by Mandy Baxter
“Then you’re all set. By the way, I’m Tabitha.” She reached out her hand across the counter. “I’m here most evenings until ten if you need anything.”
He took her hand in his and the contact was electric, sending a jolt of excitement through Damien’s bloodstream. Of all the shitty timing . . . After months, he meets a woman that he’s attracted to and he’s on a goddamned job. “Damien,” he said in return, his voice only a little strained.
“Have a good one, Damien.” Damn, that smile was enough to bring him to his knees. “If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“I won’t. Thanks.”
Was it his imagination that she seemed interested, too? She was definitely throwing off some sort of vibe, but Damien was clueless when it came to women. Maybe this was just Tabitha’s usual customer service charm. Still, he had at least a week to test the waters, didn’t he? Dr. Meyers said he needed to loosen up a little and try to live some sort of life. This week was as good a time as any for a trial run.
“Hey, um, I was wondering. You wouldn’t happen to know what’s hot downtown? Bars or clubs?” He didn’t want her to think he was on the prowl or anything, but he wanted a local’s take on the city’s nightlife.
“Scouting out locations for Parking Lot Monthly?”
Damien’s lips tugged in a reluctant smile. He’d never been funny, but he racked his brain for something—anything—comical to say, if only to make her laugh. That sound was like the sweetest music. A song he could listen to on repeat. “Even nightclubs deserve a chance at the top-ten lists.”
“Totally,” Tabitha agreed with a chuckle. “Parking lots downtown can be tricky. But if you’re also including parking garages—”
“Garages are just parking lots on steroids. Bigger and beefier.”
“Exactly!”
Damn the sound of her laughter. It had a calming effect on him that none of the drugs Dr. Meyers had prescribed could manage. “Okay, so if you use the parking garage on Eighth Street, you can hit several downtown clubs from there. Liquid on Eighth and there’s Fatty’s on West Idaho. I think a new place just opened up near there called Equilibrium that’s supposed to be pretty hot, too.”
“Thanks.” Three locations were more than a decent jumping off point. From there, he could ask around, maybe find out where the bulk of the product was being moved. “I owe you one.”
“I won’t forget it, either. Have a good one, Damien.”
He took a faltering step away from the front desk, wishing he could talk to her for another hour or so. “You, too, Tabitha.”
“’Night,” she called after him with a wave.
Maybe this assignment wouldn’t be too bad after all.
“Check you out, getting your flirt on.”
Tabitha turned to face Dave and shook her head at the conspiratorial grin affixed to his face. “It’s called good customer service. You should try it some time.”
“Uh-huh.” He clucked his tongue at her as he approached the desk. “I don’t blame you. If I’d gotten to work a few minutes sooner, you can bet I would’ve flirted my ass off. Did you see those tattoos? And oh my God, his arms.” Dave mocked a swoon. “Tall, built, and inked. Yum.”
Tall—pushing six-two at least—with the body of an MMA ass-kicker and an expression that screamed, Cross me and suffer the consequences, Damien had dangerous bad boy written all over him. Three-quarter sleeve tattoos covered his corded forearms and ran up his wide, sculpted biceps to disappear under the sleeves of his T-shirt. And though he looked as if he frequented dive bars and back alleys often, Damien didn’t have that nasty, grunge-coated look to him. In fact, when he’d smiled, the soft openness of the expression had stolen Tabitha’s breath. Deep dimples pitted his cheeks, and they’d lent a youthful lightheartedness to him that she never would have known was there if he hadn’t smiled at her.
Yep, tall, built, and tattooed hit everything on Tabitha’s yes please! list, but those same qualities in a guy often came with their own sets of problems. “Oh, he’s yummy,” Tabitha agreed. And he seemed like a genuinely nice guy, too. “But yummy can be trouble.”
“Yes, it can.”
Tabitha laughed at Dave’s suggestive tone. Sure, Damien’s golden-brown eyes had been hypnotic and his messy thatch of light brown hair practically begged to be touched, but he was a guest at the hotel. “Good thing for us he’s off-limits, then.” She and Dave had the same taste in men, which was why they were both often in the dating doghouse. Bad boys had their allure, but they only broke your heart in the end.
“I don’t know,” Dave said on a sigh. “I might be willing to lose my job over a shot at that.”
“I would have your head.” Tabitha swatted at him and Dave sidestepped her mock assault. “It’s too hard to find decent front desk people. You can’t ever quit or get fired, which means no hitting on guests for you, mister.”
“Not that it would matter,” he replied as though hurt. “Because that tattooed god was obviously hot for your lady bits.”
She didn’t want to admit that she’d felt a spark of connection between them. Or that in the course of their banter, her stomach had begun to unfurl gradually until it felt as though someone had let a swarm of butterflies loose to fly around. “My lady bits aside, I’m swearing off guys like that.”
“You mean drop-dead-gorgeous walking pieces of art?”
“I mean guys who look like trouble.” And despite the soft brilliance of his smile, Tabitha had no doubt that Damien was just as dangerous as he looked. “It’s tax accountants and guidance counselors for me from here on out.”
“Great,” Dave replied. “That means more bad boys for me.”
“You say that now, but after your next breakup you’ll be begging me to help you find a nice guy.”
“True. But until then, I’m sowing my oats.”
“As long as you don’t reap from the company fields, I’m A-OK with that.”
“Fine. But I’m telling you now, if mister MMA even blinks at me with so much as minimal interest, all bets are off.”
Tabitha laughed. “Deal.”
“Speaking of gorgeous bad boys, how’s your brother?”
Dave had been crushing on Tabitha’s brother, Seth, for as long they’d known each other. He also knew how much trouble Seth caused in her life. Since they were kids, Tabitha had been bailing her younger brother out of one bad situation after another. And it wasn’t like she could have ever counted on her less-than-responsible parents to help him out. He was the king of making bad decisions for the right reasons. Somewhere under his rough, troublemaker exterior was a good guy. He just needed someone to give him a chance to show that good side off.
“He’s all right. He’s trying to get a job working construction. If I can keep him on track for the next six months, I think he’ll be set to start school in the fall. I’ve got him talked into a junior college to start. I really think he might follow through this time.”
“I love a man with a tool belt.” Dave flashed her a grin.
Another wave of guests entered the lobby, breaking up any further conversation, which was totally fine by Tabitha. She let Dave take care of checking them in and returned to her office to complete the food order for next week.
Seth might have been trying to get his act together, but the fact of the matter was this was his last chance to make a change. Tabitha had saved his bacon for the last time. Getting him out of his latest bout of trouble had cost her dearly, and now she found herself an unwilling partner to her ex’s less-than-legal business dealings. Joey had been Seth’s friend first. Tabitha had hooked up with him because wherever Seth was, Joey wasn’t too far behind, and he’d been truly charming in the beginning. Well, charming in that dangerous bad-boy way that inevitably curled Tabitha’s toes.
If she could go back and do it all over again, she would have taken Seth and left Boise in their wake before either of them could fall prey to that bastard. Hindsight was certainly twenty/twenty, but no amount of
coulda, woulda, shouldas would change the fact that she’d found herself in a situation that was becoming more inescapable by the day.
Tabitha settled in at her desk and opened a browser window on her computer. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, the cursor flashing in the Google search bar. The keys clicked as she typed: FBI, Boise, Idaho. Her pinky paused before clicking Enter. Did the FBI even deal with guys like Joey? She hit the backspace and typed: Boise Police Department, narcotics, and clicked the first search result, City of Boise, BANDIT Narcotics Vice Unit.
How many times had she stared at this phone number on her screen? Tabitha’s hands began to shake and she twined her fingers together to keep them still. One phone call shouldn’t have been so hard to make—after all, she’d done it before in the interest of protecting her brother—but it was Joey’s promise to bring Seth down with him that kept her from dialing the phone. Empty threats weren’t Joey’s style. No, the asshole had tremendous follow-through. Both Seth and Tabitha knew that he had enough evidence gathered against her brother to put him in jail for a good decade at least. Joey was one of those rare sleazeballs who actually had brains enough to keep himself out of trouble.
By getting others to do his dirty work for him, he reaped all of the benefits of being a slimy criminal while keeping his hands marginally clean at the same time. It was Seth’s bad luck that he’d trusted Joey, and Tabitha’s own stupidity that she’d turned a blind eye to what he was doing until it was too late. Despite her kicking him to the curb, Joey was a permanent fixture in her life. He wouldn’t let her quit her job, and unless she wanted to see her brother thrown in prison, she had no choice but to let him use the hotel as a front for his dealers to sell their drugs.
Not exactly the life she’d imagined for herself.
Closing the browser window, Tabitha clicked the icon for the hotel’s Nightvision property management software and typed in the name Damien Evans. His reservation information popped up and Tabitha scanned the information he’d provided. Well, he’d rented a single. No additional guests, so he was presumably unattached. She hadn’t noticed a ring, anyway. He’d given a California address so definitely not local, and he hadn’t used a company credit card so he probably wasn’t traveling on business.
“Trouble,” Tabitha reminded herself as she exited Nightvision to focus on the food order. Damien might have been the embodiment of her perfect man, but the trouble Joey had brought into her life was more than enough proof that she needed to lay off of bad boys for good. She let out a derisive snort. At the rate she was going, she wasn’t going to be laying anyone anytime soon. The past year of celibacy hadn’t been too bad. No man? No problem. One less complication in her life. She needed to focus on finishing school, anyway, and getting Seth on the straight and narrow for good. Tabitha didn’t have time for a relationship right now.
“Tabs?” Dave poked his head into her office. “Do you have a sec? Night audit accidentally double-booked a room and neither of the guests is willing to take a double instead of the suite.”
She’d take trauma victims and sick kids any day over angry hotel guests. Though if Joey got his way, it wouldn’t matter if she was an RN or not, she’d never get the opportunity to put the degree to use. “Yeah, I’ll be right there.” No use worrying about something that she couldn’t change. At least not yet, anyway.
Angry guests might not have been her idea of a pleasurable distraction, but at least she wouldn’t be worrying about Joey. Or the tattooed bad boy she couldn’t seem to get out of her head.
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2015 by Amanda Bonilla
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ISBN: 978-1-4201-3481-0
First Electronic Edition: March 2015
eISBN-13: 978-1-4201-3482-7
eISBN-10: 1-4201-3482-5
