Waking Up in Vegas Read online

  Waking Up

  In Vegas

  Copyright 2014 by Stephanie Kisner

  Cover design by Stephanie Kisner

  Original cover photo by imagerymajestic

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written consent, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Brand names, logos and trademarks used herein remain the property of their respective owners. The listing of any firm or their logos is not intended to imply any endorsement of or direct/indirect affiliation with this work of fiction.

  To Ed, for inspiring so much of Tack’s internal sarcasm.

  Except that you actually said those things out loud.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Giving thanks:

  About the Author

  Check out some of my favorite reads:

  Prologue

  *Talk Dirty to Me*

  I don’t even know why I’m writing this.

  My therapist said writing things down helps put things in perspective. I don’t need a therapist, but my boss says I have sexual harassment issues.

  I don’t have sexual harassment issues. I have sexual frustration issues.

  And it’s totally not my fault.

  It’s her fault.

  I’ve won Sexiest Man in Vegas Media twice and I’ve been declared Most Eligible Bachelor by Las Vegas Magazine for the last three years in a row.

  See? I don’t have any issues with sex whatsoever.

  Except that maybe I haven’t been having any.

  And that’s not only unusual for me, it’s downright unhealthy for a man in his late twenties. I have testosterone to spare, and not using it is killing me.

  I worship women. Every one of them are goddesses–except for her. She’s a red-blooded all-American cockblocker.

  And I have to see her every weekday morning at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am.

  It didn’t used to be my least favorite time of day. I loved getting out of bed and driving in to the studio with the lights of the Strip blazing in my rearview mirror. I lived for starting my workday early, ending my workday early, then going home to sleep during the sand-melting-into-lava hours of blistering sunshine. My alarm was perpetually set for 6 p.m. so I could go out prowling every evening at the latest Place To Be, find myself a beauty for entertainment, and not see my bed again until after work the next day.

  Unless it was for recreation.

  At the risk of sounding cocky (ahem), I recreated a lot.

  Sex is my sport of choice. Or at least, it was, until she waltzed through my studio door and popped headphones on her head.

  To her credit, they were her own headphones, and her head isn’t ugly or anything. Too bad it houses the most evil and devious brain known to mankind.

  Plus, she’s developed some sort of pheromone-canceling ESP that follows me around everywhere. I haven’t gotten laid in… too long.

  Honestly, I haven’t been keeping track.

  Actually, yes, I have.

  It’s been two months.

  Every time I think about it, I get depressed.

  I should probably put my name in here somewhere. Just in case they find me dead from clogged testosterone and the shriveled-up mass of patheticness is unrecognizable as my body.

  I’m Tack Morgan, and I’m—

  getting ahead of myself.

  Chapter 1

  *Life is Beautiful*

  Tap. Tap. Tappatappatappatap.

  “Will you stop doing that?” Jesus. And of course he couldn’t hear me, because Milo insisted on putting his headphones over both ears instead of leaving one ear open like the rest of the radio world.

  Welcome to my life. I’m the morning-drive DJ at Las Vegas’ number one rock station, KLVR. And I’m going to dump a pot of hot coffee on my co-host’s lap if he doesn’t stop the goddamn bongo act. It would be a public service, actually.

  Maybe next music break. The only java I had at hand was the dark-roasted espresso grind we keep in the studio and I don’t want to waste it on his crotch.

  I am completely and categorically heterosexual, by the way. I just happen to respect the coffee.

  Meet my morning-drive partner, Emilio ‘Milo’ Schmidt. If my name was Emilio, I’d use a nickname, too. Although Milo’s not much better.

  And his daily constant tapping on the counter was not only driving me batshit, today he was even doing it while the mics were open. Listeners all over Las Vegas probably thought they had flat tires with the way he was thumping.

  I threw my pen at his head.

  Ha!

  “What in the Sam Hill was that for?”

  And there’s reason number two why he drives me up the wall: The guy never swears. It’s unnatural.

  I aimed a finger at his side of the counter and said, “Your drumming is coming through the microphones. Fucking stop.”

  He opened his mouth—most likely to admonish me for the cursing—as I slid the traffic report over to him. “You’re up. In three, two, one.” I counted down with my fingers as I made his mic hot, in order to cut off his retort. He’d slid his headphones down after my pen assault, and was now scrambling to get them at least half on. It was Friday morning, and that meant the commuters were already brain-dead thinking about their upcoming weekend. The crash-dummy list was as long as it was every Friday.

  I took over when he was done, reading the list of weekend shows our station was sponsoring. As I was wrapping it up, the Big Kahuna stuck his head into the booth, silently waving at Milo to follow him.

  The boss looked like a pissed-off bulldog (his usual face, actually), and I was just happy that I wasn’t the one he wanted to bark at. Milo nodded and thumbed off his mic, then got up to follow him…

  …and was promptly yanked backwards by the headphone cord. Dumbass forgot to take off his cans. It was hard not to laugh on-air. Once I heard the song start, I turned off my own mic.

  Then I laughed.

  Poor bastard. I wonder who he pissed off that he was forced to go upstairs to get chewed on. Bill Kalani (aka the aforementioned Big Kahuna) is Cirrus Radio’s local head honcho and he rarely bothered with us peons in the booths. Milo had to have fucked up big time.

  Despite being annoyed with Milo in general, I like the guy well enough to be his good buddy when he comes back downstairs and needs to gripe. Or to pack his stuff into a box.

  I queued up a couple more songs, ignored the request line, and found the promo copy sheet for the weekend. Unless I felt like actually showing my face in this building during the next two days, I needed to hustle my ass to the production room to pre-record my weekend ‘shifts.’

  I’ll let you in on a little secret. Nobody is ever actually in a radio station on weekends unless there’s a call-in contest, a celebrity interview, o
r a remote broadcast at some car dealer. Sometimes, jocks aren’t even in the station for their weekday shifts. The building could be totally vacant except for the executives, the receptionist, and the guy who fills the vending machine. And you’d never know.

  The exceptions are during the weekday morning and evening drive times. Those of us who pull those slots are always in the building. And I gotta tell you, the morning drive time crews truly love their cities to get up at crazy-thirty so they can be coherent by six a.m.

  And I am admittedly Vegas’ biggest fan.

  I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else but The LV. The people are friendly, the women are friendlier, and there’s always something exciting happening. Forget New York as the City That Never Sleeps. In Las Vegas, if you’ve been in a casino for a while, you could easily lose track of the real world. And never mind looking outside to check… The Strip is so brightly lit that ducking out the front doors won’t tell you if it’s day or night, either.

  I’m rambling again. Can’t help myself, though. Vegas is my mistress, the only one who’s always been there. I grew up here, and it’s perfect.

  Which makes me wonder why Bryce, the morning guy at our sister station The Pulse, has decided to leave. For Salt Lake City, of all godforsaken places. It snows there, it’s full of Mormons who are anti-everything-fun, and, most importantly, the market is smaller. It’s a step down, for chrissakes. He’s got a week to go. I haven’t heard anything yet about his replacement.

  Maybe they’re just going to reduce The Pulse’s Morning Crew to the Morning Two… God knows, cost-cutting and staff-cutting in this biz has run rampant for the last few years. Except in larger money markets like Vegas. It’s our hard-working asses bringing the big shiny dollars to Cirrus Radio Corporation which keeps the smaller stations afloat. And I am the biggest cash cow in this city. Stations in Denver and Des Moines ought to be thanking me that they all still have jobs.

  So I’m not modest. But I can’t afford to be. Everything I do is public (well, almost, but I’d let you watch…) and it all reflects on this station and the ad revenue I pull in. So if that makes me a little narcissistic, so be it. There are people all over this country depending on me to not embarrass myself.

  Unless it’s intentional.

  Like the kissing booth at the annual Save the Ta-Tas cancer fundraiser. I love titties. So when they asked me to pull a shift, not only was it a no-brainer, I upped the ante and put on red lipstick for every kiss just so I could leave a mark. And it was quite the sacrifice, because I hate lipstick.

  Unless I’m wearing it second-hand. On my dick.

  Aw, come on. I’m a guy. You knew my dick would have to show its head sometime.

  It’s my most prized possession.

  Second, of course, is my hybrid Camry. What, shocked that I’d own a hybrid? It’s cleaner, and I like breathing. It’s of monumental importance to my profession.

  Now, back to my penis.

  My eyes are up here, sweetheart. You keep staring, and he’s gonna want to do more than just say hello. He might expect a handshake. Or a kiss, maybe a massage…

  Crap. Just when it’s getting fun, here comes Milo busting back in, and he has a box. Time to be the concerned workmate.

  Wait… he’s grinning. And skipping. Pretty sure Milo’s gay. Despite the girlfriend.

  “I got it!” He was practically shouting as he plopped his headphones into the box and swept his collection of Happy Meal toys in after them.

  I hated those things, so I’m glad they’re leaving, but what the hell is he talking about?

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  He scanned the room for anything else that screamed Milo. “The Pulse! I’m taking over for Bryce, starting on Monday morning. They want him to introduce me as the new primary host, so I’ll be in with The Crew after today.”

  Great. He’ll be one of three, and I’ll be flying solo. Not that I mind, but it means that I’ll have to pay more attention and do everything, which’ll cut into my time people watching out the studio door. And to see how short those people’s skirts are. That Laurelle in Sales had a set of legs I’d love to see wrapped around my waist.

  “Congratulations. But I thought you hated Top 40?”

  “I’ll just take my headphones off. Nobody says I have to listen to what I play.”

  Oh, so for them, he’ll not only uncover one ear, but both? What was I, a dog turd on his shoe?

  Milo hopped in place. Yes, really. “So now we’ll be up against each other for numbers. Direct competition, buddy.”

  Buddy? He actually used buddy in a sentence? “Don’t hate me when I kick your ass. With or without a co-host,” I said.

  “Oh, you’re getting one. While I was in his office, BK took a call from someone he called Jensen. Apparently, the guy’s been delayed and won’t be in town until next weekend. BK told him to be sure to arrive before 5:30 so you can buzz him in, since he won’t have an access card yet.”

  So I had no say in my co-host. Figures. Well, I hope this new guy likes rock-and-roll and women. If not, we won’t have a lot to talk about off-air.

  Hell, I don’t know how much we’ll have to talk about on-air, at least that first day. How in the hell am I supposed to entertain listeners with small talk when I’ll only be meeting the guy five minutes before air-time? But I’m a professional. I can wing it with the best of them.

  Chapter 2

  *99 Problems*

  In retrospect, that entire weekend was kind of blurry. Even though I was mostly sober. As far as you know.

  The whole work situation was nagging at me. It’s not that I can’t handle doing the show on my own–I can. Until my current morning gig at KLVR, I’d always done some afternoon shift, just me talking to the walls and watching the halls for a skirt that was a bit too microscopic for the workplace. At my last radio station, there was this one secretary who’d always dressed too tight and too short…

  I really liked her.

  I’d knocked out the recordings of my weekend broadcasts in about an hour, then went home and slept ‘til sunset with Lita, my part-Lab mutt. She was hogging most of the bed and trying to shove me off my pillow. She knows that she’s my number one girl and, because of that, I normally let her get away with almost anything.

  After a run in the cool twilight air, I had gotten cleaned up to hit the nightlife. First stop of the evening was mandatory; The Pulse had a thing going at Pure nightclub in Caesar’s Palace, and all Cirrus radio air talent was expected to put in an appearance.

  Hear that? It’s the theme from Jaws.

  Not only do club music and techno pierce my brain like nails on a chalkboard, but there was one person there I truly hoped I wouldn’t run into.

  I was almost finished with my obligatory thirty minutes at Pure and eying the exit. None of the blatantly overdone women in this place had grabbed my attention well enough to make me consider sticking around. Besides, Pure was more for tourists than locals. And if I picked up a beauty who was on vacation, chances are that she’d want to spend all of her remaining nights with me as her ‘Vegas Vacation Hookup’ and I never sign on for more than a one-way trip around the sheets.

  I don’t do relationships. I’m like the city I live in–here to entertain for a night or a week, but it’s all with a definite lack of seriousness. And like club-hopping on the Strip, there’ve been memorable nights where I surfed the mattresses of more than one beauty.

  I believe in sharing the joy.

  Quit rolling your eyes. It’ll smudge your mascara. Or flake your eyeliner, or whatever that eye-crap does.

  Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, talking about my dick.

  ‘Cause, y’know, guy, etcetera.

  There has, on rare occasions, been a woman or two who required a little more time for full exploration. None have needed more than a weekend. I mean, you all have the same parts and there are only so many variations on the arrangement.

  “Spartacus!”

  Oh dear God. Let my
mind wander for just one minute and look what happens.

  I turned toward the voice before it could roar that word again and slammed into its owner, a petite brunette who was, thankfully, quite sturdy in her high heels. She should be. She’d worn them almost every night for years.

  “Were you going to run off without saying hello?”

  “Never. Hi, Mom.”

  And now you know my only secret. And so help me, if you breathe a word to a living soul about what Tack is short for, I will seriously hunt you down and kill you. And everyone you told. The desert outside Las Vegas is huge and mostly unexplored. You’d do well to keep that in mind.

  “I was just running some change out to the cashiers up front. Why don’t you come along?”

  This was not a request. My mother has been a Caesar’s fixture for thirty years, and while the words may be spoken in the sweetest of voices, I knew I had better obey. It was this do-it-or-there’s-the-door attitude that made her the youngest club manager in the company’s history, and what, I’m sure, made her able to put up with me. I was, to hear her tell it, quite a handful.

  It’s also why my father gave her the divorce. She expected him to earn a paycheck, and he expected to earn money by gambling her paychecks. She was unyielding, and he moved back to somewhere in Colorado. I haven’t heard from him in years.

  “Sure, Mom, I’ll be your bodyguard. But why aren’t you using the tubes?” Years ago, the casino had installed a pneumatic tube system for cash drops and change-runs to safeguard all that vulnerable cash from floating around the floor.

  “I wanted to gauge the crowd out front, and this way the staff won’t think I’m there to check up on them.”

  “Although you are.”

  She just smirked at me and kept walking.

  Once I’d gotten near the doors, there was no reason to go back inside and subject my ears to any more of the racket in there. Or out front. There are mammoth speakers in the overhang and I think the music is actually louder out here than in the club.

  I hugged my mom goodbye, and even in her heels, she had to stretch to kiss my cheek. I’m still amazed that someone as tall as I am came from someone as tiny as she. You’d never know we were related, until you compared our eyes. Both of us are ice-blue in the peeper department, but I think hers are more piercing. Or maybe that’s just because I’ve been on the receiving end of her glare so damn often.