by Amy Brent
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What did I do?”
She wiggled a stiff finger at me. “I saw you leave the party last night with my friend and when I got back to our room this morning she was gone! She left a note that she’d see me back in the city on Monday. I don’t give a fuck how much money you have, Mr. Hanson. Nobody shits on my friend and gets away with it. Now, what the fuck did you do to her?”
“Hold on a second,” I said, my hands up defensively between us. “Was your friend’s name Amanda Ross?”
She gave me a confused look. “What? No. It’s Amy Rossetti.”
My mouth literally dropped open. “Amy Rossetti… the consultant?”
The color drained from her face. She licked her lips. I could almost hear the gears grinding to a halt inside her pretty head. “Um…”
“Serena, I need a favor,” I said with a smile. I took out my cellphone and slid it across the table to her. “I need you to enter Amy Rossetti’s phone number and address into my phone.”
She glanced down at the phone as if she had never seen one before. She put her hands in her lap and leaned back from the table. I saw her swallow hard and when she looked back up, there was a look of “oh shit” in her eyes.
She asked, “Why do you need Amy’s information?”
“Because that’s the only way this asshole will let you keep your job,” I said with a smile. “And Miss Rossetti has a lot of explaining to do.”
Chapter 16: Amy
Saturday.
It was usually just another day of the week for me, typically spent catching up on things that did not get done during the week, grunt work mostly, work that didn’t involve speaking to anyone either in person or over the phone. Thank god, because I didn’t feel like making polite conversation with clients or debating the threat of cyber-attacks on the government with peers. If I didn’t speak to anyone before Monday morning that would be perfectly fine with me.
I just wanted a quiet weekend to regroup and reflect.
And recover.
I woke up feeling a little bit like I’d gone three rounds with Hulk Hogan. Every muscle in my body ached—some more than others, if you know what I mean. Every time I moved my body reminded me of the hard, passionate sex I’d had with Isaac Hanson. My back and ass muscles were even sore from the positions I contorted myself into as Isaac slammed into me. Sad proof that I wasn’t as young or limber as I used to be.
Great, I’m getting old and stiff; something else to fret about.
Unfortunately, the memory of our sex, as amazing at it was, was also the thing I most wanted to forget when I opened my eyes and instantly recalled the night before. The memories came crashing back into my brain like a tsnami hitting the shore, the waves overtaking me, pulling me under, refusing to let me go no matter how hard I tried to swim away.
I couldn’t explain why I did those things because I didn’t really understand it myself. I just felt ashamed of myself for doing them. Like I keep saying, I’m not a prude. I’ve had plenty of sex with plenty of guys and done plenty of slutty things.
But that was the old me.
The new me—the real me—the one who put her reputation before anything else, was simply disgusted with that girl.
On a normal Saturday, my internal alarm clock would have me up by six. I’d make a pot of coffee and sit at the bar in the kitchen with my laptop, answering emails or reading reports until the pot was empty. Then, I’d go for my daily five-mile run through the park, take a hot shower and grab a quick lunch, then it was back to work on whatever project that needed my attention. Other than bathroom breaks and time for Chinese takeout, my butt wouldn’t leave the chair until it was time to go to bed.
Sunday was usually a rinse and repeat of Saturday.
Even though I woke up late this morning—I could not tell you the last time I slept until nine-fifteen—I stuck to the routine. I had my pot of coffee and answered emails, scanned the hacker news sites, and read over industry reports, even though my brain was not really registering anything I was reading. It was just an effort to distract my brain, which was bursting with thoughts I didn’t want to have.
Thoughts of Isaac Hanson...
Thoughts of my brief time at Club D…
Thoughts of the things we did together…
His lips on mine…
His fingers probing my pussy and ass…
How wet he made me…
My mouth sucking his cock as my fingers tweaked his balls…
His tongue probing deep inside my pussy…
His cock ramming into me so hard I thought my heart might explode…
Fuck…
I slammed the laptop closed and pushed up from the table as if it had turned into a pit of vipers. I could feel the hot moisture pooling between my legs. My nipples had grown rock-hard beneath the flimsy night shirt. My brain was losing the battle. I had to get up and get moving before the lower parts of my body engulfed me fully.
By the time my running shoes hit the pavement, it was almost noon and hot as hell in the valley. I did my five miles through the park and was walking it off toward my apartment when I felt someone watching me. There was a black SUV parked in front of my building. There was a man standing beside it, looking my way. I put a hand over my eyes to block the sun and squinted in his direction.
Was I dreaming?
Was he really there?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Isaac was leaning against the same kind of black SUV that had dropped me off hours before. He had his arms folded over his chest, squinting back at me in the bright sunshine.
I momentarily thought about running in the opposite direction—I can run really fucking fast—but no, that would have only delayed the inevitable. I owed Isaac an explanation for my behavior. He had done nothing wrong. It was all me. I was the neurotic one with the issues I thought a night with him might fix. Well, I was wrong and he deserved to know it. Nothing was fixed. It only proved to me how truly broken I was. Even if he called me a slut and threatened to expose me to the world, I still owed him an explanation.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, glaring at him as I wiped the sweat from my face with the collar of my t-shirt. I must have been a sight in my Spandex running shorts and running shoes and raggedy t-shirt, with my hair in a ponytail and every inch of my skin covered in sweat. “And how did you find me?”
Without saying a word, he reached into his back pocket and brought out the mask I’d worn while we made love. He held it out, letting it dangle from one finger by the rubber band.
“I thought you might need this someday,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe the next time Amanda Ross wants to come out and play.”
I gave him a confused look and shook my head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s almost like you’re Cinderella,” he said with a thoughtful frown. “And I’m Prince Charming.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and took a step back. “Look, Mr. Hanson, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if you don’t—“
He gave me a look that let me know he could see right through my bullshit. It stunned me, froze me in my tracks. He took a step closer, the mask still looming between us.
“I’m talking about the best night of my life spent with the most amazing woman who disappeared before I woke up. It’s almost like Cinderella running from the ball at the stroke of midnight, though I don’t think you were in any danger of turning into a pumpkin.”
“That’s now how the story goes,” I said without thinking. “Cinderella never turned into a pumpkin.”
He seemed to be loving the fact that he had unnerved me. He kept smiling and said, “She did run away without giving the Prince an explanation.”
I held up my hands and patted the air between us, which was growing hotter and thicker by the moment. It wasn’t the sun beating down on us or the heat of the day that was making me sweat. It was the heat between us that was i
gniting the air. He felt it, too. I could tell.
I mustered up my best frown and tried to be forceful. Ordinarily, I had no problem repelling men with just a glance. But Isaac Hanson was not just any man. Regardless of what my brain was telling me to do, my heart —and the rest of me—was clearly telling me to do something else.
“Look, Mr. Hanson…”
“Call me Isaac,” he said, reaching out to brush a bead of sweat from my cheek. I pulled back from his touch, but his arm was as long as the rest of him. My cheek flushed when his fingertips brushed against it. “And I’ll call you… Amy.”
“Look, Isaac…”
“Why did you leave?” he asked, his voice going soft, suddenly sounding hurt. “Did I do something wrong?”
“You? Oh god, no.” I was muttering, trying to build an argument in my head while he kept dangling the mask in front of my eyes. “It wasn’t you. Honestly. It was me. I don’t… I mean… I never…well…”
He touched my cheek again. His smile returned. “So it was you, Cinderella.”
His touch made my knees wobble. I huffed and swatted his hand away. I stepped back, put my hands on my hips, and mustered every ounce of courage left in my body to push him away.
*“Look, Mister Hanson, if you don’t leave me alone I’m going to scream and a very large doorman is going to come out of that building and kick the shit out of you.”
He pulled his hand back and let the smile fade. “Okay, fine. Just tell me one thing and, if afterward, you still want me to go, I will. I’ll climb back in this SUV and drive away and never mention our night together again. And if we see each other in public I’ll pretend that I don’t even know you. It’ll be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but if that’s what you want… well… that’s how it will be. Fair enough?”
I glared at him for a moment, then blew out the breath I was holding and waved my hands in the air. “Fine. Fair enough.”
He glanced toward the building, then wiped the sweat from his forehead. There was no shade on the sidewalk. The sun was beating down from directly overhead. It was probably eighty-five degrees with no breeze to speak of. We were both sweating like pigs.
He held out his sweaty palms and asked, “Can we at least go inside? I’m melting out here.”
“No,” I said, head shaking, teeth clenched. “Just say what you have to say and go. The air conditioning in the SUV will cool you off on the way back to your little club.”
He wiped his hands on his jeans and narrowed his eyes. “My little club… I see... Okay, fine. Just tell me why you came to my little club. And why did you approach me at the bar?”
I blinked at the question. I was expecting him to ask why I ran away, not why I came to Club D in the first place. It was a question I was still asking myself. I said, “I don’t know…”
“You don’t know why you came or why you approached me?”
I sighed as I licked sweat from my upper lip. “I don’t know.”
“You know, for someone with a genius IQ, you don’t use your words very well.” He grinned. I didn’t. He spread out his hands as if they held the keys to the secrets I would not reveal. “Can I tell you what I think?”
I made the mistake of looking into his eyes. My mouth should have said no, but my head nodded yes.
“I think you came to Club D looking for me.”
I snorted at him. “What? That’s ridiculous. Why would I do that? I don’t even know you.”
“Because of the spark.”
“The spark?”
“When we first met,” he said, his eyebrows arching at the memory. “On the stage, behind the curtain. I stood next you and even though we didn’t know each other and didn’t even touch, there was a spark there. Like the air full of static electricity before a thunder storm. I felt it and you did, too. I could tell.”
“That’s utterly insane,” I said defensively. I looked at him like he was an idiot. “I think you’re still drunk.”
“You’re going to stand there and tell me that you didn’t feel a spark? Okay, fine. Maybe I was the only one who felt it, but I know you were watching me while you were speaking on stage.”
“How could you know that?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “You were too busy talking up that blonde reporter to have a clue what I was doing.”
“I heard every word you said,” he said, the smile returning softly to his face. “And I know you were watching me because I was watching you. Our eyes kept meeting. Because there was a spark. You can deny it all you like, but it was there.”
“That’s insane.” I looked away to avoid his eyes.
“Insane or not, it’s the truth.” He stared down as he rubbed at a spot on the sidewalk with the toe of his boot. “I thought of you all that day. I even asked my partner about you.”
I put my hands on my hips and cocked my head to one side. “And what did your partner tell you?”
“That you were a bona fide genius,” he said with a shrug. “And an ice queen, and that I’d be wasting my time chasing after you.”
“Well, at least one of you has a brain,” I said.
“Maybe, but that didn’t stop me from Googling you,” he said, wiggling his fingers in the air like he was typing. “Or standing at that bar Friday night drinking alone, thinking about you.”
“Please,” I huffed. “That’s bullshit.”
He held up his right hand. “Swear to God.”
I wrinkled my nose to let him know that I could smell bullshit when it was tossed my way. “You were standing at the bar thinking about me? Give me a break. You were standing at the bar trying to decide which girl to take upstairs. I know because I was watching you.”
His eyebrows arched over a hopeful look in his eyes. “You were watching me?”
“Don’t let it go to your head. I was watching a lot of things.”
“Well, no matter, it’s the truth,” he said. His eyes told me he wasn’t lying. “Didn’t you find it odd that I was hanging out at the bar by myself?”
“Well… maybe…”
“I wasn’t in much of a partying mood, until you approached me.”
“I didn’t approach you,” I said, eyes rolling again. “I just came to the bar to get my glass refilled. I’m pretty sure you hit on me.”
“I think there was mutual hitting on,” he said. “But when you moved in close to me, when our bodies touched, I felt that spark again.” His hand came up again with the mask dangling from one finger. “I had no idea it was you, but I knew there was something more than casual there. Call it intuition or coincidence or sheer dumb luck. I knew that we would not just be a one night stand.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And I knew that I was never going to be lonely again.”
We stared at each other in silence for a moment. The mask dangled, as if Isaac had removed it to reveal his true self. He wasn’t the billionaire playboy of legend who fucked his way through oceans of gorgeous women anymore. Oh, he had done his share of that, but at the end of the day, he was simply a lonely person looking for something more—and someone to share it with.
Just like me.
Now it was my turn to be honest.
I took a deep, deep breath, and told him the truth.
“I came to Club D looking for you,” I said quietly, staring into his eyes as I spoke. “I’ve been lonely, too. I’ve focused on my career for so long I don’t even have a personal life. Other than Mandy I have no friends, no one I’m really close to other than my family. I ordinarily don’t let people—men—get close to me, but when we met… the spark… I felt it, too.”
“You did?” he asked, the corners of his lips twitching.
“Yes, and I Googled you, too.” I giggled. He giggled. Apparently, Googling had become a sort of digital foreplay. “It was pure coincidence that my assistant Mandy worked at Club D as a waitress. She invited me to go and said you’d probably be there.” I let my shoulders go up and down. “I guess I was just curious. I wanted to see what went on at Club D. And I wanted
to see if the spark was real or just my imagination.”
“Was it as real for you as it was for me?”
I smiled and gave him a little nod.
“And did you have a good time… with me?” he asked quietly, tilting his head to one side like a little kid asking if I liked the Valentine he’d made for me. A line of sweat was streaming down his left temple. I clenched my hands at my side, forcing myself not to reach out and brush it away.
Or lap it up with my tongue.
Fuck!!!
Sigh.
Okay.
Fine.
“Yes. I had a wonderful time,” I said softly, almost in a whisper. I seemed to have lost the ability to lie, at least to him. I bit my lip as he took a step closer. The air between us began to boil. We were sweating like lovers in a steam bath.
“Good,” he said.
I should not have asked, but I did, “Did you have a good time… with me?”
He smiled again…
That beautiful smile…
Dammit, stop smiling!
He said, “As the old song says, I had the time of my life.”
I was blushing like a schoolgirl.