by Sybil Bartel
“Hey.” Still not leaning away from me, his expression sobered. “You okay?”
Grasping for a distraction, I picked up my wine, but my hand had a slight tremble. “I’m fine.”
His hand covered mine, and he brought my glass back down to the bar. “Easy, darlin’.”
Scarred by my ex, defensive and out of sorts as his touch sent shock waves through my system, I rudely threw impolite words at him. “You’re worried about me drinking now?” His hand was huge, twice the size of my ex-husband’s, and his fingers were long and rough and too warm, and oh God. He smelled better than any man I’d ever been near, and I wanted to fall into his arms like my life depended on it.
“No,” he quietly reassured. “I’m just asking if you’re okay.”
The bartender arrived with the food. “Here you go.” Setting two large plates and a cutting board with the flatbread down between us, he glanced at Thomas. “Anything else?”
Thomas let go of my hand. “A couple waters would be great.”
The bartender raised an eyebrow at me. “Anything else for you?”
Cool air touched my heated skin, and I desperately wanted Thomas’s hand back on mine. “Just the water, please,” I managed as the aroma of roasted vegetables and fresh bread and the spice of the hummus platter drifted around us.
My stomach growled.
“Oh, darlin’, you’re definitely eating.” Thomas picked up the napkin closest to me, unrolled it and placed it on my lap. “Dig in.”
SHE LOOKED AT ALL OF the plates like they’d reach out and bite her. “This is a lot of food.”
“Yep.” Hopefully she’d eat something.
“I said I wasn’t eating,” she protested.
“I know what you said, woman.” I heaped some salad on her plate. “But I heard that hunger growl, and now you’re eating. Period, end of.”
“Woman? Really?”
“One hundred percent woman.” I glanced at her, but then I decided to tease her because the one small smile I’d coaxed out of her had lit a match, and I’d taken the hit directly in the chest. Now I was officially fucking addicted, and I needed another kick start to my heart like I needed to breathe. “Am I offending your delicate sensibilities?”
“I think we both lost the rights to anything delicate or sensible when we decided to drink in a hotel bar on a Sunday evening.”
I grinned because just being close to her made me happy. “I like you, darlin’.” I ate a piece of the pizza in one bite.
“Just like you like that flatbread?”
I glanced at her. Damn, she was pretty. Chewing slowly, I swallowed, then I let my guard down a little. “No comparison. You win over dough with sauce any day.”
“That’s because you had them leave off the cheese.” She picked a piece up and took a dainty bite.
I laughed, but how I ate was no joke. Keeping my immune system as healthy as possible meant clean eating. “Pretty sure you didn’t just compare yourself to dairy. Because if you did, I hate to break it to you, you’d still win, sweetheart.” And that was saying a lot. Even though I avoided it, I fucking loved cheese.
She finished her bite and wiped the corner of her mouth. “I hate to break it to you, but the more terms of endearment you use, the worse your odds become.”
I took the in. “I’m a man with limited means.” I put my hand on my heart. “When the beautiful lady sitting next to me won’t share her name, I’m left with no choice but to improvise.” I winked.
She almost smiled again. “Smooth, Mr. Flirtatious.”
“You forgot my name already? Now that hurts.”
“I didn’t forget.”
I cocked my head and baited her because I wanted to hear her say my name again. “You sure?”
“You’re relentless.” She smiled.
Oh hell, yeah, there it was. And damn, that shit kicked at my heart. “Yes, ma’am, I am.” More than she’d ever know. “Now give it up. Say your name.” I put just enough force into my tone.
As if it slipped without thought, she gave me what I already knew. “Fallon.”
“Beautiful name for a beautiful woman.” I should’ve felt guilty. I should’ve told her who I was. I should’ve done a lot of things different, but I was sitting next to Fallon Amherst, and just like eleven years ago, I’d made her smile.
The whole damn world could fall down around us right now, and I wouldn’t fucking care.
Letting her guard down, she blushed and her voice softened. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Jesus, I wanted to kiss her. “So, these odds you were talking about? Was that in reference to getting you to share a drink with me or a meal?” I tipped my chin at the food. “Because I think I’m batting a thousand.” Nothing could touch me right now.
Her guard went back up, and she shifted on her stool. “You still haven’t told me a story.”
“Give it time.” I winked to cover guilt and nervousness, because I knew I should’ve told her an eleven-year-old story, but I didn’t want to. Not tonight. Tonight I wanted to share this meal with her and let our pasts be our pasts. “I meant what I said in that toast earlier.”
“Which part?” She took a bite of the salad.
“To new beginnings.”
“How do you know this a beginning?”
Her tone was casual, but I read into the question for what it was. “It is,” I assured.
She pushed food around her plate with her fork. “Because…?”
Trying to navigate the information I was withholding, I gave the obvious answer. “Because you don’t strike me as someone who frequents hotel bars by yourself.”
“I don’t.” Her expression turned south, and she put her fork down. “A missed late meeting had me in the area.”
I figured her piece-of-shit ex had told her to meet him at the office. He’d said as much when he’d told Luna she might show up. He was a dick for not waiting for her. “You don’t seem like someone who misses meetings.”
Picking her fork back up, she stabbed a carrot stick and dipped the end in the hummus. “I’m not. But when my ex-husband is involved, there’s always room for misinformation.” She bit the carrot with vengeance.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Sorry she had to deal with him, or her daughter for that matter.
“Which part?”
“All of it,” I said honestly. “I don’t wish a marriage falling apart on anyone.” I saw that with my own parents.
“If it hadn’t fallen apart, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
I turned and looked at her so she could see I wasn’t laying a bullshit line on her. “Not sure what kind of man you’re used to, sweetheart, but I stand by my previous statement. There’s nothing pleasant about the dissolution of a marriage.”
She reached for her wine. “Have you ever been married?”
“No, ma’am.” Irony flowing like this conversation, there was only one woman I used to think about marrying, and damn if she wasn’t sitting right next to me.
Then I spent five years working for the cartel, doing shit even I didn’t allow myself to think about. Up until last month, my chances of having a normal life had been firmly between never and when hell froze over. I hadn’t been kidding about new beginnings, because here I sat, fate mocking every inhaled breath of her exotic perfume.
Taking a sip of her wine, she glanced at me, and her hair fell over one shoulder. “Yet you seem to have strong opinions on the subject.”
I contemplated not saying anything, but I knew everything about her that the tabloids published. She deserved to know the bare bones about me. “I witnessed firsthand how an ugly divorce tore my parents apart.” I still blamed myself for it.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Such is life.” I faked a half smile. “Pretty sure I turned out okay.”
She shook her head, but she looked amused.
I forked some salad with one hand and picked up another piece of the flatbread with the other. “E
at, woman. I can’t finish all this on my own.”
She dipped a piece of bread in the hummus. “It’s not working, you know.”
I finished the piece of pizza I was holding before dusting my hands off. “What’s not working?”
“Your boyish charm,” she said, casually taking a sip of wine. “It’s not working on me.”
My hand to my chest, I threw my head back and laughed. The fact that she said it wasn’t was proof enough. I didn’t give a shit she’d called me boyish. All the guys at Luna and Associates hazed me about my looks, called me the kid. They pissed me off, but with her? Saying I had boyish charm? I could work with that.
“Darlin’, you do realize the simple fact of you mentioning that to me is a dead giveaway?” I winked, because I could. “But I’ll let it slide.” I leaned toward her just so I could smell her intoxicating scent that was spicy but subtle and all woman. “It’ll be our little secret.” In a calculated move, I took her hand and kissed the top of her knuckles. “I won’t even mention the fact that you’re still sitting here enjoying my company.”
Inhaling, her back straightened, but she didn’t pull out of my grasp. When she spoke, her voice came out stone-cold even. “Is that what this is? I’m enjoying your company?”
I held her hand, I held her pretty green gaze with mine, and I lowered my voice. “Yes, you are. And I’m enjoying yours, thoroughly.”
“I’m beginning to think you have a thing for older women.”
I may have only been twenty-three, but there were three things in life I knew the hell out of—women, making bodies disappear, and my own immune system.
The first started eleven years ago when I’d laid eyes on the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. The second was a bad fucking mistake during a bad fucking time in my life. Lesson learned. If you can’t shoot a gun, don’t take a job with the cartel. You’ll do far, far worse shit than taking someone’s life. And the third was the hand I’d been dealt since birth.
Whether it was fate or just how the cards fell, or that I unconsciously sought it out, older women had always gone for me, and that suited me just fine. I’d never had patience for the games women my own age played anyway.
Stroking the back of Fallon’s hand, I didn’t lie. I knew who I was. “I like someone I can converse with.”
“You can’t converse with women your own age?”
Since she’d brought it up enough times now, I decided to address it. “Would you consider dating a younger man?”
No hesitation, she pulled her hand out of my grasp. “No.”
I frowned. “May I ask why?”
“Because I date older men.”
I knew her past, I knew who she’d been married to, and I knew what I was about to say was rude as fuck, but I said it anyway. “How has that worked out for you?”
For two whole seconds, she didn’t move. She didn’t even blink.
Then she picked up her purse and stood. “Excuse me.”
Shit. Shit. “You’re leaving?”
“I need to use the ladies’ room.”
“Of course.” I slid my stool back to give her room, but fuck.
Without a second glance, she walked toward the lobby of the hotel.
Pulling my wallet out, I signaled for the bartender.
Fucker sauntered over like he had all the time in the world. “She’s out of your league. You know who she is, right?”
Ignoring his bullshit, I threw down a hundred. “Leave the food and our drinks. If we’re not back in twenty minutes, you can close out the tab and keep the change.” Goddamn it, I’d been reading her body language, her expressions—I’d been making headway. I knew I was. The color in her cheeks, the crossing of her legs, shifting in her chair when I flirted with her, she’d been into it.
Then I’d opened my fucking mouth about her ex.
Fuck.
Reaching behind him to grab my credit card, the bartender shook his head, but then he smiled. “To be young and dumb again.” Handing me my card, he took the hundred. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.” Pocketing my card, I double-timed it out of the bar. Glancing at reception, then toward the far side of the lobby that led to the elevators and restrooms, I caught a glimpse of her sexy long legs and perfect ass before she rounded a corner and disappeared.
I looked toward the front desk again.
A brunette smiled at me.
Fuck it.
I strode toward the brunette.
“Good evening, sir. How may I help you?”
I tossed my credit card down. “I need a suite for the night.”
I LOOKED AT MYSELF IN the mirror.
A nervous flush had replaced the wary anxiety, and for the past hour, I’d forgotten all about my ex-husband and stepdaughter and their constant toll on my mental health.
I was no longer in a bar on Sunday night desperate for a glass of wine to dull the tightness in my chest because my ex wouldn’t tell me where his daughter was or why she’d missed our Sunday night dinner. I wasn’t even shoving down anger at his cryptic bullshit.
I was thinking about a twenty-three-year-old.
Twenty-three.
I’d never slept with a twenty-three-year-old, not even when I was twenty-three.
“Pull it together, Fallon,” I whispered. “Act your age.”
But that was just it.
I didn’t want to act my age. I didn’t want to act like a thirty-six-year-old going on fifty who’d been married to a man almost thirty years her senior.
I wanted to be the woman the blond-haired man in the bar was flirting with.
I wanted to smile for him. I wanted to know what he looked like naked. And God help me, I wanted to know if other parts of his body were as large as his hands, because my ex-husband only had a large bank account and an even larger ego. He didn’t have muscular forearms with ropey veins. He’d never winked at me with a half smile that said he knew every way to make my body sing. He’d never even made me orgasm. He’d never done anything for me except pull me out of the modeling world, get rid of my mother as my manager, and make me his arm candy.
And that’s where I’d existed for seventeen years.
In a loveless, empty, lonely marriage with a husband who worked a hundred hours a week and where I’d buried my dreams in a little girl who’d been more lost than me. All I’d hoped for was that I could raise her into a woman who felt fulfillment. Instead, she’d turned out exactly how you’d expect Leo Amherst’s daughter to turn out. Leo may have inherited a publishing company from his father, but he’d turned it into a record label before founding the Trinity Media Group, the world’s largest media conglomeration.
The fact that Leo, a self-professed playboy, had to settle down in order to get his father to hand over the last controlling interest of the original company so that he could leverage it to purchase another company didn’t slow him down. At age forty-five, he’d set his sights on me.
I was young, naïve and so tired of modeling and being under my mother’s thumb, I’d stupidly welcomed his courtship. I’d even overlooked his pathetic excuse for why he’d cheated on me with a drugged-out backup singer while I was away on a shoot, saying he was distraught without me.
It wasn’t until nine months later that I learned he’d fathered a child. He’d waltzed into the house, dumped a day-old infant in my lap, and said we were getting married. Then he made me sign an NDA, a prenup, and a marriage license. I was eighteen years old. Two weeks later, when I was sleep-deprived and bottle-feeding a baby who had fetal alcohol syndrome, Leo announced we were having our wedding reception at home.
A personal assistant I was sure he was fucking arranged for my outfit, hair and makeup while a nanny I’d never met took the baby I’d been holding for two weeks out of my arms. Then five hundred celebrities, rock stars, music industry executives, agents, and producers descended on our oceanfront estate, and people I’d never met wished me congratulations.
The only saving grace had been that my mother was
n’t in attendance.
I’d learned a week later that Leo had set her up in New York City in a coveted three-thousand-square-foot penthouse overlooking Central Park with a monthly allowance at Barneys.
But it’d been a small compensation the night of our reception.
Everything changed that night.
The nanny became full-time, Leo moved the assistant into the pool house, and I stopped modeling.
My life became a fight.
A fight to spend time with an infant. A fight to find the man who’d courted me. A fight to wake up each day and get out of bed. A fight to breathe.
The memories had me sucking in a breath, then another.
I would not panic. Not here.
That was then.
This was now.
I was free.
I had my own home. My own career. My own life.
And a twenty-three-year-old gorgeous man was sitting in a bar probably wondering where I went.
Why shouldn’t I enjoy a drink with him?
More importantly, why was I panicking after a single sentence from him?
How has that worked out for you?
He was right.
Older men weren’t the answer.
Except that didn’t mean a younger man was. No man was the answer. I knew that. But maybe one night of letting my guard down, if even for a few moments, wasn’t the worst idea.
Straightening my shoulders, I smoothed my hair, then I walked out of the bathroom.
And stopped dead in my tracks.
“You know what I think?” Taller than I imagined, more muscular than I thought, Thomas leaned against the wall as his gaze met mine and held.
His voice, his cologne, the way his eyes took me in with a reverence that belied his age—he made my stomach flutter.
My mouth suddenly dry, I tucked my purse under my arm and shook my head.
Courtesy of youth, his stance was the kind of casual that said he could take on the world. “I think you’re scared.”
I wasn’t scared. I was terrified—my stepdaughter, my ex, making the wrong move and losing another seventeen years of my life, all of it. I almost envied his untainted, simplistic perspective.
“What exactly do you think I’m afraid of?” I managed.