, Arden playfully pounded her fist on the bar. “Where’re my bikers and booze? The Internet said I’d get some of that here, so it must be true!”

  Molly laughed. “It’s like you want Hell’s Angels to come rolling in or something. You know that this could be the kind of bar where weekend warriors go, like Matlock and Dr. Shinychompers with big bikes.”

  Sofia sighed. “I say we just head to the Strip.”

  “After you act as our darling DD,” Arden said. “You should be sober while you poke around town anyway. Bloggers who write about their vacations never write drunk, even if they only do it for fun. I want to get some booze into my girl here, though.” Arden smacked Molly on the back, laughing. “Baby, we are so going to get back your mojo. You are going to work it from this moment on. Got me?”

  Molly touched her hair again, almost letting it down. But there was still a niggle getting to her. She couldn’t stop her brain from running overtime, stressing out, making her fold into herself a little.

  But Arden, who had a history of getting Molly and Sof to loosen up since college, was right. Molly had done all she could do with putting out job feelers with all her friends and contacts. It was time to heave a big old screw-you to Genhaven, enjoy her “sick days,” and live it up on the Vegas comps and freebies that Arden had somehow collected during her summer off from teaching. She said she’d scoured the computer for deals, and Molly couldn’t say no to that.

  Yes, now was the time to temporarily let her hair down, while she didn’t have to worry about getting up early or taking work home or traveling for projects. Her, the girl who felt like . . . well, perhaps the term “an amoeba” would be appropriate. She’d gone on one too many aimless dates and become tired of trying to maintain any kind of intimate liaisons. Work had fulfilled her, so who needed any of that lovey-dovey other stuff when it was so much extra work?

  A female bartender finally came from a back room, carrying a crate of glasses. There was something striking about her big baby-blue eyes that clashed with all her rough edges, like the haphazardly cut desert-sand hair, the black T-shirt with its sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, and her throaty voice.

  “Sorry about that,” she said with a friendly smile, setting the crate on the other side of the bar. “I usually have someone covering while I do what needs doing round here.”

  She was talking as if the saloon was overrun with customers, but Molly only returned her smile. Meanwhile, Sofia used her iPad to take some pictures for her blog. Arden forged ahead, as usual.

  “Two whiskies, straight-up shots.” She turned to Molly. “Total Old West, right?”

  Sofia got the bartender’s attention. “Can I have a ginger ale, please?”

  “How about my own ginger ale concoction?” the lady said. “We used to have the real stuff on tap, but no one orders it anymore.”

  “Sounds fine.”

  As the bartender went to work, a roar from outside caught everyone’s attention.

  Molly exchanged wide-eyed looks with the girls. Motorcycles? Bikers?

  “Oh, crap,” Sofia said.

  “Awesome,” Arden said.

  Molly tugged down the hem of her dress, her heartbeat bobbing. What were she and her friends doing in a place like this again? Like bikers were their kind of crowd.

  Arden leaned over and asked the bartender, “Hell’s Angels?”

  The woman bit back her smile. “Could be. Usually, they come at night, but you never know with the one-percenters or the other types who patronize these digs on a regular basis.”

  Molly had done her share of reading and watching TV when she wasn’t dating. Which pretty much meant always. One-percenters weren’t exactly lawyers or dentists. No, these were guys from motorcycle clubs, the outlaw one percent of bikers who were criminals.

  “I’m leaving,” Sofia whispered just as the bartender put her ginger ale in front of her.

  Arden snagged her blouse, then glanced at Molly. “You chickening out, too?”

  As the engines cut off from outside, Molly felt a trill of rebellion running through her. So many years behind a desk, crunching numbers, lost in them because so they were much more orderly than real life. Years and years with her face in books on a Friday night because she’d given up, preferring the comforts of home and all the TV programs she’d DVRed. Ted Genhaven’s cologne creeping into her as he’d taken away all the control she’d always had over who she allowed to touch her.

  Time to say, Screw it . . . for now.

  “What the hell,” she said, grabbing the shot glass the bartender had slid to her.

  “Atta girl,” Arden said, lifting her drink.

  They clinked, throwing the whisky down the hatch, sucking in air, and shaking their heads. Lighter fluid, Molly thought. Damn.

  All the while, Arden kept hold of Sofia’s blouse as their friend sat on her stool again, her eyes on the door.

  “Want another round?” the bartender asked Arden.

  Molly reached into the leather purse she’d slung over her chest and slapped the forty dollars she’d budgeted for some of her food on the bar. They’d been snacking in the car, and the booze would keep her full until the free buffet tonight. “Keep ’em coming.” Lighter fluid, schmighter fluid. Also? Vegas, baby. Ted Genhaven was paying for this one since he hadn’t had the guts to contact her and officially fire her yet. She’d see if he had the man-sack for it.

  “Great,” the bartender said. “My name’s Kat, so give me a holler whenever you need anything.”

  The door opened, letting in a flare of light. Molly tried to look like she wasn’t looking, but it didn’t help that Arden was staring in flagrant curiosity. Sofia sat ramrod straight, turning her back on the new arrivals.

  Molly braced herself for leather jackets that’d been cut off at the shoulders with skulls on the back. Big, hot motorbike muscles. Desperados who’d just gotten off their steel Bon Jovi Dead-or-Alive horses.

  But all she saw were six old teddy bear versions of bikers.

  Gray-haired, with leather jackets that lacked any kind of motorcycle club patches, shiny buckled boots. One of them even had a long mustache that he’d oiled into handlebars. None of them were exactly shaggy and grizzled.


  As the doors closed, Kat the bartender laughed and winked at Molly. The guys took seats at the other end of the bar.

  “Motorcycle enthusiasts,” their hostess said.

  Well, damn. It wasn’t that Molly wanted one-percenters who ran drugs or anything. But a bit more testosterone would’ve been nice. So much for the start of their wicked Vegas adventure.

  However, they were still male, and they were openly checking out the girls as Arden and Molly threw back another shot. And, like all males, they weren’t very good at hiding what was going through their heads as their gazes traveled on down the line: Sofia, cute as a button with her petite figure and big brown eyes. Arden, with her wiry athlete’s body and kiss-my-ass attitude. Then Molly.

  Instinctively, she adjusted her sundress, as if it didn’t fit right. It did, but . . . habits. She’d grown up wearing her sister’s dime-store secondhand clothes and she’d never heard the end of it from the kids at school. Being bused in had made her social status even worse, but who needed those clowns when she’d had her books and the library?

  She’d also had the uncanny ability to brush off anyone who made her uncomfortable, and pretty soon, that’d become her MO. Now, whenever she didn’t want to deal with someone, she was as cool as a swan ice sculpture—that’s what Sofia had told her once, laughing, saying that she wished she weren’t cute and could be just as regal as Molly.

  Yes, the new arrivals sensed the ice, all right, and they chuckled as the bartender went over to them, gripping their hands in welcome, taking their orders.

  The newcomers had obviously been the first wave of lunchtime customers, because the doors opened again, letting in a group of very nonbikers dressed in shorts and flip-flops. Maybe they were from a caravan going to Vegas?

  Arden sighed as the tourists blocked the view of the old bikers. “I feel like this is the Disney version of the badass West. Sorry, Mol.”

  “For what?”

  “I wanted this to be exciting.” She lifted a full shot glass. “Drink to excitement with me?”

  “Anytime.”

  And that’s when she saw him.

  He had to have come in behind the gaggle of tourists when she wasn’t looking, because he was sitting at the other end of the bar, near the video poker machines embedded in the wood. Longish light brown hair skimmed his broad, T-shirted shoulders. A fine coating of stubble rode his jaw. But it was his eyes—a piercing green that made her hold her breath for a second—that stopped her from taking in more oxygen.

  Was he giving her a look as he settled into his seat? Not just any look, either, but one of those visual caresses over her face, then her chest, her belly, and back up in a slow wave that got her warm, starting on the inside, then coming out in a raging blush over every inch of skin. Unlike most guys, he didn’t dwell on her so much that it made her huddle up. This was . . . a very complete look. And he seemed to be good at doing them.

  When he saw her hot flash—and why wouldn’t he when it was like one of those neon beer signs around the room?—he got a canary-eating grin on his face.

  It was definitely a moment, and Molly almost smiled back without thinking. But then she heard a female laugh, and her vision expanded, taking in the fact that he was surrounded by three women in hussy-tight black tank tops that emphasized their bodacious ta-tas. Molly had never seen so much eyeliner in her life, either, as the ladies hung on him, having a grand time.

  He took a long swig of a beer the bartender must have already brought him, locking gazes with Molly, making her skin burn even more.

  Glancing away, she resisted the urge to cross her arms over the bodice of her sundress. The hot stubble guy would’ve already seen that her boobs didn’t exactly make the laced-up décolletage expand to anywhere near the size of those women’s . . . cannonballs. But you know what? Molly had always liked her boobs. They were perky, dammit.

  She tried not to glance back at him—the bad-boy type they’d been hoping to find in here. But, the thing was, the hot guy wasn’t wearing any kind of leather cut or jacket—at least right now. What kind of biker was he?

  Before Molly could wonder any more about him, she fully turned away. It was one thing to coexist with genuine bad boys in a saloon. It was another to make too much eye contact with one.

  Unruffled by any of this, Arden peered at Molly as if she’d fallen into a pool of red paint and hadn’t washed it off. God help her when they went to the Chippendales show.

  “The liquor getting to you, Mol?” Arden asked.

  It required all the strength Molly had not to see if the guy was still watching her. Instead, she took her filled shot glass in hand. All the while, though, she could feel the skin at her nape sizzling, as if he hadn’t stopped checking her out at all.

  Silly. He had his fan club to keep him busy. His hands were full indeed. Even so, her belly flipped at the thought of the look he’d given her.

  Cut it out, she thought. Off-limits. Just be casual. Cool. She delicately sniffed at her whisky, pretending that she was unaffected by him. She stopped herself from coughing at the toxic smell, and Arden laughed.

  “Whisky, such a romantic drink,” she said too loudly. “A perfect booze for the miners who used to come in here, or even Clark Gable and Carole Lombard when they supposedly stopped in here once during their travels. Awesome, huh?”

  “You have strange ideas about romance.”

  Arden gave Molly one of her PE teacher looks, like she was going to make her run laps if she continued with the backtalk. Then she held up her glass. “To adventures and new beginnings?”

  They toasted each other and drank, torching lungs, making them blow out their breath afterward. Over the music, Sofia’s phone dinged with a text alert, and she accessed it while Arden and Molly exchanged a glance.

  Roberto time. The ex-boyfriend. An obsession. Sofia lived to get messages from him, even though they’d separated over two weeks ago. Who knew how she could get so attached to a guy when they’d been dating for only a month, but Sof always fell hard and fast.

  “He’s just saying hi,” she said. “What do you think that means?”

  “That he’s saying hi,” Arden said.

  “You don’t think—”

  Molly said, “That he’s actually typing out a cryptic code telling you he wants to get back together? Sorry, Sof, but no.”

  Was the biker guy watching them? Was he, huh, huh?

  The drinks had really started hitting, happy-ing her up, making her feel very girl-powery. Screw Ted Genhaven. Screw the future!

  Screw somebody while the screwing was good?

  She wouldn’t look at the biker again. No. Way.

  Arden had already summoned Kat the bartender over for another shot. “Here’s to Vegas and losing it! Emphasis on it. Inhibitions. Loosening up, getting sexy. You know.”

  Yeah, yeah.

  “Molly P. Preston,” she said, leaning on the bar and holding up her still-full glass, “not only are we going to cheer your ass up, you are so going to lose all your hang-ups on this trip, too. Now drink!”

  Wow. That’d been loud. “Can you amplify it any more, Ard?”

  “I think,” Sofia said from the other side of Arden as she continued texting, “that Arden only means she’d like to see you get laid properly.”

  OMG.

  Molly listened to see if a burst of laughter sounded from behind her, signaling that the hot biker and his harem had overheard. But she only caught snippets of the women’s voices, chatting about the touristy shirts the bar had on sale, which were hanging to the left of the bottles.

  Did that biker ever talk? She’d had her ears tuned in to hear what he’d sound like, but so far . . . no feedback.

  Arden had leaned toward Sof. “Hey. Molly’s no virgin, you know.”

  Seriously? “Ard, please.”

  “Shhh, okay.”

 
When the bartender checked on them, Molly discreetly shook her head and gestured toward Sofia’s ginger ale. Kat understood that Molly was switching drinks, and she went about her business.

  Whispering loudly, Arden said, “You’ve gone out with guys, had online dating service dates, all that. But, Molly . . . you need good sex bad.”

  Sofia put a hand over her mouth, sending Molly an apologetic glance. It’s the drinks talking.

  But Molly had already been tweaked by what they’d said. True enough, she needed “it.” But the thing was, she wasn’t sure exactly what “it” was for her. Mere sex? A little nightclub dirty dancing on the Strip, some vacation canoodling?

  None of it sounded . . . great. There was something missing from the equation. Fun, excitement, orgasms. Damn, Arden and Sof were right—she really needed to get laid properly. She had to be the only thirty-year-old who’d slept with just three men in her lifetime, which was slutty if you were a Jonas brother but sad if you were her.

  Truthfully, there’d never been any big love moments for Molly, as in, say, a night like Anna Karenina would’ve had with Count Vronsky, where the sex was enough to make a woman ruin her life. Not that she wanted to ruin her life any more than it was already ruined, but . . . you know. She would’ve liked the chance.

  As Molly blithely drank the new glass of ginger ale that Kat had served her, Sofia texted with Roberto. When Kat brought over a big bowl of peanuts, which Molly immediately attacked, the bartender smiled consolingly, as if she’d heard the entire sex conversation. Brilliant.

  By now, she’d had enough cojones to turn halfway around, very nonchalantly pretending as if she needed to scope out where the restrooms were. As luck would have it, they were behind the hot biker guy, who was presently engaged with a woman perched on his hip and nibbling on his ear.

  Oh, perfect. Why had she looked? And why did she feel a twinge of envy?

  Why did she even want his complete attention anyway?

  Because he’s disturbingly yum. And extremely off-limits, like Count Vronsky was to Anna Karenina . . .

  She realized she very much had to pee. With all the dignity she could muster, she took a breath, then made her way to the restroom, putting all her effort into ignoring the guy she should’ve been ignoring all along as she walked past him and his breast brigade.