Karen Kendall - Blame It on the Bachelor

“No, I—”

“Fantastic,” he said, grinning amiably and hustling her out into the parking lot.

“I don’t want a ride from you!” Temper flared in those hazel eyes.

“Funny, you sure wanted a ride last night.” He continued to tow her along while she balked.

“Oh!”

“So I find it real interesting that you didn’t say goodbye, that today you won’t make eye contact with me and that you seem to want me dead.”

An ominous silence fell, until she finally retorted, “Alive. But in serious pain.”

“Why?”

“You know exactly why.”

“Nope. I don’t. If your nice-girl-gone-astray guilt is kicking in, you shouldn’t take it out on me. I didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do. I didn’t proposition myself, tease myself or screw myself in that closet, Sweet Pea. You were there for every step of the process.”

“This has nothing to do with guilt. It has to do with you being a jerk of epic proportions.”

“Thank you for the compliment. It’s true that my proportions have been described as epic. What I don’t get is the jerk part.”

“Oh, you get it, all right.” She tried to pull away from him again. “Let go of me.”

“No. We’re going to have a little talk,” he told her, stepping up the pace so that she tottered on her high heels and had to hang on to him for support as he towed her along.

“I have nothing to say to you, and if you dare try to manhandle me into your car, I will file kidnapping charges against you!”

“Don’t be melodramatic,” said Dev, unlocking the passenger door of his screaming red Corvette. “Now get in.”

“No.”

“What is your problem?” Dev asked, raising his voice on purpose as an elderly couple approached. “You practically raped me in the supply closet last night and now—”

Kylie whipped her head around. “Keep your voice down!”

The couple got a little bug-eyed but pretended not to hear as they shuffled toward their Buick.

“I’ll be glad to whisper if you’ll get in the car instead of behaving like the lead actress in a bad soap.”

With a look that would have reduced a lesser man to rubble, Kylie folded herself into the low-slung sports car, showing a lot more leg than she probably intended to—not that he minded.

Dev shut the door for her and rounded the nose of the ‘Vette to get in himself. “Now,” he said, closing his own door and starting the engine, “just what are you so pissed off about?”

“You know why I’m pissed! You’re disgusting. You’re a pig , McKee. I saw you telling your buddies all about us.”

“You saw nothing of the sort.”

“What, do you think I’m stupid? You were three tables away, your friends were falling over themselves laughing, and you were all looking at me ! ”

Dev shot out of the exit, took the corner on two wheels and watched, amused, as she flailed for her seat belt. The powerful eight-cylinder engine made her breasts jiggle under the prim dress. Pig or not, he enjoyed it.

“For your information, sweetheart, the guys were laughing because they were convinced that you’d blown me off. That I tried, and failed, to get into your pants.”

She finally clicked the tongue of the seat-belt fastener into the latch, then turned to face him. “Oh, but I’ll just bet you enlightened them, didn’t you?”

“No,” he said evenly. “I did not.”

“Then why were they all laughing so hard?”

“Because they loved seeing me strike out. It doesn’t—” Dev shut his mouth abruptly, as self-preservation kicked in. It was probably best not to call attention to his man-whore past.

“Doesn’t what?”

“Forget it.”

“Doesn’t happen often?”

Dev felt his face and neck get warm. “I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to.” Kylie crossed her arms over her chest and stared out the window as if she couldn’t get enough of the strip malls, gas stations and convenience stores.

“Interesting. So does that mean you think I’m hot?”

A low growl came from her throat.

Dev grinned, then cleared his throat. “So I’m waiting …”

“Waiting for what?”

“An apology.”

Kylie muttered something unintelligible.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, why should I believe you? It seems like an awfully convenient explanation.”

“Are you always this ornery, or do I just bring out the best in you?”

“Well, it does!”

Dev sighed. “Pete saw the tail end of our first encounter, okay? The one where you said I might do . And he saw you walk away from me and out the door, while I stared after you like a brain-damaged sheep.”

Her lips twitched.

“So he assumed that you blew me off, and he told the other guys, who thought it was hilarious that the one-time chick magnet crashed and burned.”

“Chick magnet?”

“Look, give me a break. I was the lead singer in a popular band. Women threw themselves at me.”

She tossed him a look of distaste. “Maybe I should have sprayed your epic proportions with the Lysol in the closet.”

Stung, Dev said, “I used a condom!”

“Yeah. Maybe I should have made you use duct tape, too.”

“Listen up, Miss Bee-yotch. As I recall, you were begging for it, and weren’t too particular about whether I had protection with me or not!”

Her gasp of outrage was satisfying. “I went to the closet to cry , not to have sex with you.”

“And I went to the closet to see if you were okay. Seems to me you’re on some kind of emotional roller coaster this weekend.”

Kylie shrugged.

“So what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“C’mon, tell Father Dev all about it.”

Kylie kept staring out the window.

“Unless you’re just a garden variety psycho?”

“ That’s it . Stop the car and let me out.”

“No.”

“I’d rather walk to the reception than ride with you.”

“The drama queen returns,” muttered Dev, without slowing down.

“Stop the car!” she shrieked.

He rolled his eyes, made a last turn into the grounds of Playa Bella, the luxury hotel, and squealed to a stop under the portico, where a valet immediately came toward them. “Feel stupid yet? Would you rather I’d left you at the stoplight a block away?”

Kylie erupted from the passenger side of the Corvette like a blond hurricane, without waiting for the valet to hand her out. Dev was treated to the delectable view of her ass swinging furiously from side to side as she teetered up the carpeted steps and into the hotel without him.

He shook his head at the valet and shrugged his shoulders. “She had to get to the ladies’ room, quick.”

The valet’s eyebrows shot up in clear disbelief.

“Okay, fine. She’s late for a homicide,” said Dev, scooping up the evening bag she’d left on the ‘Vette’s floorboard in her haste to get away from him. “And she really likes to be on time for her bloody murders. Pictures at eleven …”

KYLIE MUGGED A waiter the instant she was inside the grand ballroom. She snatched a glass of wine off his tray, almost unbalancing the poor man in the process. She drank it dry on the way to the buffet table, where she stabbed five Swedish meatballs, six mini-quiches, three triangles of spanakopita and an entire school of shrimp, which she drowned in cocktail sauce.

She stalked with her plate to the darkest corner of the ballroom, which happened to be where the huge amplifiers for the band clustered. Kylie maneuvered herself behind one that was almost her height and attacked her food like a starving goat, in the subconscious hope of filling the awful hollow inside her. She was four meatballs into the meal when she realized that she’d left her purse in Dev’s ostentatious Corvette. Which meant she’d have to speak to him again. And worse, she’d have to do it politely.