“Why?” I lowered my voice too, maneuvering us into a corner so as not to be spotted right away if someone were to enter the corridor.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” she said, lowering her eyes to the ground, and I could tell where she was going with this as well. “It was supposed to be one night for me, to be someone else, and now I’m caught up in something I don’t know how to get out of. And do you want to know the most frightening part?” She paused and looked back up into my eyes. I nodded because I had to hear her say it. “Maybe I don’t want to get out of it.”
Those words were all I needed to hear to give me the green light. I grabbed her around the waist, moving us further into the shadows of the corner we were standing in, and pressed my mouth to hers before she could think about what was happening. Her hands went up to my chest, at first to push me away, but then she grabbed a hold of my shirt with both hands and pulled me to her. There was no room for thought or doubt between us in that dark corner, and I pushed my tongue between her lips, tangling mine with hers.
Her moans were trapped amid our kisses and her body was pressed against mine. My dick hardened again, wedged between us against her belly. It was unbelievable the amount of desire I felt for her, only an hour and a half after we had sex. Never in all of my experience with women had this happened to me. Fear of the unknown threatened to break the spell I was under but I shut my brain off and thought of nothing but Liza.
Letting go of my shirt, she wrapped her arms around my neck, the motion lifting the back of her short dress up so her ass was exposed. I took the opportunity to grab it with both hands, pulling her even tighter against me, and she moaned again, deepening the kiss. I couldn’t stop, the need to be inside of her again was making my dick so hard it hurt, and if we didn’t end this soon, we would end up fucking right here in the hallway.
“Well, what do we have here.” The drunken voice of my cousin Henry broke through my fog of passion.
Liza jumped away from me with a gasp, adjusting herself and backing up even further into the shadows. I scowled at Henry because he had the shittiest timing.
“What do you want, Harry,” I barked at him, blocking Liza from his view with my body.
“I was coming to see if you two wanted me to save you some dessert, but now I see you’ve already had it,” he said with a smirk, his words slurred and jumbled in such a way I really had to concentrate to understand him.
I frowned. I had seen Henry drunk on many occasions but this was, by far, the worst he had ever been.
“You’re wasted, Harry. Let’s get you out of here,” I said, stepping away from Liza and towards him. I grabbed his arm but he shook me off.
“Nope, no, I’m not going anywhere. I have a model back there waiting for me,” he slurred and stumbled away from me.
“I’m calling Monroe to take you home,” I demanded, grabbing him again.
Liza made a small noise behind me and I turned to look at her. She was worried; it showed on her face as she looked between Henry and me. I nodded to her and she gave me a small smile of understanding. We finally had our reason to leave.
“I’m going to deposit him in the car with Monroe around back. When I get back, we’ll go back out and say goodbye to everyone. I’ll quietly let my aunt know what’s going on,” I told Liza.
“All right, do you want me to wait here?” she asked, still smoothing the skirt of her dress anxiously.
I nodded. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”
With Henry’s bicep firmly clutched in my hand, I dragged him down the hall, away from where Liza stood staring after us, and around a corner. There was a service entrance to the back by the kitchen and with my other hand, I shot a text to Monroe to meet me back there with the car. The car was pulling in as I pushed the doors open, pulling Henry behind me. Monroe opened the door and helped me shove Henry in, where he promptly passed out across the whole back seat. I sighed as I watched him, feeling guilty for letting him get to this point and not speaking to him more the last two days because I was so wrapped up in Liza. Something was definitely going on with him but it would have to wait until he sobered up to dissect it further.
“I have to go back to get Liza and beg off with my aunt. I’ll be right back,” I told Monroe.
He didn’t answer, except with a nod, and I turned and headed back in the way I came. Liza was standing in the corner where I left her, looking distraught. She was wringing her hands but her eyes brightened when she saw me. The way she was looking at me, with trust and expectancy, took my breath away for a moment. She was so stunning sometimes, it was like looking into the sun.
“Is he all right?” she asked as I approached.
“He’ll live,” I said gruffly. “Let’s get this over with.”
I reached for her hand once more, and she swiftly took hold of mine. It was becoming easier to tolerate the affectionate gesture, especially the more I got to know her. I’d probably deny it if someone asked me, but I was starting to like holding her hand.
We walked in silence back to the banquet room, and once again as we entered, all eyes shifted our way. I felt Liza sink into herself, the same way she had when we exited the limo in front of the hotel, and I didn’t blame her one bit. Being in the spotlight wasn’t fun and it was only something I tolerated because I knew my companies depended on it. My stomach dropped as the realization that Liza wasn’t meant for this life sank in deep, and as we approached the table where my aunt and uncle sat, I renewed the promise I made to her.
One month, and then we would break it off and go our separate ways.
Despite what Liza and I shared tonight and what we shared a month ago, this was not a life I would wish on someone who hated the spotlight. Besides, I wasn’t built for relationships and I’d likely fuck it up in some way eventually, leaving us both broken and battered on the side of the road. It was better for both of us if we stuck to the plan.
“We’re leaving,” I said curtly to Aunt Bea and her lips pursed at my tone.
“Why? And where is Henry?” she asked, irritated.
She, my uncle, and the errant model Henry brought with him were the only people at the table at the moment. I looked around and spotted the other occupants, who were mingling about since all of the dinner and dessert festivities were over. Leaning in, I lowered my voice just above a whisper.
“He’s drunk. We’re taking him home.” I winced at the use of “we,” but didn’t pause long enough for Aunt Bea to cut in. “I’ll make sure no one sees him.”
Aunt Bea nodded and looked at her husband who shrugged his shoulders. I wanted to tell them to do something about Henry but he was a grown man.
“All right, I guess I’ll do your speech instead,” Aunt Bea said, clearing her throat. “It was very nice to meet you, Liza. I hope we will be seeing you around more often.” She turned to Liza and they shook hands, my uncle following suit.
“Thank you for having me. Everything was so lovely,” Liza said graciously and my aunt beamed back at me, all traces of irritation gone from her face.
Of course she liked Liza, how could she not?
A knot formed in the pit of my stomach though, at her reaction to Liza, and I wanted to speed up the goodbyes. It was time to go.
“I’ll let you know how Henry is doing, Aunt Bea,” I said, taking Liza by the arm and steering her away. Aunt Bea gave me a wave as we walked back the way we came.
Once in the car, I gave Monroe the orders to bring Henry to my place after dropping Liza off. I lived alone and liked it that way, but someone had to make sure Henry didn’t choke on his own vomit tonight, and it looked like that someone was me. We rode in silence to Liza’s apartment and when Monroe opened the car door, I slid out with her to walk her to her door.
“Hello, James,” Liza said sweetly to the doorman and I nodded a greeting.
“Good evening, Miss Deveroux,” he replied while nodding at me.
I followed her to the elevator and stabbed the button for her floor before s
he could reach out.
“I can get upstairs on my own,” she said with a bit of attitude.
“I know that, but I want to walk you up,” I said, trying to hide the irritation in my voice.
I wasn’t sure how we were here again, snarling at each other when less than thirty minutes before, we were all but ripping each other’s clothes off.
“Fine,” she said with a sigh as she stepped into the elevator.
I held back my temper, balling my fists as I stepped in behind her. Losing it right now would alienate her further, though maybe that would be a good thing because I didn’t want her to get too close. The promises I made to myself on her behalf were beginning to unravel, however, when I looked over at her. She was leaning against the wall, her arms folded over her chest defensively.
There was something about the pose that was screaming “back the hell off,” and yet, I wanted nothing more than to kiss the pout from her lips and smooth the scowl from her brow. Clenching my jaw, I looked away from her, willing myself to keep it together. The attraction and pull towards her made no sense to me, and if I was being honest with myself, it was frightening. How was I ever supposed to let her go if I couldn’t even stand two feet away from her without wanting to gather her in my arms?
I could feel him, from across the elevator, the energy and restraint rolling off of him in waves. I pretended not to notice, when in fact, I couldn’t do anything but. Every fiber of my body was drawn to him, telling me to look up and go to him, to wrap my arms around his waist and lay my head on his muscular chest. But I couldn’t and I wouldn’t. This wasn’t a real relationship and he was not my boyfriend. The urge to be affectionate, to ask him to come in and stay the night, wouldn’t leave me, no matter how many times I repeated the mantra in my head.
This isn’t real. This isn’t real.
It felt real, in a way that made a hard pit form in my stomach, in a way that made me want to flee him and never come back. But at the same time, the feeling made me want to weep because I knew, even though everything we shared tonight felt real, it couldn’t be further from the truth. And that was how I knew it wouldn’t matter if I ran, and why I didn’t run from him back at the banquet, because this could never be real. Jackson wasn’t the type of man to fall for a woman—he was the type of man women fell for, and never recovered. I didn’t want to be one of those women, but after spending only my second night with him, I knew it was too late.
The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. I wanted to tell him again to go but knew it was useless. I wouldn’t really mean it and I hated myself for admitting that. He followed me to my apartment door in silence. Once we reached the door, I pulled my key from my tiny purse and inserted it in the lock before turning around. I stifled a gasp when I saw he was too close again, so close our chests were almost touching. I could feel my resolve begin to break as I looked up into his deep chocolate-colored eyes. If this was a game, I was losing, terribly.
“Jackson,” I said quietly.
“What did I tell you about saying my name like that?” he asked, but obviously wasn’t waiting for an answer because his mouth came down over mine and I forgot the question anyway.
All thoughts wiped from my head, I kissed him back, deeply, with urgency I didn’t understand. This felt like the last time, like he would slip away the moment I walked into the apartment, and I’d never see him again.
But wasn’t that what I wanted?
In the moment, with his arms around my waist, pinned against my front door, I didn’t know anymore and that was the part I was most confused about. How could one man wipe away all of my convictions and reservations with one kiss?
I pushed back, breaking the kiss. “No, I can’t do this.”
I wasn’t sure what I meant by “this,” but I had to get my head back on straight. I needed a minute to think.
“What can’t you do?” he asked, as if reading my mind.
I shook my head because I couldn’t have this conversation right now. “I have to go,” I said, turning the key in the lock and pushing the door open.
“Liza,” he called after me as I tried to disappear inside the apartment and close the door on him.
Against my better judgment, I turned around slowly, afraid of what I would see in his eyes when I looked back. Would it be lust? Pity? Something else I dreaded but desired to see at the same time? But when I looked at him, he was closed off, his emotions shuttered away from me. A pang gripped my chest but I ignored it. This was ultimately for the best.
“I’ll call you,” he said gruffly and with one last nod, he turned and headed back down the hall to the elevator.
I stood, staring after him for a minute but he didn’t turn around. Emptiness filled me but I ignored that too. I had no right to these feelings. With a sigh, I went into the apartment and closed the door.
* * *
“Why are you being so stubborn?” Nicolette said with exasperation after I refused to give her explicit details about the night.
We were sitting on my bed, our backs against the headboard and both of us in pajamas, passing a bottle of wine back and forth. She wasn’t home when I came in, and I was thankful for that. I was able to take off the dress and shoes, deposit them where they belonged, and take a shower before she came back. I don’t know where she was, and she didn’t say but had a forlorn look on her face as she came into my room. Just as quickly, she perked up when she saw me and began to ask questions. I kept shaking her off, telling her I was tired and wanted to go to bed, but she insisted we decompress with some wine and a little girl time. So here we were.
“I don’t really want to get into all of it, Nic. I kind of want to think about anything else right now. Like where you were when I came in.” I tried to turn the tables back to her but she shook her head.
“I don’t want to get into that,” she said and the look was back.
“What happened?” Here I was, being selfish again.
Nicolette shook her head again. “It doesn’t matter. I want to know what happened with Jackson, Liza. Why won’t you tell me?”
I sighed and put my head back against the headboard, closing my eyes for a second. “It’s so complicated,” I said. Those words felt so cliché.
“What does that mean? I hate when people say that,” Nicolette chided, then took a swig of the wine and wiped her mouth on the back of her sleeve, passing the bottle to me.
I did the same, starting to feel a slight buzz because I hadn’t eaten much for dinner.
“To be honest, I have no idea,” I said to her and we both laughed.
Okay, maybe it was more than a slight buzz.
“Just be careful, Liza,” she told me again, and I looked at her, curious.
“Are you sure there isn’t anything else you want to tell me?” I asked her one last time.
With another shake of her head, she looked down at her lap, and I could see she was trying not to cry.
“We are quite a pair, aren’t we?” I asked, not needing an answer.
“We are. I’m so tired of feeling sorry for myself,” she said, shaking off her mood.
We sat there in silence for a couple of minutes, each lost in our perspective thoughts. I wanted to tell her everything, every last bit of the night, but I was ashamed of my reactions to Jackson and my inability to control myself around him. How did I get in so deep and why did I have such strong feelings for him? None of it made any sense and I wasn’t sure she would understand because I didn’t understand it myself. But there were a few things I could tell her, so I decided to start there.
“When we first walked into the banquet room, Jackson was staring at this woman, a tall, dark-haired woman, gorgeous, across the room. She was talking to his aunt.”
Nicolette perked up, sitting up straighter and setting the almost empty wine bottle on the nightstand. “Really? I wonder who she is? And what do you mean, staring?”
“Well, staring is generous. It was more like a glower,” I said with a shrug.
&nb
sp; Nicolette jumped up from the bed and practically ran out of the room, and I wondered where she was going. I didn’t have to wait long because she ran back in with her laptop, sat down, and opened it on her lap.
“I’m gonna Google,” she said with a grin.
“How? We don’t know her name.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “I’m going to Google Jackson’s name and ‘women’ and see if anything comes up.”
Nicolette began typing away and I looked up at the ceiling, hoping something awful didn’t show. At the same time, I was dying to know who the woman was and why Jackson appeared to hate her so much. We sat in silence as we waited for the results to pop up on the screen. I was too afraid to look, even when Nicolette gave an almost silent gasp. She tapped me on the arm and I looked over at her.
“Do I even want to know?” I asked her.
She nodded and pointed at the computer screen as she turned it towards me. I looked over, holding my breath. There it was, in black and white, with a picture attached. The woman Jackson was scowling at was engaged to him at some point in time. Her name was Natalie Livingston.
“How old is that picture?” I asked Nicolette. I didn’t wait for her to answer though, and instead grabbed the laptop and pulled it on my lap.
Squinting down at the screen, I leaned forward, clicking on the image to go to whatever website it came from. It was, of course, from a tabloid, but the part that made me breathe a little sigh of relief, at least for the moment, was the date. The pictures and article were four years old.
“Look.” I pointed to the date and turned the screen back towards Nicolette.
She looked at it and looked back at me with a shrug. “So, he was engaged four years ago.”
I thought about her nonchalance. Was I freaking out about nothing? Something about it made me so uncomfortable and it made no sense. He wasn’t my boyfriend; we were pretending to be in a relationship because I fell for his lie in a moment of weakness. That was it.
I took a deep breath, swallowing the anxiety that was fluttering in my stomach. I wanted so desperately to believe, to make myself believe, he wasn’t affecting me in any way and that I could maintain my distance. I was almost successful. Almost. But I knew I felt something for Jackson, something I had never felt for any other man. The why didn’t matter at this point, at least not while I was at home in my room with Nicolette. There would be time to worry about that later. Right now, I had to figure out how I wanted to react to the news that Jackson had a broken engagement under his belt, and based on everything I already knew about him, hadn’t had a real relationship since.
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