Hot on His Heels (What Happens in Vegas) by Margo Bond Collins Read Free Book Online Page A

job to do. You’re not here to get seduced by some muscle-bound sex symbol .
    A job.
    Wait. She suddenly remembered that the Twitter app on her phone had gone off while she’d been dealing with the humiliation of standing in front of a whole room full of people who actually wanted to go on dates with those male models.
    Jocelyn.
    Jocelyn had posted something.
    Scrabbling for the bag at her feet, she grabbed her phone and turned it on.
    Yes. There it was. A picture of Sadie standing in the middle of the models, and a caption: Who’s luckier? The amazing Sadie Quinn, or the Intertwined model who gets to go out on a date with her?
    “She was there,” Sadie gasped, waggling the phone in Jake’s face. He grabbed her hand to still it and peered at the image, a quizzical look on his face. “Jocelyn Dellarivier was at the Bad Boy Bingo party.”
    “Well, yes.” Jake’s Southern drawl was back in full force.
    “She must have been…” She stopped to examine the photo more closely. “She must have been standing right next to you. I can’t believe I didn’t see her. You know I’ve been looking for her. Why didn’t you—I don’t know, wave at me, or something?”
    Jake held his hands out, warding off the implied accusation. “Hey. It’s not my job to find her for you.”
    “Oh, you…you…” Sadie spluttered, unable to think of a derogatory-enough term. “You man ,” she finally spit out. With a huff, she dropped her phone back into her bag and slung it over her shoulder. “You’re all useless.”
    A dark chuckle followed her down the hallway toward the elevators, and it stayed with her all the way to her room.
    “Okay,” she finally amended, when she was alone and could throw herself down on the bed to wallow in the humiliation of the day. “ Mostly useless.”
    After all, Jake Blaine was pretty to look at. He had brushed her tear away. And he had almost kissed her in the elevator.
    Most of all, he didn’t ignore her.
    …
    From now on, Jake was going to avoid posting Jocelyn’s current whereabouts. Nope—only where she had been. Centering the phone’s lens on the current speaker, he snapped a picture to post after the session ended. He was afraid Sadie Quinn might be getting a little too close to the truth.
    That look she had given him the day before had left him tossing and turning all night. If he were honest with himself, he would have to admit that the initial attraction he had felt toward her was beginning to blossom into something else. Admiration, certainly. Her dogged determination to track down one incognito editor among a sea of romance-novel professionals was impressive.
    But there was something else, too. From her email messages, he had expected someone strong and assertive, a domineering woman used to getting her way. Someone larger, louder, bossier.
    Some of those elements were certainly there—but they were intermixed with other characteristics he hadn’t expected. She was shy, even anxious, prone to stammering when she was nervous and blurting out what he had realized were quotes from literary works—he had recognized the quote from an E. E. Cummings poem in the hallway.
    Her hands fluttered when she talked, like the wings of a bird trying to take flight—or maybe an angel confined to earth, all delicate bones and soft skin, and he found himself wanting to help set her free, even if he didn’t know exactly what freedom would look like to her.
    She should have the chance to soar.
    Good lord. He must be losing his mind. He liked working with words, liked finding an author who could come up with a good turn of phrase, loved helping those authors turn good sentences into strong ones. But he wasn’t prone to random bouts of poetics.
    He also wasn’t inclined to spacing out when a speaker he really wanted to hear was giving a presentation on editing for the current market.
    If Sadie Quinn inspired him to flights of fancy, he should probably run away as fast as possible.
    Which brought