Her Secret Lover (What Happens in Vegas) Read Free Page B

what I don’t get, man. How do you write these incredible books when you don’t believe in love? They are the most romantic shit ever put between two covers. You write the ‘books that make America fall in love’ for Christ’s sake.”
    “I hate that stupid tagline … ”
    “You can hate it all you want, but it’s true. You even get me weepy when I read them.” His friend smacked him on the shoulder. “We’ve been friends long enough that I can tell you I thought you had a vagina after I read your first book.”
    That got his attention. He swiveled his head to glare at his best friend. “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “I’m just saying I didn’t believe a guy wrote them when I first read them.” He held his pointer finger up to forestall the comment Micah wanted to make. “I know you don’t actually have a vagina. I’ve seen you at the gym and you’ve got plenty going on down there to make the rest of us feel bad.”
    “Stop looking at my dick, Allen. Seriously.”
    “I only looked that one time, and you’re missing my point.”
    “You have one?” He snorted and ducked another jab that almost made him spill his beer. “I’ve been writing for a solid week, please don’t make me read your mind.”
    Allen got up and headed over to the kitchen area, opening the refrigerator to get another beer. He removed the bottle cap before he continued. “My point is that you write this shit that gets every woman in America crying and then climbing on top of their husbands who immediately start begging their doctors for Viagra by the truckload, and I don’t know how you do it when you don’t date … ”
    “My lifestyle doesn’t make it feasible.”
    “You don’t have a sex life to speak of … ”
    “As long as my hands aren’t amputated, my sex life is fine.”
    “That’s pathetic and disturbing,” Allen said and took a swig from his beer bottle. “But what I don’t get is how you don’t believe in love and you still write books that sell like ammo during the zombie apocalypse.”
    Micah thought about explaining all the shit in his head about love and life and what went through his mind when he sat down to write a book, but he’d have to get into Becky and his marriage and his divorce and the Marines and getting blown up, and he didn’t want to go there. Not today. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in love, it just wasn’t easy to find, and to make it last was even rarer.
    After he’d become successful, women had been plentiful and aggressive, perfect for a guy who was shy and still bearing the scorch marks from his divorce. He’d had to make very little effort to gain a woman in his life. A few attempts to jump back into sex and relationships and he’d learned the hard way that women either wanted his money or expected him to be the hero in their favorite book. One look at his modest lifestyle, and conversation that didn’t sound like a script, and they were gone, pissed off like they’d been sold a bill of goods.
    After those terrible experiences, he’d given up dating. Nothing killed the mood faster than wondering what the person you were with really wanted from you.
    “It’s not hard to sell the happily ever after in four hundred pages,” he said and finished off his beer.
    It was trying to make it work beyond that first kiss, the wedding photos, and the life of real-time epilogue that was hard. Bills, deployments, children, in-laws, and the day-to-day stuff were what happened next. Couples who made it that far were rare.
    Allen stared at him from across the room, waiting to see if he was going to say more, but he just shrugged. That was all he had.
    “Okay, back to the books. Have you taken another look at the business proposal I put together for setting up your own publishing company and self-publishing your books?” Allen asked and Micah groaned.
    “I don’t want to have to run a company. Hire people. I just don’t.”
    “But you might have to. I wouldn’t be