Page 39 of Not Exactly a Small-Town Romance

But this is Kelsey. I’ll simply explain.

I’m not clear how to get upstairs right away. I spot an elevator, but after a moment of waiting, I ascertain that it’s not functioning.

I follow the exit signs and finally spot a set of stairs. I take them two at a time.

When I get to Kelsey’s room, she’s peering out into the hall. “I thought you were lost!”

“The elevator appears to be out of order.”

“Oh, yeah, Watson said that.”

“Watson?”

“The man at the front desk.”

“You already know everybody here?”

She waves me inside the room. “I made quite an entrance.”

I follow her inside. I haven’t stayed in a room this small since a high school trip. There’s a bed beneath an oversize painting of a mallard family, mass-produced and as hideous as anything I could have imagined in a place like this.

But I’m not here for the art.

I tuck my suitcase discreetly in a corner and drop onto a threadbare chair next to the bedside table.

Kelsey sits on the bed, a gray sweater thrown over a pair of pink pajamas. When she turns to me, I spot a cartoon bear on the shirt.

I knew it.

But a quip about her sleepwear dies on my lips when I see her expression, her lip practically quivering. She’s falling apart.

I move to sit beside her. “Tell me everything.”

She holds off for a good ten seconds, fussing with her fuzzy socks, also printed with bears.

Then it all comes in a rush. “I shouldn’t have faked a meet-cute. I tripped, apparently flashed the room, and they all thought I wanted one of them to stuff me like taxidermy!”

Wait, what? “Stuff you?”

“Zach! I mean with their dicks!”

Oh. “And how do you know this?”

“They told me.” Her face crumples. “At d-dinner.” She shivers.

Damn it. I draw her against me.

She tucks her face into my neck. She’s warm and soft and sighs against my skin.

“Kelsey, they’re small-town yahoos who have no right talking to a woman at all, much less like that.”

“But I did fake the fall. I thought I was making a meet-cute.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

I’m so angry these assholes upset her that I want to bash a whole lot of hillbilly faces in.

Of course, we’re in the desert, not the hills, but even so, it was crass and lowbrow.

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