“Excuses?” He sounds amused, and as he closes the room door and ambles beside me to the elevator door, he gives me a smirk. “It’s the truth. Dad wants me at an important meeting with the other shareholders, at seven in the fucking morning in Washington. We’re flying at five.”
Oh. And now, according to my cell phone time is one in the morning. Where did time go?
I ride with him down, trying not to look at his sexy mouth, or stubbled jaw, or pale hair. The broad shoulders I clawed at as I came.
He hails a cab for me, and I climb inside. I turn to take one last look at him as we speed away. He’s still standing outside the hotel, hands still in his pockets, a new expression on his face, one that has me puzzled as we drive out of view.
It looks a lot like regret.
***
Days pass. Nights, too. I feel an emptiness that’s only partly explained by the lack of Chance in my life.
Turns out he was easy to cut out of my routine. I miss watching thrillers with him and eating together at the college cafeteria, but apart from that, I’m curiously fine without him.
And I miss Hawk.
Okay, that’s obviously not possible. I only met him once, spent less than a night with him, and no matter how many orgasms he gave me, I can’t miss a guy I only spent a couple of hours with, most of them spent on his bed in a hotel room, right?
Yet I do. I miss the way he looked at me like I’m the most desirable woman in the world. The way he told me I’m hot, and pretty, the way his body hardened against mine, the way he kissed me and held me.
Like I’m unique. Like he’s never met anyone like me.
Which is bullcrap. It’s all in my mind, it’s all I wanted to believe. Maybe what he wanted me to believe, too—that he felt something. That it wasn’t all a charade to help me get over the break-up.
And why should he care how I felt? He didn’t have to do any of it. Also, he had sex with me, and he was hard. He wanted me.
Or he wanted it. Wanted sex. A man like him probably has rough, marathon sex on a regular basis. He found me in a vulnerable position and took advantage. It’s what rich, arrogant men like him do.
That’s what they do, Layla.
Questions spin in my mind, questions I hadn’t posed myself in the insanity of the evening’s rote—like, does he do this often, pick unknown women from restaurants and bars and take them to anonymous hotel rooms to fuck?
I mean… he’s obviously a play
boy. Even if his life isn’t splashed all over the tabloids as much as one would have expected, I kind of recall a couple of scandalous photos of him with pretty girls hanging on his arms, at some gala or other. He can’t be over twenty-five—in fact I’m quite sure I read he’s even younger than that somewhere, or else my friend Dorothy told me—and guys of his age, his looks and his money are expected to sleep around.
I doubt I’ll ever hear from him again—and I guess now I know how he managed to avoid scandals: he keeps his conquests quiet, out of the spotlight. If I told anyone I spent a steamy night with Jamie Fleming, who would believe me? No photos, no proof.
Nobody knows, except Dorothy, and the memory will remain in my mind, a bright light and snapshots of touches, glimpses of pleasure unlike anything I’ve ever felt.
A desire unlike any I’ve ever experienced. God, the roses… and his touch. His cock inside me.
Somehow even though I know he won’t call me again, won’t come around to see me, won’t have dinner with me again… It was worth it. I can’t regret it.
Did he regret me?
A noise from the room next to mine draws me from my thoughts. Speaking of Dorothy… My roommate walks through my door, her dark hair a ratty nest around her head. Let’s just say she has restless sleep—which I blame on the tons of caffeine she consumes every day.
She’s holding a steaming mug right now. “Did you know,” she says, “that the suite he bedded you in is the honeymoon suite of the exclusive Pearl Buck Hotel?”
“Bedded? Seriously, Dodo?” But this little piece of news floors me, when it shouldn’t. “It was probably the best room he could get on short notice, or something. That’s all.”
It means nothing.
Dorothy shrugs and sits uninvited on my bed. She slurps noisily at her coffee. “So, any signs of life from Tall, Blond and Mysterious?”
“He’s not mysterious,” I mutter irritably. “We know who he is.”