But then a low growl penetrated my consciousness.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” A voice that I recognized made my head jerk around, and sure enough, I turned to see a raging pair of deep blue eyes.
“Bo,” I breathed. My man looked magnificent, clad only in tight leather pants with his broad chest bare. I desperately wanted to run my palms over those delineated abs while licking the thick muscle of his pecs, but I forced myself to remain still and clenched my hands into fists at my side. But before I could say anything, Bo seized my arm and dragged me out of the main room and down a narrow corridor.
“But my friend!” I gasped.
He shook his head, his expression dark.
“She’ll be fine,” he growled before shoving me into a small, private chamber. It must have been his office, given the desk along one wall and a towering bookcase filled with titles like Tantalizing Submission and Advanced Techniques for Achieving Subspace.
But then Bo slammed the door shut and then turned to face me, those blue eyes glowing with anger.
“What the fuck are you doing at a sex club, Haley?” he rasps. “When you’re pregnant too. What the hell?”
I was just about to blurt my reply when my tongue grew still and I stared at him.
“How did you know I was pregnant?”
Bo laughed harshly.
“How do you think? I’ve been keeping tabs on you, Haley, ever since you drove away from my cabin without even so much as a goodbye.”
He looked incensed, as if he wanted to wring me by the neck before turning me over for a good spanking. But I was still confused.
“You’ve been keeping tabs on me? I was supposed to say goodbye? What do you mean? I heard you, Bo. You’re a worthless, faithless, piece of –”
He stares at me.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he growls, but now I’m on a roll.
“No, I’m not kidding,” I spit like a cat on a hot tin roof. “I heard you! You were having phone sex with another woman at the cabin! Right in the middle of the afternoon, when you thought I couldn’t hear because of the thick log walls. But damn you!” I scream. “I was in the tub and there’s an air duct that leads straight from your office to the bathroom. I. Heard. Every. WORD!” I scream, uncaring that my voice has now reached maximum volume.
But Bo looks confused.
“I wasn’t having phone sex with anyone, sweetheart. You’re the only woman I’d want to do that with.”
I pick up a paperweight and hurl it at him. He ducks and it crashes into the wall before tumbling to the floor.
“You LIAR!” I scream. “I heard you. All those uh-uh-uhs and touch your pussy for me, baby. I. HEARD. YOU!”
Bo’s still looking confused, but then suddenly, realization dawns on his face and he chuckles. Literally chuckles, just incensing me further.
“Haley, it’s not what you think it is.”
I stare daggers at him. “Oh yeah?” I ask sarcastically. “Because you know, you just talk like that in real life on the phone.”
He holds both hands up in a gesture of surrender.
“No, wait for it, sweetheart. One of my novels, Black Dice, is being made into a movie. It’s steamier than the suspense that’s my trademark, but as usual, I was hired to write the script and I was going over some of the lines with another screenwriter. We were testing it out because honestly, I’ve never really written sex or romance before. At least, not in that kind of detail. You must have heard us reading lines.”
I stare at him. “You must be kidding me.”
He shakes his head slowly, those blue eyes amused.
“No, and for your information, Verona is a seventy-year-old grandmother of four or five. I can’t remember how many grandkids exactly, but she’s definitely in her eighth decade. And she’s been happily married for at least forty years,” he adds. “But I’ll tell her her acting chops are Academy-worthy.”
I stare at him again, my jaw dropping open.
“Verona?”
He smirks a little.
“Yes, my co-screenwriter. Maybe you’ve heard of her? Verona Parker. She’s won two Academy Awards actually, because she’s so good at what she does. I thought I was lucky to be paired with Verona, but evidently not if it led to this.”
Now, my heart’s racing and I stare at the man I love.
“So you weren’t having phone sex.”
He shakes his head emphatically, those black locks tumbling forward. “No, definitely not, sweetheart. You’re the only one I’d want to have phone sex with, but you were right there in the cabin with me. It wasn’t necessary.”
Suddenly, I feel silly, not to mention sick to my stomach. Why didn’t I talk to Bo before I left? Just one conversation, and the air would have been cleared. Yet now, I’m an even bigger idiot than before.