The Uber spit Jenna out in a neighborhood that could’ve used a good polish. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with the motel that sat in front of her, with its faded, peeling gray paint and grungy windows, and the assortment of beat-up cars in the parking lot out front. The rest of the buildings and vehicles in the area were in similar states of disrepair, and the businesses visible a few blocks down the street were the exact definition of “seedy.” But Los Angeles wasn’t a cheap place to stay, so Jenna would have to make do with what she could afford and hope she didn’t get mugged or murdered in the process.

She stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the parking lot, noticing a dusty but decent Harley-Davidson motorcycle parked near the reception office. She hoped the motel didn’t cater to biker types—that was all she needed, to get harassed by a biker gang—but even if it did, she’d have to work around the problem. She’d already spent a small fortune on Ubers today, and she was about to drain what little surplus funds she had with an unplanned motel stay. The clientele of this particular motel was low on her list of priorities.

Jenna knocked gingerly on the door to the reception office, and a man with a beer gut and gray-speckled stubble answered the door. “Can I help you, miss? You lost?” he said.

She looked down at herself. She was wearing a pencil skirt and a white, frilly blouse, because she’d originally been planning to visit the convention center today. The flight delay had changed those plans, but she hadn’t had the chance to swap her outfit yet. Clearly, she looked out of place in this rundown neighborhood, like some corporate new hire who had gotten lost on her way to the office. “Um, no,” she answered. “I actually need a room for three nights. Do you have any vacancies? Your website said you did.”

Jenna wasn’t sure why this place even had a website, given it only had about twenty rooms. But she figured everything had a site these days, just because.

The man scanned her again and furrowed his brows in confusion. “You sure you want to stay here?”

“Yes, sir.”

He shrugged. “Okay then. Come on in.” He held open the door and motioned for her to enter. “I’ve got a single left up on Two, if that’s what you want. Room 206.”

“That’d be perfect.” She walked over to the desk and dug around in her purse for her billfold. She plucked her Visa card out and handed it to the man. He ran the card, printed her a receipt, then dug out a metal key from under the desk. Jenna wasn’t sure she’d ever used a metal key for a motel or hotel room before. At least not for a room she was paying for. She had vague memories of keys being used on family vacations before keycards were the end all, be all, but those memories were muddled and indistinct.

She took the key and tucked it into her purse. “Do I need to do anything else?”

“Nope,” the man said. “You can go on up.”

“Great. Thanks.” She scurried out the door, aware the man was still eying her in confusion until the moment she stepped out of sight. Halfway up the concrete steps to the second floor, her phone buzzed. A new text had come in from the conference organizers, confirming her meeting with them tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock sharp.

Jenna would need to make sure she got a good night’s sleep and a filling breakfast before she went to the convention center. Tomorrow was going to be a long day, given Marvin’s endless list of nitpicks. Everything had to be exactly the way he liked it, or he would lose “some of that necessary primal energy for instilling excitement in a crowd.” Or something like that. He said the weirdest crap sometimes, and most of it sounded like quotes. As if he had memorized every bad self-help book on the market and picked lines out of them at random.

As Jenna continued up the stairs and onto the second-story landing, she typed out her own confirmation to the conference organizer who’d texted her and hit the send button. She then tapped the back arrow to check her inbox and make sure that she hadn’t missed any vital texts for—

Jenna rammed face first into a large, solid object, bounced off, lost her footing in her flimsy kitten heels, and landed flat on her ass.

She sat there for a second, dazed, her phone clutched in her hand so hard the plastic case gave a disconcerting groan. Then she realized what had happened. She’d run into somebody. Some man.

Jenna stared at the man’s legs for a second, taking in the sight of well-worn black boots and dirty jeans that looked to be covered in the same dust as the motorcycle parked in the lot below. She tracked his legs up and up and up, until she hit a broad torso clad in a plain blue T-shirt and a stylish leather jacket. Finally, her gaze made it all the way to the head of a devastatingly handsome man with a short haircut, piercing hazel eyes, and the faintest hint of stubble on his rugged, chiseled face.

The guy was looking down at Jenna with an eyebrow raised, one hand on his dark sunglasses, which he’d tugged down the bridge of his nose so he could get a better look at her in the shadows of the overhanging roof. When she didn’t say anything—nope, nothing at all; she just ogled him with an idiotic, slack-jawed expression—he said in a smooth baritone, “If you’re going to insist on texting while walking, can’t you try walking into traffic instead of me?”

Jenna’s brain suddenly rebooted itself. (Anger had a funny way of doing that.)

“Excuse me?” She grabbed the rusty railing beside her and hauled herself to her feet. “What did you just say?”