Breaking Beauty (Devils Aces MC): Vegas Titans Series by Celia Loren Page B

to all but sit by the phone waiting for a guy to call. In any case,
she felt the heft of the cliché on her shoulders.
     
    Her friends at school were not quite close—and were
themselves pretty alien to the casino community—but there might yet be a way in
which they could comfort her. She imagined grabbing a slice with Eliza, and
finding some vague way to allude to her work problems. While Romy was still too
afraid to tell anyone explicitly what had happened in DiMartino's lodge, or
what had continued to happen under the scintillating gaze of
Zaida-the-Eastern-European-witch-model....surely, she could find some coded way
to talk shop. She picked up her crusty old landline then, prepared to dial her
friend's number and end this restless bullshit. Only—labored breath filled the
other end of the line.
     
    “Hello? Who is this?” Romy panicked instantly. It hadn't
occurred to her that her phones might be tapped. “I'm hanging up....” she
began, but still lingered on the line.
     
    “Don't!” came a voice thick with smoke and maybe longing. “I
mean—what are the odds? Did your phone even ring?”
    Bryson! Bryson, Bryson, Bryson. Romy's heart flooded
then—the dull panic, the sense of restlessness, the inability to concentrate,
all flew the coop once she identified his voice. In a tone she hoped sounded
cool but knew was altogether too giddy, Romy replied.
    “I wasn't so sure I'd hear from you again.”
    “Didn't I say I'd take you out, babe?”
    Bryson sounded confident, but perhaps slightly caught
off-guard by the conversation's abrupt intro. This thrilled Romy a little.
    “Well, one never quite knows, with a man like you,” she
said, leaning backwards, letting the tops of her hips rest easily against the
kitchen countertop. “And hey—for a first date, I know that wasn't my most
ladylike.”
    To her relief, Bryson laughed at the joke. It felt so good
to abandon, or at least temporarily ignore, the situation's gravity. Maybe—just
maybe—they could grow love from the ashes of this royal Windsor mess. Romy
sighed at the thought. It was probably too good to be true.
    “I think you were just like a lady,” Bryson said now. She
detected a gravelly undercurrent in his voice; the man was growling for
her.
    “And that must make you the perfect gentleman,” she snapped
back. Two could play at the sexy-phone-flirting game. God, it had been such a
long while since Romy had even had someone to flirt with...
    “I think so. In fact, I'm calling because”—Romy held her
breath, in spite of herself—“I'd like to expand my original offer, and take you
out to dinner. You like dinner, Romy?”
    “I love dinner, Bryson.”
    “How about Mexican food?”
    She wasn't a huge fan of Mexican food, but the urgency in
his voice was not something she wanted to impede.
    “Love it. You just tell me when.”
    “No better time than the present, right? Shall I pick you up
in forty-five?”
    Romy eyed the oven clock. She did have class in the morning,
and who knew how late an evening with an outlaw biker would go? But in almost
the same moment it took to articulate doubt, Romy decided she didn't care. For
better or worse, this was her real, adult life rolling by. She'd already
allowed far too much of it to slip beyond her grasp.
    “You can say thirty,” she said, glancing down at her scrubby
school garb of sweatpants and a tee. “I only need to slip into something more
comfortable.” She felt his smile over the line.
     

     
    Exactly twenty-eight minutes later, Romy looked up from her
bathroom mirror when she heard the sound of a leaping engine. Sure enough,
peering through the window, she saw long rays of red and yellow light dancing
over black asphalt. Her heart lurched. How long had it been since she'd been on
a bona fide date ? Years?
    She'd elected to wear a dress that left slightly more to the
imagination than her pasty-emblazoned work leotard: a floral, summery jersey
shift that fell to her knees while still