“Due to extreme road conditions and inclement weather, I-70 has been closed down between Grand Junction and Denver.”
“Fuck.”
We’re sitting at a gas station just outside of Denver, and it’s only six p.m. The closure took us down a detour, quiet country highway, and this is about as far as we made it before the roads turned into parking lots. We still have eleven hours to Vegas. We’re both feeling exhausted, grouchy, hungry, and in desperate need of beds and showers. I can’t even stomach the thought of another night in the car.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter as he flips off the radio, cutting off the announcer in the middle rattling all the road delays this little closure created.
Henry is staring blankly out the window, and I know he’s feeling defeated. To be honest, I am too. He doesn’t respond, and I quickly pull up my phone and open the hotel app, looking for a place to stay tonight.
The first search comes up with nothing. We are about fifty miles outside of the city, so I increase my search.
There are a few places in downtown Denver for over three-hundred bucks a night. Roadside hotels for a reasonable price…nothing.
Fuck.
I really don’t want to break this to him.
Looking around, I take in our surroundings while he still stares mindlessly out the window. There’s a small gas station, a rustic-looking restaurant, and a cute touristy strip mall. The last thing I really want to do is go into a restaurant in the same clothes I had on yesterday, but we need to get out of this car.
“Let’s go eat,” I say, nudging him with my shoulder. I nod toward the restaurant. He looks at my face for a moment before finally answering with a forced smirk.
“Okay.”
The moment we pass through the door into the restaurant it becomes instantly clear that this is a bar, not a restaurant. I almost turn around and leave, but Henry is already halfway to the bar. I pick up the scent of something being fried in grease, and I let him drag me to the red, cushioned barstools.
It’s dark in here, and classic rock blares from the speakers perched in the corners. Everyone stares at us as we walk in, and I cling to Henry who doesn’t seem to notice how out of place we are.
As we sit down, Henry immediately calls the bartender over. “The darkest beer you have for me. Laila, what do you want, love?”
I chew the inside of my lip and glance behind the bar, not seeing any drink menu nearby. “Same?”
He shrugs, and the bartender, a big man with a gut that barely fits in the small space, turns away to retrieve our drinks.
“Not much of a restaurant, but I needed a drink,” Henry says, turning toward me.
I grab a beer-stained piece of paper that lists the food available. “It’s a restaurant…ish.”
“Not exactly Instagram worthy,” Henry adds, leaning toward me. Somehow, he still smells good, and I want to curl up in his arms, it pains me to keep my distance.
“I don’t need perfection,” I reply, gazing up at him, eyebrows raised.
Henry’s face full of surprise only lasts as long as it takes the bartender to drop two glasses of beer in front of us. I take a hearty sip of mine and immediately hate it, but I try to hide my reaction. He picks up on it anyway.
“If you drink that whole thing, I will be very impressed,” he says with a laugh.
“Challenge accepted.”
I do manage to get the whole beer down, but I learn pretty quickly that it tastes a lot better cold than warm so the last few sips are brutal. We order some hot wings and onion rings before I finally work up the nerve to tell Henry that there are no hotels available tonight. If we’re going to sleep on the hard seats again, we might as well be drunk when we do it.
“So, I have some bad news…” I say when the bartender brings us each a second round.
“Let me guess. There are no hotels available.”
At least he’s smiling about it. So I plaster a fake grin on my face. “There’s always the back of the car again.”
A growl rumbles low from his belly at that. “No, we need to find a suitable place to sleep tonight.”
“You guys need a place to crash?” a husky voice asks from behind Henry. We both turn to see a woman cleaning the top of the bar with a white rag. She has long red hair, nearly down to her bottom. “Sorry, didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard you say you needed a place to sleep.”
“Umm…” Henry stammers.
“I have a rental cabin is all,” she answers with a smile. For a moment it did sound as if she was about to give us a fold up couch in her living room, but a rental cabin sounds…acceptable.
Henry looks at me with a shrug of his shoulders as if he’s asking my input, to which I respond with the same gesture. “We’re just passing through, hoping this storm clears up and we can get to Vegas tomorrow,” he tells her.
She perks up instantly at the sound of his accent, leaning her elbow on the bar and looking at him with starry eyes. A sting of jealousy pierces my heart watching her fawn over him as I’m sure millions of other women already do.
“You’re far from home,” she says to him with a flirtatious smile. She’s probably Henry’s age, maybe a little older. She’s actually quite beautiful with snowy white skin and a spatter of freckles across her cheeks. But she also has the look of a woman who has been hardened by, well working in a bar.
“Ah, yes,” Henry replies with a smile that I haven’t seen yet. There are new dimples and a pink hue to his cheeks. Is he…flirting? “I moved from London just last year.”
“Nice,” she replies.
“How far is the cabin?” I ask, interrupting their conversation. It looks physically hard for her to tear her eyes away from Henry long enough to look at me.
“Oh it’s not far from here. If it wasn’t for the snow, you could walk. There are two queens in it, so you don’t have to share with your daughter.”
His jaw drops for a moment, but he doesn’t correct her. He doesn’t correct her.
“I’m not his daughter,” I mutter, but she doesn’t answer me. I don’t even think she hears me. A bell rings from the window to the kitchen, and the red-headed vixen who wants what Ben got in the parking lot of the strip club carries us over our food, but I’m suddenly not hungry.
Even after she gives us our plates, she’s looking at Henry again, so I clear my throat. “What’s the rate for one night?”
“Oh…for you guys…” With her gaze on the man next to me and him with that stupid, panty-melting smile on his face, I want to throw this beer glass on the floor and make a scene. “We can work something out.”
You’ve got to be kidding me.
“That’s very kind of you,” Henry says like he has no idea what she’s talking about. Someone across the bar calls for her, and she finally turns away, leaving me and Henry alone. “Eat something,” he says, pushing the plate of wings toward me.
“I’m fine,” I mutter in reply.
“What’s wrong with you? This is good news.”
I have no right to be mad that Henry is flirting with someone else. We’ve already established that we can’t be together, and after this trip, he will be free of me and flirting with every woman on the east coast, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I asked for this. I wanted him physically, knowing full well that it would put my heart at risk.
But how could he do it right in front of me? Already?
“Well, you have to work something out, remember?” I bite back without looking at him. Instead, I pick up a greasy mozzarella stick and dunk it aggressively in the marinara sauce.
“What’s gotten into you?”
I look up at him with a cynical glare. “You know what she’s talking about, right?”
Now, he’s grinning at me with those dimples, but it only makes me more angry. How dare he try to disarm me when I’m trying to be mad at him. “Why don’t you explain it to me? I seem to be missing something.”
Fucking British bastard.
Instead of giving him a straight answer, I toss my hair over my shoulder like she did and slap my hand against my hip, mimicking the red head. “I’m sure we can work something out.”
“You think she wants to bargain with sex?” he asks, and he’s just playing with me. I know it. He can’t be that clueless.
“Duh, Henry.”
“Well, I wonder how low I can get her,” he replies, his brows furrowing. “In price, I mean.”
I slap him across the arm. He’s lucky I don’t drown him in ranch dressing.
“You’re a prick.”
His arm winds around my waist, pulling me closer, and it’s at that moment that I realize the one and a half beers are kicking in, making me warm and lazy.
“Are you jealous?” he asks against my ear.
Putting my hands against his chest, I shove him away.
Suddenly, an idea brews, and I’m ready to give Henry a dose of his own medicine.
“Jealous of her? Please.” With a blank expression on my face, I tear off my sweatshirt, leaving me in nothing but my crop top that shows off half my stomach. Pulling out my hair tie, I let my hair flow down over my shoulders. The nice thing about curly hair is that it tends to look even better the longer I don’t wash it. So today it has that sexy, messy texture that looks a lot better than it feels.
Standing from the barstool, I saunter over to the jukebox in the corner. I feel eyes on me as I lean on the box, jutting my backside out while I browse through the music. Not bothering to look back at Henry, I can already tell the smug bastard is being stubborn, but I know he’s not taking his eyes off me for a second. He couldn’t even stand that cop looking at me this morning, and he barely let me out of his sight at the mechanic’s. He thinks that we’re not already stuck on each other, well he has another thing coming.
Glancing at the table of men to my right, I shoot them a smile. They are in black leather jackets and torn jeans. “Do you happen to have a quarter?” I ask with a flirty grin.
One of them stands and comes closer. “Of course, darlin’.”
He puts a whole ten dollar bill into the machine, and gives me a wink. He’s not bad looking really, but the gray beard tells me he’s probably in his sixties. And Henry thinks he’s too old for me.
“Aren’t you cold?” he asks, his eyes shooting down to my bare stomach.
“It’s warm in here,” I reply, looking right at him.
“Fighting with your boyfriend?” He’s leaning against the jukebox, and I almost can’t tear my eyes away from his thick forearms as he crosses them over his chest.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I say loud enough that Henry can hear.
“Well that guy you came in with hasn’t taken his eyes off you since you stood up, and he doesn’t look too happy about you talking to me.”
“Oh, you mean the bartender isn’t distracting him with her big tits and long hair?”
The man laughs. “Oh, I see.” Then, he turns toward the music and puts an arm on my opposite shoulder. “Trust me, darlin’, he’s forgotten all about Rhetta by now. If he chooses anyone over you, he’s a damn fool.”
Normally, I wouldn’t tempt fate by prancing scantily clad through a bar and let a complete stranger put his arm around me in a very risky situation, but Henry has me acting crazy. As does the beer. Plus, I know he’s here. He has done nothing but protect me all week, and I like the way it feels. Coming from a boyfriend who hardly cared whether I existed at all, I love the way it feels around Henry.
“Thank you,” I mumble to the man. “To be honest, he’s actually my best friend’s dad, but he thinks that’s too inappropriate, so he won’t let us be anything more than that.”
“That’s a shame. Life is short, you know. No use in dwelling on things you can’t change.”
Wow, I never expected to gain such wisdom from a drunk biker in a bar, but that’s life sometimes.
“Exactly!”
“You just pick out some music sweetheart, and if he gives you trouble, you let us know.” With that, the man takes his arm off my shoulder and walks back to his table. The rest of the guys hold up their beers toward me. Looking through the jukebox, I suddenly notice a familiar song. Using the credits the bearded man gave me, I schedule a whole playlist of songs to play.
When the first chords of “Hurts So Good,” start to play, I turn back to see him. He’s still wearing that scowl, his fists clenched on the bar.
I walk back to him, grabbing my new beer on the bar and taking a long swig. It’s really the last thing I need right now, but it’s giving me the guts to finally tell Henry what he needs to hear. “What’s wrong, Dr. James? You look angry.”
“Don’t play with me, Laila.”
“The only thing I’m playing is the jukebox,” I reply, leaning toward him.
He snatches me by the waist and pulls me against him, holding me between his knees. “I know you’re just trying to make me jealous, little girl.”
“But you have no reason to be jealous. I’m not your girl—”
He shuts me up with his lips against mine. I let out a muffled yelp just as his tongue slides into my mouth and I melt in his arms. There’s a murmur of excitement from behind us, and I don’t need to open my eyes to know it’s the table by the jukebox cheering for us.
“Looks like you two are ready for that cabin,” the bartender says as she leans up against the beer-soaked wood of the bar. I pull away, gasping and staring at him with my eyes wide and my heart hammering in my chest. I keep searching his expression, looking for a sign that we’re going back down that road of resisting this thing between us.
Instead, he turns to the woman and says, “Yes, we will take that cabin now.”
