Page 22 of The Bachelor

The sunshine and heat slammed into her as she burst out of the front door of the hotel onto the sidewalk. She had to use the ladies’ room desperately but she needed to get the heck out of there. Using her phone she looked up the closest affordable hotel. She would go there and grab a few more hours of sleep, and a hot shower so she could no longer smell the scent of sex on her. Every time she moved her arm, the faint remnants of cologne wafted up and filled her nostrils.

Shane. Shane Hart.

She pictured him naked, hovering over her, eyes dark with lust. Have mercy.

Maybe instead of a hot shower she needed a cold one.

Shane woke up slowly, reaching for Avery, sensual memories of her staring up at him tugging at his subconscious, pulling him out of sleep. But the bed beside him was empty, the sheets cool. He opened his eyes reluctantly and confirmed what he already knew. No Avery. For a second he thought she might be in the bathroom, but the room felt empty. Too quiet.

Well, hell. This was ironic.

He was usually the one leaving first, though he hadn’t actually sneaked out of a room in many years. Now he usually woke a woman up, gave her a kiss, a smile, a few compliments. Then he rolled. But it seemed for the first time in longer than he could remember, he had been ditched. No number. No goodbye. He rubbed his eyes and pondered the thought. Had she been embarrassed? No telling.

It shouldn’t feel like anything. He should have no reaction to it other than relief that now he wasn’t responsible for shattering any expectations she might have about what they might or could be. Because that was nothing and most women knew that, expected that. Hell, wanted that. But Avery was a wild card. There had been no telling what she would have said or how she would have reacted, but now he didn’t have to worry about it.

Funny, relief was not what he was feeling.

Rolling over to grab his phone and see what time it was, he found a piece of paper laid over it. Lifting it up he saw a note scrawled in very loopy and large handwriting.

Thank you for being decent.

Hugs,

Avery

What the actual fuck did that mean? Shane stared at it, irritated as hell. Was she suggesting he was merely decent in bed? A decent dick? Or was she saying thanks for being nice? He had no idea but somehow it sounded terribly insulting. There was no scrawled phone number or anything else. Just a giant kiss off as far as he was concerned. The girl had been a virgin, and this was all he got? Thanks for being decent, his ass.

His sister was blowing up his phone. Which also irritated him. A guy couldn’t sleep late without everyone freaking out? Maybe he had a headache. Maybe he had the flu. Maybe he had changed his plans. He wasn’t twelve. Jolene didn’t need to know where he was at any given moment. Since when was she keeping tabs on his studio time anyway? They weren’t working together. He suspected she wanted to grill him on the bachelor party antics, of which there had not been any.

He texted her.

I’m not dead.

That was all she needed to know as far as he was concerned.

As he lay in bed naked, Shane contemplated finding Avery O’Leery on social media. It couldn’t be that hard. He could message her and make sure she’d gotten home okay.

That was when he dropped his phone like a hot potato. “Don’t do that, you total fucking idiot,” he murmured out loud. He sat up and ran his fingers through his hair.

If Avery wanted to see him again, she would have left her number. He wasn’t going to chase after her. Even though everything inside him wanted to.

How was that for ironic? He’d spent his adult life avoiding relationships and now he could actually see dating a woman for real and she wasn’t interested.

He was going to take a hot shower and forget he’d ever had the pleasure of encountering Little Miss Sexy.

Twenty minutes later his skin was bright red and burning, but he still couldn’t get Avery and her beautiful eyes out of his head.

So he grabbed a coffee and went to the studio so he could force himself to stop replaying every minute of their naked tango.

Two hours later he was still trying.

ELEVEN

Avery was playing with a chord on her guitar when her best friend at work, Lauren, came rushing into the small office they shared. She glanced up at her in amusement. Lauren was usually loud and larger than life, and today was no exception. In the three months since Avery had been working at the small publisher, Rusted Truck, as a junior songwriter, she’d seen Lauren wear some of the most outrageous combinations of patterns and colors imaginable. Avery herself was invariably in jeans, a T-shirt, and cowboy boots. But Lauren liked stripes and polka dots, usually layered over top of each other. Today she was Cruella de Vil goes rockabilly, her black hair in victory rolls that showed off a prominent white streak, her red lipstick perfect. She was wearing a circle skirt and a tight short-sleeved sweater.

“You’re not going to believe this,” she declared dramatically.

“Believe what?” Avery kept her fingers moving, humming the melody a little to herself. She still had to pinch herself on a daily basis that she had landed this job within two weeks of her big blowup fight with Ben. She had checked into a hotel, gotten online, and found herself an apartment with two other girls, and then managed to get this job after meeting Lauren through her roommate. Lauren had told her Rusted Truck was hiring, and to her shock, after an interview she was offered a position. It didn’t pay well unless someone put a hold on one of her songs, but it was better than working for minimum wage at a coffeeshop. Plus here there was opportunity, possibilities. She was learning the industry, networking a bit, seeing how the process worked.

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