“Since then?” he sounded amazed.
She nodded.
She felt coolness as he stepped back.
“Turn around,” he said.
Slowly she did. She didn’t want to look him in the eye now. Who’d have thought her afternoon could become even more of a nightmare?
“You were a kid.” He tried to smile but looked too tense to pull it off. “And you were unhappy. It wasn’t that I was nice. I just wasn’t a jerk.”
Like her father had been.
And he wasn’t being a jerk now. She got what he was doing—the gentle let down. It was worse than anything.
“Let’s start over,” he said roughly. “You’re staying the night. One night. Sort the bank in the morning. Find your way from there.”
No. He’d forced this into the open. He couldn’t ignore it now. She sure as hell couldn’t forget it. “But what about this?”
“This is just chemistry. That’s all.”
He was dismissing her crush just like that? Like it was just going to disappear? Hell, if he only knew how many times she’d wished it had. How many times she’d kissed some other guy hoping to feel some kind of lust—even a fraction of what she felt for him.
“If you knew me better, you wouldn’t have a crush.” He seemed to read her mind.
Really? She straightened up from the door and stepped up so she was toe to toe with him. “Then I guess you have one night to rid me of it.”
And that’s what she wanted. She didn’t want to measure every other guy to him. Because every other guy paled in comparison. No other guy, ever, had done it for her the way Rocco St Clair had.
He grinned. Well, it was more a twisted, uncomfortable looking grimace. “Okay, I’ll kill your crush. In one night.”
Chapter Four
“HOW DO YOU plan to kill it?” Dani asked, ridiculously intrigued.
“I’ll find a way.” He stepped away from her, crossing to the other side of the room to study his computer screen. In seconds he was typing something short with two fingers.
“You don’t think if we just give into it, then it would be gone?” she asked, unable to hide the hope in her voice.
He didn’t so much as glance back at her. “That’s not a wise idea.”
“No?”
“I’m not screwing around with you,” he said roughly. “It wouldn’t be right. Or fair.”
She blinked. “Right?”
His phone pinged. “Or fair,” he repeated.
His phone pinged again.
“Why wouldn’t it be right?” she asked. Why didn’t he think he was right for her?
His phone pinged once more.
“You don’t want to get that?” she asked, irritated.
“No. It’s fine.” He didn’t even take his phone from his pocket.
“We’re not talking marriage here, you know,” she said, her irritation mounting. “Nothing so serious...”
“Is nothing serious to you?”
He was trying to sidetrack her. It wasn’t going to work.
“I’m just talking some... fun...” That’s all she wanted. Really.
This time his phone didn’t chime a message. It rang, rang and rang.
“Are you sure you don’t want to get that?”
He growled and yanked his phone out, swiping the screen. “What?” he barked into it.
A full minute passed while who ever was calling explained something long and clearly complicated.
“Fine. Give me five minutes.” Rocco ended the call and bent back towards his computer.
He was as bad a workaholic as Connor. The brother serving a life sentence as CEO of Summerhill.
Dani crossed her arms. She was going to get a job too. She wasn’t wasting more time studying for a degree she wasn’t interested in. She’d get a job and eventually pay for herself to study what she wanted to study. If she didn’t accept her father’s money, she didn’t have to accept his terms.
Rocco clicked something so his screen shut down. He turned to face her. “I have to go downstairs for a bit. Only an hour or so, but I need to get to it. Can I trust you or am I going to have to lock you in here?”
“Lock away. I’ll set off the fire alarms.” She sent him a malignant smile.
“You would too,” he acknowledged appreciatively. “How many times did you run away from that boarding school?”
“Not enough.” She’d hated it. She’d oscillated between studying her ass off and ditching all A-grade plans to plot escape routes.
He laughed, then sobered. “Can I trust you?”
“I promise I won’t leave the hotel,” she said peaceably. “As you’ve so kindly pointed out, I have nowhere to go.”
“Chin-up peaches, it’ll sort itself out.”
Not if she didn’t make some changes.
“We’ll have dinner when I get back if you can wait that long,” he said. “You can access the menu on the iPad over there. Just phone down and order.”
“Are there any personal movies I might want to enjoy on here?” She nudged the iPad with her finger.
“I’m not your brother.”
She chuckled softly. Logan’s infamous sex-clip was apparently one of the most viewed ever. “You want me to order you anything?”
“They know my usual. Get them to send it all up in an hour or so. You might as well put through your breakfast order at the same time. Pancakes, waffles, anything you want.”
“Wow, so generous,” she mocked. “Is this what you offer all the women you bring here?”
“I don’t bring women here.” He didn’t even blink.
“Men, then? Oh!” she slapped her hand on her forehead. “You should have told me sooner already. Saved me embarrassing myself.”
“No men either.”
“No partners at all?”
He shook his head.
She frowned, thinking it though. “Oh I get it. You go back to her place so you can escape easily.”
He gave a non-committal shrug, but she knew she had him.
“You’re a runaway too,” she waggled a finger at him. “Fancy, we have something in common.”
“No,” he said, starting to walk towards the door. “Not much in common.”
But Dani had realized something else. “So all your staff will be thinking this is something really special,” she grinned gleefully. “That’s really funny.”
The look he sent her was not amused.
“Oh the irony. They’re all downstairs thinking the boss has finally gotten his act together. That he’s finally getting some. Whereas we’re up here doing nothing but talking.”
“Talking is right.” He grimaced as he got to the door. “Don’t you ever stop?”
“Sure.” She glanced at the menu she’d pulled up on the iPad. “You never cook?”
>
“You see a kitchen? Why, you want to cook your own?”
She shuddered. “I never cook either. Fancy, another thing in common.”
“Give it up.”
She chuckled. “Over easy or sunny side up? You think we’ll have that preference in common?”
He went completely still, then spun round to face her, pointing his index finger like a dagger at her. “You’re going to starve at this rate. I won’t let them serve you anything.”
“You’re already starving me.”
He so looked shocked she had to laugh.
He didn’t. “One day, Dani, you’re going to land yourself in real trouble.”
“I can’t wait,” she muttered after him as he left the room. “It’s got to be better than boring.”
As soon as Rocco closed the door behind him, she went to her bag and rifled for her wallet. Her brother might have mocked her but she knew what she was going to do.
Pete Boulder, one of New York’s most celebrated photographers, and known for his ultra-edgy, push-the-boundaries work, had been at her parents’ party. They’d employed him as the official photographer—so they could vet what pictures were presented to the world. He’d approached her during the party and shown her the picture he’d taken of her. At the time she’d been mortified. But now she used the hotel room phone and dialled the number written on the card he’d given her.
A portfolio with Pete Boulder could set her career in motion. So what if he was creepy. He could get the job done. She’d see if she could meet up with him tomorrow or sometime soon. She was not going back to Summerhill.
“Pete,” she said as soon as he answered. “Danielle Hughes. We spoke at my parents’ party at Summerhill the other night. You asked me about posing for a spread? I wondered if we could talk more.”
“Danielle,” Pete’s voice sounded loud in the empty room. “Whereabouts are you?”
“In Manhattan, actually. At The Trove. Only for the one night, but I have time tomorrow—”
“I have time right now.”
He did? “Uh... okay. You want to come here?” Good lord, she wasn’t anything like ready. But she could be.
“I’m only five minutes away.”
Seriously? Was something actually going to go right for her today? “Fantastic,” she breathed. “Then I’ll see you in the bar shortly.”