Random on Tour: Las Vegas

by Julia Kent

  RANDOM ON TOUR: LAS VEGAS

  JULIA KENT

  CONTENTS

  Random on Tour: Las Vegas

  Copyright © 2017 by Julia Kent

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Julia Kent

  RANDOM ON TOUR: LAS VEGAS

  Now, you know my mama’s a gambler (sweeper, whatever...), so I guess I got to blame her for a little of this.

  When the band got invited to do a big gig here in Las Vegas, I was so excited. Really excited. And when we got here, I was dazzled.

  A little too dazzled. I blame the lights and the money and does Vegas pump a scent through the entire town that makes you think you’re a winner, or what?

  Because I gambled all our money away. And by “our,” I mean the band’s money. All of it. Every dang cent.

  Only no one knows. They’d kill me. So I have to find a way to make all that money back.

  I have an idea. I got a good body and a smart mind.

  (Quit laughing).

  I can do this. I can fix this.

  Really.

  It’s just gonna get a little weird for a while.

  * * *

  Random on Tour: Las Vegas is the ninth book in Julia Kent’s New York Times-bestselling Random series. When the band performs in Vegas, anything goes – including Darla’s dignity and all of the band’s savings. When a savior appears, though, there’s a trade-off for being rescued. A big one. How far is Darla willing to go?

  * * *

  Oh, please. It’s Darla. Like you even have to wonder...

  * * *

  This book is told from the point of view of Darla, Trevor, and Joe.

  COPYRIGHT © 2017 BY JULIA KENT

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  * * *

  Sign up for my New Releases and Sales newsletter at http://www.jkentauthor.com

  * * *

  Join my members-only Facebook group, Laugh Your Way to Love, for exclusive excerpts of books before they’re published, special contests, and lots of fun!

  To Mila Grayson from KU Korner, for inviting me to write a #bedtimestoryinthekorner and encouraging me to write three separate stories from three separate series. I’d been sitting on about 5,000 words of this book forever, and the 2,800 word sex scene between Darla, Trevor and Joe that I wrote for Bedtime Stories was a kick in the pants. Once I crossed 10,000 words, that was it – time to write more Darla.

  * * *

  To Viv Arend, for her mention of the licking app. I now have a very sore frenulum of tongue because of you. ;)

  * * *

  To Beth Treadway, for her link to the chicken fucker case, United States v. Sanchez , 29 C.M.R. 32 (C.M.A. 1960).

  * * *

  To a fellow author and a beta reader who will remain unnamed, for help with the Mormon scene. Thank you. <3

  * * *

  To my husband, Clark, for the booger plot. Seriously. You complete me.

  * * *

  I don’t make this stuff up, folks. I just write about it in an imaginary world where Darla deals with it all.

  CHAPTER ONE

  DARLA

  “I got me a big problem,” I said to Amy, plunking down on the springless couch in her and Sam’s living room. Calling the couch area a ‘living room’ is a stretch, given that my knees banged into the front door knob when I sat down and if I didn’t hunch just right, my head poked out the one window and birds tried to shit on me, but whatever.

  I needed to talk to someone. You do desperate things when you’re needy, and sitting in Amy’s living room was one of them.

  She looked at me in horror, her fingertips going to her mouth. “Whose is it?”

  “What?”

  “Who’s the father?”

  “The father?”

  Her eyes drifted to my gunt. Yeah, gunt. You know what a gunt is. It’s that part of your middle that isn’t quite gut, and isn’t quite your c –

  “Whose baby is it?” she asked.

  “Baby?” I can be slow on the uptake sometimes, but I sat down to talk to Amy about writing my shapeshifter romance, and here we’re suddenly talking about babies. Not shifter babies, mind you, or secret babies, or hybrid babies that get eaten out of wombs by their daddies like Renesmee.

  “Your big problem?” She raised her eyebrows so high, I thought they were being duct-taped in place. “You’re pregnant, right?”

  I jumped up, cracking my kneecap on the fucking brass doorknob. “WHAT?”

  “Isn’t that your big problem?”

  “You’re my big problem right now! I sat down to talk to you about werewolf cocks and ferret shifters and instead you’re telling me I’m pregnant?” My hands flew to my belly. “Do I look like I’m pregnant?”

  She opened her mouth to answer, a look of speculation on her face.

  “Don’t answer that. No, I am not pregnant.” I patted my belly. “And if I am, it’s a donut baby. We’d have to name it Boston Cream Jennings.”

  She gave me a patented Amy the Librarian look, complete with peering over the rims of her reading glasses.

  “That would be Boston Cream Jennings-Connor-Ross,” she replied with a little throat clearing that made me want to shove a frog in it.

  “The guys wrap it,” I insisted.

  “Condoms break.”

  “I am on the rag.” I started to unbutton my jeans. “Do I need to prove it to you?” Jokingly, I started pulling my jeans over my hips.

  Amy’s boyfriend Sam walked in.

  “Hi Darl… uh, what’s going on?” He turned away quickly, but not before I caught a glimpse of terrified eyes.

  I now knew exactly what Sam was going to look like as his first baby entered the world, him watching. I mean, hey, Amy already birthed a cell phone out of her cooch, so a baby wouldn’t be so hard, but still.

  Sam’s one of those guys who faints in the delivery room, betcha.

  “Amy and I are making a porno.” I almost added Wanna join us? as a joke, but shy Sam would have a heart attack and die on the spot, and that shit isn’t fair to do to your best friend.

  You don’t passively kill their man for the sake of a great joke.

  Or, at least, you shouldn’t. It ain’t moral. It’s Girlfriend Code. Don’t sleep with your friend’s ex, don’t deny her a Period Run to the drugstore, and don’t make your friend’s fiancé die of embarrassment.

  “Did Joe bring over another ice cream pie?” Sam asked in a low, pissed-off voice.

  “Nope!” Amy batted her hands in the air at me, motioning up, which I interpreted to mean I needed to pull my pants back up. Either that or she farted and was sharing the joy in the room.

  I complied, but said, “We were talking about being pregnant.”

  Sam whipped around, my bare ass be damned, apparently. “You’re pregnant?” he shouted.

  To Amy.

  I grinned.

  Now this was gettin’ interesting.

  “What? No!” When Amy gets flustered, i
t’s a sight to see. Makes me grin just thinking about it, because she goes from all pinched-mouth composed to flush-faced unraveled in about nine seconds flat.

  And best of all?

  It makes her look guilty.

  Sam sized her up with those mystical green eyes of his, ginger eyebrows down, struggling to figure out what in the hell was going on here.

  “If you’re not pregnant, why are you talking about pregnancy?” As the words came out of him, he slowly turned and looked at me, fresh horror pooling in those emerald eyes.

  “Oh, no. Darla, you’re not pregnant, are you? Whose is it?”

  I was getting damn sick of this.

  “It’s Liam’s.”

  Amy choked.

  “Just kidding.”

  “Do not joke about sleeping with Liam,” Amy said, casting so much side-eye at Sam, you’d think we were in a French romantic suspense movie from the 1950s.

  “Okay. I’m not allowed to joke about fucking Liam. Who can I joke about fucking? My cellphone?”

  Sam snickered.

  “You are both on my shit list now,” Amy hissed, standing up with a prim stiffness to her spine, walking exactly three and a half steps to the ‘kitchen.’ She began muttering to herself and making coffee.

  I looked at my phone. No call. No text.

  Sam noticed. “Nothing from the booking agent?” We were on pins and needles, waiting to hear about a huge gig in Las Vegas. The national tour was ramping up. Los Angeles had been killer.

  Las Vegas was a game changer.

  “Not a word yet.”

  Sam’s shoulders sank in disappointment.

  “Why are you here?” Sam asked in earnest. His eyes went wide and he quickly added, “Not that you aren’t welcome.”

  Amy made a noise in the back of her throat that made it plain she didn’t agree.

  “I need to talk about werewolves.”

  “Werewolves? As in..?”

  “People who become wolves,” I replied slowly. Sam was a preacher’s kid. I knew he’d lived a sheltered life, but man. Didn’t he watch Twilight in high school like the rest of us, as God intended?

  Stoned out of our minds in the back of a pickup truck, parked illegally at the drive-in movie theater fence, scaring the shit out of poor Davey, who couldn’t handle his THC very well – that was our generation’s version of Woodstock.

  “I know what a werewolf is,” he said gruffly. “Why are you talking about them?”

  “She’s writing about them,” Amy answered for me. “Her romance novels. Remember?”

  “You’re still doing that? Does Joe know?”

  I gave him a cold stare. “What does Joe have to do with me writing a shifter romance?”

  “Aside from being a wolf in your series,” Amy interjected.

  She had a point.

  “You turned Joe into a wolf in one of your books?” Sam made a strange motion with his mouth that I think was meant to convey an animal baring its teeth, but on him just looked like a middle-schooler losing his retainer.

  “In all my books,” I corrected.

  “I don’t understand.” He frowned.

  “That’s because you’re a man,” I offered helpfully.

  “And because this is Darla,” Amy said with as much bitterness as she could muster, which was a lot. She toe-tapped as the coffeemaker sputtered just long enough to produce that first overly strong cup of coffee, which she poured for herself. After dumping half a pint of milk in it, she rested her ass against the sink edge and looked at me. “What is your shifter romance emergency?”

  “It’s not an emergency.”

  “A writing emergency?” Sam asked, folding his arms over his chest. “How does that work? Did you run out of printer ink? Coffee? Websites to browse? Did you reach the end of the internet? Because that’s about all I can imagine that falls under the heading of ‘romance writer emergencies.’”

  “You done?”

  “No, actually. This is kind of fun to imagine. Do romance writers consider it an emergency when they run out of roses? Or when Fabio dies?” Now he was starting to sound like Liam, all cocky and shit. Time to shut this down.

  Amy shoved him, hard. The apartment was so tiny, Sam practically fell out the window. “Don’t make fun of romance writers. Some of my favorite books are romances.” She lowered her voice. “Why do you think I’m always in the mood after I set my eReader aside and turn to you before bed?”

  Sam turned the color of a kid’s valentine. “Oh.”

  “Not so funny when it means you’re getting some, is it?” I rolled my eyes so hard, they damn near swiped Cleveland. “Now if you’ll excuse us, I have some issues to hash out with Amy.”

  He skedaddled.

  “What issues?” Amy asked, tracking Sam’s ass as he disappeared into the bathroom.

  “I’m writing these shifter romance books.”

  “I know! I read part of the first one. When you publish them, they’ll be a huge hit!” Her face changed, nose scrunching up as she nervously ran her fingers through her long, thick hair and pulled it back in a ponytail, arms up, holding the hair back with her palms. “And they’re actually good.”

  “You say that like you’re surprised.”

  “I am!”

  At least she’s honest.

  “I guess you set the expectations bar at ankle height for someone like me, huh?”

  “Well, yes.”

  Honesty gets fucking old real quick.

  “Why?”

  “Darla!” She dropped her hair, the thick, honey-brown waves covering her face, a bit catching on the edge of her glasses. Under any standard online definition of librarian, Amy’s picture should just be replicated over and over. “You have a high school diploma and a few writing classes under your belt. Your last job before you moved to Boston was gas station attendant. People like you aren’t supposed to, you know...”

  “Have a brain?”

  “Right.”

  Fuck honesty.

  Before I could open my mouth and give her a verbal ass-whupping, she added, “And that means I was wrong about you. So was your Harvard night school writing professor. You are talented. You write a great story. It’s compelling and I want to read more.”

  My aunt Josie once told me the definition of being an adult is the ability to juggle more than one feeling about a person or situation at the same time.

  “You… what?”

  “You gave me a rough draft of the first few chapters, with the bear and the librarian.”

  “He’s a doctor,” I corrected her. “And a bear. And she’s a librarian and an owl.”

  “I don’t understand why you made her a librarian,” Amy said with a blush, her face alternating between proud and worried. “People will think Mara is me.”

  “No, they won’t. And no one will think my hero is Sam, given he’s a physician and a bear who used to play hockey and is tall and dark.”

  Suspicion clouded her features. “You just described Alex.”

  “Alex?”

  “You know. Alex. Josie’s husband? Your uncle?” Amy made a snorting sound of amusement as my legs went a wee bit numb. She opened her hand and started ticking off points. “Alex is dark. Tall. Used to be a hockey player. Now he’s a physician…”

  Shit. Shit! Had I subconsciously written an entire novel where my main characters were based loosely on Amy and Alex? No way.

  “But Alex doesn’t have siblings, like my hero. And he’s a gynecologist and obstetrician. My bear shifter is an orthopedic surgeon.”

  “Oh, well. Glad you’re making your shifter romance nice and realistic.” She chuckled amiably, not making fun of me. Then she frowned. “Last time we talked about this, you were thinking about having a chicken shifter named Mavis.”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yep.”

  “And she falls in love with a weasel shifter?”

  “Roscoe is his name,” I declared.

  “Are you really wr
iting a book about Roscoe and Mavis? And seriously – you named a chicken shifter Mavis?”

  One of my hands wanted to slap her. The other one wanted to hug her.

  “No, they’re minor characters. The focus is on the bear and the owl.”

  “Will Mavis and Roscoe get their own book someday?”

  When I don’t know what to say, I just revert to “Hmmm.”

  “It’s brilliant! Anyone who follows the band will get the inside joke because of Trevor and all the chicken videos out there.”

  “Like the one that got him kicked out of law school?”

  “Given a leave of absence,” she clarified primly.

  “Semantics.”

  Her eyebrows went up like she didn’t expect me to know an SAT word like that.

  “Look,” she said with a sigh. “I just read romance novels. I don’t know anything about them other than the fact that I like to give my brain a rest from being me for a while. Romance novels are nourishing. I know they have happy endings.”

  “They’re like massage parlors in Cleveland.”

  “Huh?”

  “Everyone goes there for a happy ending.”

  “That was baaaaaaaad,” she groaned.

  I had to laugh, too.

  “You said you had a question about your writing?”

  “Can a wolf give a bear rabies?”

  “If he bites him, I guess.”

  “Can an owl fly with a broken wing?”

  “Huh?”

  “Like, can a bird kind of fly if its wing is broken?”

  “I have no idea.” She gave me a look. “But a reference librarian could give you some help finding the answers. Googling these questions isn’t helping?”

  “No. I’m fact checking before I release these books and want to be sure. And what about weasels? Do they have to eat chickens? Like, what if a weasel fell in love with a chicken – would love keep him from eating her? Like Edward fell in love with Bella?”