What the Bachelor Gets

by Kristina Knight

  Barb took notes as Gage went over his plans for the day. He didn’t know when Callie would show up, but he knew she would. For all her reservations about leasing his building, for all her reasons to choose the casino location, she was smart. She knew she needed a new location, and she knew the Oasis was prime. She would call.

  He just hoped she didn’t see the newspaper before she did.

  • • •

  Callie used her hip to push through the front door the next morning with two tall lattes in her hands. She’d asked for extra whipped cream and a double shot of espresso in her own drink. After a night of tossing and turning and calling herself an idiot for turning down Gage’s rental offer, she needed the extra caffeine.

  Latent, re-awakened attraction or not, Callie needed a prime location, and Gage’s building had it. Once she’d been home, away from the man who’d kept her off balance for an entire day, she’d realized what a fool she had been. Turning down a perfectly appointed space that only needed the barest of cosmetic upgrades was silly. And why? Because the man was hotter than a July afternoon at Lake Mead?

  She’d dealt with that attraction all through high school and still graduated at the top of the class. And now she couldn’t call him to tell him she’d changed her mind because what sane businesswoman turned down an offer like that? And what kind of crazy person flip-flopped on basic decisions like location?

  Gage was her gift horse, and she had basically kicked him in the mouth.

  Callie closed her eyes and shook her head. And now she would have to take the casino location and deal with marketing execs who would want to market her spa as part of their chain right down to how her employees could dress.

  She handed the extra latte across the desk, but Mandy didn’t take it. “Mandy?” she called, glancing out the window. Her car was there. She had to be here somewhere. Callie left the drink on the counter and continued into her office.

  “Hey.”

  “Augh!” Callie squealed and threw her hands in the air, losing her grip on the coffee in the process. The cup went flying, and the brown liquid began snaking its way down the wall. Crap, crap, crap. “What the heck?”

  Mandy walked up the back hallway with a big wrench resting on her shoulder and a swipe of grease over her nose. “Leak in the bathroom. You do not want to go in there.”

  “You look like Lumberjack Lil.” Callie took in her friend’s appearance, from the faded coveralls they’d begun leaving in the small kitchenette after the first few leaks, cracks, and electrical failures, to the bejeweled high-heeled flip-flops she wore on her feet. Today, Mandy’s hair was in a sleek bun high on her head, but a few tendrils had escaped the tight knot and were caked in grease, too.

  Mandy smiled at the nickname. “Maybe we should offer plumbing services along with massage treatments and facials. We’d make a killing.”

  “I can barely keep my breakfast down when I’m dealing with the plumbing in my own office. I’m not dealing with anybody else’s.”

  “Oh, I made you spill your coffee.” Mandy’s smiled turned into a frown as she eyed the puddle of brown at Callie’s feet.

  Callie shrugged. “I’ll settle for ice and Coke, I guess. Yours survived the scare though.” She pointed to the desk. Mandy tossed the wrench into the closet and shucked the coveralls, folding them and putting them back on the top shelf.

  “Best boss ever,” she pronounced and then grabbed her latte off the desk. She joined Callie in her office a moment later, soda in one hand and coffee in the other. She handed the coffee to Callie and opened the Coke herself. “So, why the added caffeine this morning?”

  How did she … ? Callie glanced at the lid and saw the notations the barista had made on her coffee. Gage had her so worked up she hadn’t realized she’d put the wrong coffee on Mandy’s desk. One more reason not to rent from the man.

  Why were the seemingly easy questions always so hard to answer? Callie sipped the latte and decided to come out with everything. She told Mandy about the prime location and how she’d turned Gage down.

  “Why does it matter if he’s your investor and your landlord?” Mandy finished off the soda and tossed the bottle into the trash can beside Callie’s desk. “I only graduated from the technical school in Reno, but it seems to me that Gage investing in the business and you leasing a space from him makes sense. He’s invested in your business; why would he lease a lemon of a location?”

  Callie finished her coffee and sat back in her chair. “I like him,” she admitted, though she left out the part about Gage being her unrequited crush from high school. “He’s smart, hot, and funny. He’s my Kryptonite, and he doesn’t even know it. I can’t afford to get distracted, not when I’ve already had this false start.” She waved her hand around the room, encompassing the dilapidated exterior as well as the nonfunctional interior. “We don’t even have decent plumbing.”

  Mandy pulled the ponytail holder from her hair, freeing the topknot so she could twist her hair around her finger. In the few months they’d worked together, Callie had gotten to know her habits. Twisting hair meant Mandy was going to play Devil’s advocate.

  “So you can rent from him and lust after him and have a successful business. Or you can not rent from him, still lust after him, and have a not-so-successful business.”

  “Pretty much.” Callie leaned forward, resting her face in her palms.

  “A smart businesswoman would go for the most successful option. I think you’ve got to take one for the team here.”

  “You’re just saying that because you want another paycheck,” Callie mumbled around her hands.

  “True.” There was a smile in Mandy’s voice. She reached across the desk and pulled Callie’s hands from her face. “But also because I don’t want to work for another Timber Spa operation. And I don’t want to be a paint-by-numbers masseur. I want to experiment with treatments and have fun and call in sick to play hooky on the Strip every now and then.”

  “When we become successful you can’t call in at the last minute to play craps at the MGM.”

  “Are you kidding? I call in to play tourist on Fremont. Nothing’s better than keno at The D Hotel.”

  Callie gave her friend the side eye.

  “Old Vegas at its best. Campy and frivolous, and nobody takes it seriously.” Mandy waited a beat. “And you just said ‘when.’ So are you going to call him?”

  “I shouldn’t. I should start life fresh at the hotel location.” For too many reasons, and every one of them was rooted in the past. Her past friendship with Gage. The huge mistake she’d made in marrying Eddie. The raging attraction to Gage that she still didn’t have a hold on. The mess she’d made of her first try at Holliday Spas. The fact that just thinking about Gage made her want things she shouldn’t want. Gage. Gage. Gage.

  “But you don’t want to.”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

  “You want to see him again.”

  This time Callie nodded. “Yeah, I do. He took me out for burgers and beer last night after we toured the location.”

  “See? He sees you as friend material, not date material. Just keep repeating that to yourself, and Hottie McBody or not, your libido will get the idea, too. Gage Reeves is off-limits. Come on, repeat after me: Gage Reeves is off-limits.”

  Callie repeated the words slowly, but they didn’t penetrate because her brain was still reeling from the “not date material” bit. She was date material, damn it. She was smart and pretty and … yeah, newly divorced was a bit of a blow, but that didn’t mean she needed to go around for the rest of her life with a scarlet D pinned to her chest. Yes, I’m divorced, please treat me as if I have the plague. She pushed away from her desk and paced across the back of the office. “Once more, with feeling.”

  A vision of Gage, driving her to the Rocking R and then not going ballistic when Walt Heck didn’t sell the dude ranch, went through her mind. He still ate vanilla ice cream with SweeTarts on top, for God’s sake. That was the Gage she re
membered, Hugo Boss suit or not. That was the Gage she was attracted to, and leasing his building was just asking for trouble. Asking for another Eddie Davenport-style distraction, and look where that landed her: broke, in Vegas, with zero prospects.

  So maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing if Gage saw her as friend material and not date material. She sat behind the desk once more and picked up her pen.

  “Gage Reeves is off-limits,” she said again, a little louder. She twiddled her pen between her fingers. Attraction to Gage didn’t have to mean hearts and flowers doodled all over her manila folders the way she’d doodled in her notebooks as a teenager. And there was no chance of her falling for him as long as she kept reminding herself they weren’t compatible. “Gage Reeves is my business associate,” she said, “and he is most definitely off-limits.”

  Now to repeat that phrase five million times a day for as long as it took for the message to travel from her brain to the butterflies beating in her belly at the thought of hearing his voice when she called to tell him she’d changed her mind.

  “Or you could go for it,” Mandy said. “Really vamp it up and make him see you as you want to be seen.”

  Callie, beetle-browed, protested, “You just said I wasn’t date material.”

  Mandy waggled her finger at Callie. “No, I said he might think you aren’t date material. I mean, he’s mostly photographed dating trust funders and party girls, and you’re definitely neither of those, thank God. Speaking of … ” Mandy reached into her bag. “Have you seen the Vegas Nightly spread on him?”

  “I’m not interested in Connor’s tabloid, thanks.”

  Mandy folded the paper over and shrugged as if whatever was in it was no big deal. Callie’s fingers itched. “If you don’t want to see it, I’ll just throw it in the trash.” Mandy motioned to the trash can.

  Callie held out her hand. “Fine, I’ll look.”

  Mandy handed the newspaper over, practically rocking in her chair. “It’s just an old picture with some Hollywood chick who hasn’t been around Vegas in ages. But they included a few casual shots, too.”

  Callie’s mouth went dry. There was a picture of Gage, shirtless, on a boat on Lake Mead. Another of him riding horses in the desert. And another of him in Hugo Boss with a very pretty, willowy brunette on his arm. Each picture made her heart beat a little faster, which was ridiculous. They were just photographs. Images of him with a woman who was so not Callie. She was tall and thin, with surgically enhanced breasts and hair that fell in waves practically to her hips.

  Another reason to keep your distance, Callie reminded herself.

  “If you want him, you should go after him. All you have to do is change his mind.”

  Bad idea. Very, very bad idea. She didn’t need to change Gage’s mind about her date-ability. She didn’t need the distraction of Gage at all. She should go with the hotel location.

  “How would I change his mind?” Before Mandy could answer, Callie shook her head. “Scratch that, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to change his mind. I am undateable as far as he’s concerned, because we’re working together. No need to blur those lines.”

  No need at all. She’d lived through high school with that ridiculous unrequited crush on Gage Reeves. She’d let Eddie Davenport use her because she was so distracted by his attention she hadn’t seen that she wasn’t as important to him as he was to her. She’d been lonely in Philly, and Eddie seemed to fill in those holes. Gage was no user, not like Eddie, but that didn’t mean she needed to turn herself inside out for him.

  She was a grown-up now, an adult. This was just leftover high school hormones and, possibly, the result of not having had sex for more months than she cared to count. She wouldn’t blur the lines, so no phone calls. He’d said to email him when she signed the new lease. Email would keep the distance she needed so badly.

  Mandy shrugged. “You’re a better woman than me,” she said and closed Callie’s office door as she returned to the empty lobby. Callie heard the pop of another soda top through the door. She sipped the last of her own drink and threw the can in the trash.

  She could work with Gage and not paw at him. He wouldn’t even be around all that much.

  Callie booted up her email and put Gage’s address in the To column.

  Change of plan. Where do I sign to lease the Strip location?

  • • •

  Gage raised his wine glass to touch it to Callie’s. They sat in a quiet corner of an exclusive restaurant in Caesars Palace. Couples sat at small tables around the room, talking quietly. A few played footsie, and one woman sat alone at the bar, black-stockinged legs crossed and one stiletto heel dangling from her toes. If she hoped to pick up a whale—a high roller in Vegas-speak—tonight, the pickings were slim. Of the four tables with single men, two were obsessed with their smartphones, and another seemed too interested in the hostess. No one paid any attention to Gage, though, and that was one reason he’d picked this restaurant for the evening.

  Connor’s newspaper was a hot item, but for locals. Most tourists didn’t bother with the gossipy paper. So far, Callie hadn’t brought it up, so maybe it had escaped her notice, too. Gage hoped so. He was no angel, but he didn’t want Callie to think of him like … a piece of meat.

  “To a bright future for Holliday Spas, the Oasis, and Reeves Brothers Entertainment.”

  Callie clinked her glass to his and sipped. “I still say we could have finalized everything over lunch at one of the carts.”

  “I still say a business partnership should be celebrated with something better than a steamed hot dog or a pretzel on a stick.”

  When she sighed over a bite of Caesar salad, Gage knew he had her. “Besides, I had a hot dog for lunch.”

  “Tinfoil-wrapped burrito here. I splurged.”

  They ate their salads in companionable silence, and after the waitress filled their wine glasses, Gage asked, “So why Vegas? Your parents were leaving. You had a start back East already.”

  Callie played with the stem of her wine glass for a few minutes, as if weighing her words. Finally, she said, “After six years of beaches and all four seasons I was thirsty for a dry, Nevada summer.”

  “Liar.”

  “I missed it,” she said, and there was a rawness in her gaze that told him she was completely serious. “I missed the heat, and I missed the neon. I missed boiling in the water at Lake Mead and freezing at the top of the Eiffel Tower during a cool winter night. New York has its share of neon, and the view from the top of the One Liberty Observation Deck in Philadelphia is amazing, but neither place has showgirls, or the music of slot machines, or the clippity-clap of the workers pushing the cards of escorts on the Boulevard at night.” Her voice took on a wistful tone. “The controlled chaos of a UNLV football game. Or the beauty of a desert sunrise over the Canyon.”

  “I knew you didn’t really mean it when you said you were only a cheerleader for the college applications.” Gage’s grin widened when Callie blushed.

  “Caught. I love football.”

  “New York has football—two professional teams and countless colleges. Plus Tiffany’s and an entire district dedicated to fashion.” The waitress delivered their meals, and Gage cut into his steak. “Philly has the Eagles.”

  Callie twisted her mouth to the side. “Las Vegas has legalized sports betting.” She bit into her chicken. “And amazing restaurants.”

  “There are Revolutionary and Civil War landmarks and monuments all over the East Coast.” Gage’s steak was perfect, but he savored the look on Callie’s face as she ate her chicken more than the taste of his own dinner.

  “Vegas has museums dedicated to both neon and Liberace.”

  “King Kong tried to destroy New York.”

  “King Kong was misunderstood. Like Vegas.” She looked at him from beneath her lashes. “Why did you stay? The last time I talked to you about … well, anything, I thought you’d be out of here faster than Prince left the Rio.”

  The last meaningful co
nversation they’d had, before yesterday, was the day of his father’s funeral. He’d been mad at the world. Pissed off, angry, and so confused he couldn’t see the point in anything. He’d cried on Callie’s shoulder, eaten her mom’s fried chicken, and promised himself he’d never be that confused again.

  “Maybe it’s the neon,” he said, making her smile.

  Gage kept the conversational ball on surface topics for the rest of dinner, and by the time the server brought their check he was back on an even keel, concentrating on the present and not the murky past. He had enough on his plate with the new proposal for Walt Heck, so he’d pay for dinner and tell Callie good night. He wanted her as a client; that was why she’d taken so much of his attention since yesterday. It didn’t have anything to do with unresolved feelings he had for her. Feelings that had been nonexistent before the funeral and that he’d cursed for the following six months until Callie left for college that fall.

  He handed Callie into the Escalade after the valet brought it around and then pulled into the heavy traffic on the Strip. Callie watched the neon flashing by the window, and Gage tried to watch traffic.

  “You’ve been back for several months. Aren’t you used to the neon yet?” He couldn’t ignore Callie’s not-so-quiet sighs over the bright neon signs, the street performers, and packs of tourists.

  “Watching them as a passenger is different from seeing the glow as I’m driving.” She didn’t take her gaze from the signs flashing past the window.

  Hell, Callie distracted him from the top of her blonde head to the tips of her purple-painted toenails.

  Feelings, he reminded himself, don’t have any place in business. Not friendly feelings. Certainly not the lusty feelings he was having about her feet. Feelings didn’t have a place in his life, in general, for that matter. Feelings merely mucked up the truth, and the truth was, the only person Gage could count on was himself.