Chapter 32
REED
Las Vegas, Nevada
Age Twenty-Four
The bachelorettes were fucking obnoxious. They couldn’t be much older than Reed—he guessed them to be somewhere in their mid-twenties—but they were screeching like they were at a college frat party.
They’d stormed into Frankie’s five minutes ago in a drunken mash of pink and white skirts and proceeded to swarm through the bar like a cloud of mosquitoes. They danced and giggled, shrieked and nuzzled, barely managing to stay upright on their way to the bar.
“Shots! Shots! Shots!”
They took them down together, the bride-to-be closing her eyes before throwing her head back in a howl.
Reed sighed.
He knew their kind. They filtered past him every day at the Wynn, paying him about as much attention as the luggage he carried. Women who snapped their fingers at him like he was their own personal servant and complained about their lives all the way to their rooms.
“You would not believe how bad Marcus dented the BMW. It just looks awful now.”
“My manicure is already chipping. It’s so embarrassing.”
“Am I fat? I’m getting fat, right? It’s all the fried food out here, I swear.”
These women who acted like their lives were the equivalent of a suburban concentration camp.
None of them had struggled. Not by a long shot.
Not like Reed had struggled when Aunt Beth kicked him out of her house after graduation.
She’d paid for a single semester of community college before pulling the plug. A single fucking semester.
“I told you I was done if you get Cs.”
One C in math. That’s it. A single, goddamn C—which would have been a B if his bitch of a professor hadn’t docked him for showing up to class late after pulling a double-shift changing oil at Mac’s Garage.
Traffic had been bad on the way over. He’d explained this.
He’d told her he had to have a job to pay rent.
It wasn’t his fault. He’d even managed to summon a few tears in the process, but she hadn’t cared.
She’d simply told him to take his seat. That was it. College over.
He took a long pull of his beer. It was why he was here now, struggling to make ends meet.
Reed thought he might make a few professional connections in Vegas and find a job that paid well.
But between rent and the outrageous living expenses, the city was a sewer that seemed to suck every single dollar he made right out of him.
At least he had Frankie’s. The bar was a neon-soaked respite where he could toss back a few beers and unwind with the locals comfortably far from the strip.
It was his sanctuary in a way—a place to get his head straight after a long shift.
Yet, here they were, these women dusted in sashes and glitter, ruining the vibe while reminding him of exactly where he stood in the social pecking order.
One of them—a chunky blonde with a helium-balloon voice—was honking at the bartender for another round of drinks a few feet away while the two behind her giggled and swayed.
“Jesus Christ,” the guy next to him said, slapping a twenty on the bar while rising to his feet. Reed was about to do the same—needed to get the fuck out of here—when something one of the women said cut through all the clatter.
“… made over two-hundred thousand last year! Can you even believe that?”
He rotated toward the voice and spotted the bride-to-be in conversation with a brunette who had her lips rounded into a red-lipstick O. “You’re kidding me. That’s amazing!”
“It’s crazy, right?” the brunette replied. “Who knew candles would sell so well.”
The bride set her chin on her hand and her eyes seemed to slosh in place. “I did. Girl, wasn’t I the one who told you to go for it? I always knew you’d go places.”
Reed groaned. Girl. Like the brunette was an eighth grader instead of a woman pushing thirty.
“You totally did, girl! Oh my god, I don’t know how I’m going to keep growing it though, you know?
It’s, like, getting so hard to do on my own now.
” The brunette’s voice dipped weepily toward the end of the statement, like continuing to make two-hundred grand would be the worst thing to ever happen to her.
“You’ll figure it out.” The bride squeezed the brunette’s arm and gave her a little squeal. “I’m just really happy for you, Rachel!”
The brunette screwed her face into a happy pout, then pulled the bride into a hug. “Not as happy as I am for you.”
Oh, good god, Reed thought, about to vomit.
Luckily, the bartender returned with the drinks and set them on the bar.
The bachelorettes scooped them up one by one and scurried away toward an empty table—all of them except for the brunette named Rachel who pointed at the empty space on the bar in front of her. “I think you missed one.”
The bartender frowned. “Sorry about that. What did you order again?”
“A chocolate martini.”
“Be right back.”
“So you sell candles, huh?” Reed asked, cutting in.
Rachel startled at his voice and then looked at Reed like he was a mushroom that had grown out of the stool beside her; an unpleasant thing better suited for the dark.
Her gaze warmed the second it reached his face.
A handsome face, he knew. Reed didn’t have much going for him, but he had his looks.
They were about the only good thing his mother had ever given him.
“Are you spying on me?” she asked.
He feigned a good-natured laugh. “Overheard, actually. I’m a home-goods distributor.”
“A … what?”
She gave him a lazy blink, first one eyelid, and then the other, like she was trying to dial in his resolution.
Reed had no clue what a home-goods distributor was or why he’d said it.
But he’d lugged a trolley full of suitcases up to a two-thousand-dollar-a-night luxury suite for a guy with that title the other day.
They had to make good money. Besides, what did it matter?
He’d already jumped into the deep end with this conversation.
Might as well see how far he could take it.
But where was he taking it? He didn’t know. He finally decided to go with, “Someone who helps people like you achieve scale.”
She blinked again, looking confused, so he added: “You know—connect you with more customers. Do all the busy work while you rake in the sales.”
Her eyes brightened at that. She was attractive enough, pretty even, with her full lips and olive skin, but definitely not a supermodel.
Although Reed could tell she thought she was.
Add another five years and twenty pounds and she’d be chasing down her glory days in an endless series of nips and tucks.
“Wait, seriously? I’ve been looking for someone like you. I—” She hiccupped. Giggled. A pair of pendant earrings hung from her ears and glittered as she laughed. “I am sooo drunk. Good lord.”
Reed grinned. “Big night, huh? Where are you all in from?”
“Here, actually. Summerlin.”
Here? Reed hadn’t expected that. Vegas was mostly transients and tourists. But people did live here. Especially rich people. People like this woman. Summerlin was full of them.
He realized she was still talking and tuned back in as she flapped her hand.
“Bridgette’s getting married in Tahoe. She’s flying me and the rest of the girls up there in a couple of months for the wedding.
Her family’s loaded. It’s going to be ridiculous.
” Her voice stalled on the last word before it finally tumbled out in a slur: ree-digulis.
“What’s your name anyway?” she asked.
“Logan,” Reed said. “And you’re Rachel.”
“How did you—”
“Know?” He tipped his beer toward the table where two of the bachelorettes were trying to call her over.
“Rachel, what are you doing?”
“Yeah, come on, bitch! Get your ass over here!”
“Oh my god, give me a minute!” she hissed over her shoulder.
The bartender returned with her martini and set it on a napkin.
“I’ll get that,” Reed said to the man.
Rachel smiled. “And a gentleman, too.”
“Already paid for,” the bartender said.
Reed knew this. He’d seen another one of the women open a tab.
“The next one, then,” he said, winking at Rachel.
She reached over and smacked his chest. “How cute are you? So, tell me more about this big job of yours, city boy.”
Reed started to, spilling terms like just-in-time inventory and supply chain management, rattling on about cost efficiencies—shit he’d picked up listening to the businessmen around the hotel—when he realized her eyes were glazing.
She hadn’t really wanted to hear more about him.
Why would she? She just wanted to talk about herself.
It pissed him off, but he was the one in control here, even if she didn’t know it.
He stopped, leaned in, and brushed his knee against hers. “It’s boring stuff. Not nearly as fun as candles.” He couldn’t believe he’d just said that, but it did the trick.
She came back to life. “Oh, it’s more than candles.”
So much more. She made handbags and coffee mugs and a bunch of other tacky crap she sold on Etsy to soccer moms and suburban housewives. Daddy had given her the seed money and—voila!—the business simply took off like a rocket. Of course, it had—everything handed to her on a silver fucking platter.
It made Reed’s blood boil, not that she could tell.
Ever since the bullshit with Taylor, he’d clamped down on his emotions.
There were times she still haunted him even now, times he lost himself in memories of her and what could have been.
But he’d never let them linger long before he squashed them.
He’d cried for a week after the abortion, actually fucking cried, breaking into tears like some sad-sack little bitch at inopportune moments until he finally got it together.
And when he did, he swore he’d be damned if he ever let a woman gain that kind of control over him again.
Hell no. That was pathetic. Those days were through.
He turned his attention back to Rachel, who was still droning on about her stupid candles.
It was clear she’d never worked a single day in her life.
Not really. Etsy didn’t count as work. She’d never had to scrub dirty toilets like Reed had or begged for change at an intersection just to afford her next meal.
She’d never had to dig a ditch with her bare hands while standing waist-deep in slop.
No, for Rachel, things simply worked out.
“Girl, c’mon, we’re going dancing!” Three of the bridesmaids had wandered over, one of them already tugging Rachel by the arm.
“Wait,” she said, shaking free to grab a pen and a napkin. She wrote something on it and passed it his way. Reed couldn’t help but notice the diamond sparkling on her finger as he took it. “I gotta go,” she said. “Call me, okay?”
An idea bloomed as he stared at the phone number. Reed would call her. He definitely would.
It was time something worked out for him.