Page 12 of Rebel Revenge

I’d oozed confidence.

Now I had none. Not anymore.

They’d stolen more from me than they would ever know.

The woman stared at me, waiting for me to respond to a question I hadn’t heard.

She raised an eyebrow. “I asked if you had a reservation?”

I cleared my throat. “Oh, sorry. Um, maybe? I’m meeting my mom and her fiancé here. Her name is Miranda. His is Bart.”

She ran her fingernail down a sheet of paper on her desk. “Nothing by those names. Most people book under their last name, though.”

If Mom had mentioned Bart’s, I couldn’t remember it, so I gave ours instead. “Kemp?”

The woman shook her head. “Sorry.”

It had to be under Bart’s name then. “They should be here any minute. Could I just wait at the bar?”

The woman shrugged. “Sure.”

I thanked her and weaved my way through the tables of people, to a large circular-shaped bar in the middle of the room. People sat around it on stools, waiting on their tables to be ready or for other members of their parties to arrive. Bartenders moved around the inner circle, serving drinks in all directions.

I dropped my bag at my feet, scooted up onto a stool, and asked the bartender for a vodka with cranberry juice. He placed it in front of me a moment later, and I sat sipping my drink, one eye on the door, waiting for my mom to appear.

A family of four came in and were seated immediately with a bored look from the hostess. I glanced over again when the door opened once more, but it wasn’t my cute mother on the arm of a rich businessman.

The hostess perked right up though, and it was obvious why. The man walking through the door was as blacked out as I was. Black motorcycle boots. Black jeans and tee. A leather jacket that was as dark as night, apart from the metal accents that glittered like stars on his broad chest. He had a helmet beneath one arm, and he ran his fingers through his hair, straightening it.

The hostess flashed him a flirty grin she most definitely had not used on me or the family sitting at table four. Interestingly, he flirted back, leaning in to twist a curl of the hostess’s hair away from her face.

What an ass. I almost hoped his date would turn up right now, just for the excitement it would cause.

But no leggy blonde, or any other woman followed him in, and eventually, the hostess stopped panting all over him and pointed at the bar.

I rolled my eyes as he leaned across her podium, plucked the pen from her fingers, and wrote something down on her pad of paper. Surely his phone number.

He took the same path through the tables that I had, brushing by me to get to the empty seat next to me. I stiffened at being so close to him and instinctively shifted my stool in the opposite direction. I busied myself with my drink to try to keep my panic at bay. This was a public area. Nothing was going to happen here in front of a hundred people. Mom would be here any minute. There was no need to freak out and cause a scene.

“Do I smell?”

I glanced around, not sure if he was talking to me, but nobody else was paying him any attention. “Sorry?” I stuttered.

“Reek? Stink? Odor of road?”

I crinkled my nose at him. “Odor of road? What exactly does that smell like?”

He grinned. “Squashed bugs and motor oil, maybe?”

Actually, he smelled vaguely of cologne. One I really liked and could pick out on men just walking past them at the mall because it was that distinctive. I kinda wanted to take a deep inhale. “You smell fine.”

“Why are you scuttling down the bar like a scared cockroach then?”

I blinked, confused as to why he was talking to me, let alone insulting me. “Did you just call me a cockroach?”

He shrugged. “You’re small, quick, startled easily, and all in black. Seemed fitting. Who died by the way?”

“Your manners, perhaps?” The quip was out before I really even had time to consider how my mouth had gotten me in trouble before.

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