by Heidi Rice
The teary vulnerability, the panic had seemed to fade into exhaustion as her body relaxed into sleep. His penis had stayed hard and immobile inside her, feeling so good, so right.
Tally shook her head, trying to dispel the memory as the teary vulnerability threatened to return in a rush.
He’s gone, you’re tired. And you’ve had the night of your fucking life. End of.
However epic the night before, mornings after always sucked the big one. No point getting silly. The good thing was she hadn’t thought about Henry once, but that was no excuse to think too much about Brent. Last night had been the final confirmation that she was no longer the sad, stupid, gutless fool who had once confused sex with love. Absolutely no way was she going to screw that up now that he’d gone.
Her gaze landed on the clock on the wall opposite. Crap, ten to eleven. She threw back the covers. Time to get a move on. She’d taken a half day today—in hopes of getting a result last night. But she had to be at the magazine by one. Springing out of bed, she rushed into the suite’s living room naked—with a gunslinger’s swagger caused by the tenderness between her thighs—to find her clothes neatly stacked on the sofa. And her handbag lying on the floor.
Her heartbeat jumped at the thought of Brent folding her clothes before he left and putting all her belongings back into her bag.
Nope. Not going there. Last night was a strictly shagadelic experience. No sentiment allowed just because Brent’s a neat freak.
She took her smartphone out of her bag, ready to tweet her success. She’d posted a couple of times yesterday before getting to the bar, apprising her followers of the set-up. The possibilities. But she had gotten so lost in the experience once she’d clapped eyes on Brent, she hadn’t tweeted anything since. As she clicked on the app, she saw several hundred retweets of her last post and another hundred or so addressed to her—all basically demanding the same thing. To know what the hell had happened with #EpicHotLover, as she’d nicknamed Brent before she’d met him.
She scrolled through the list, clicked on the ‘write a message’ box. Only to have her brain—and her fingers—stall.
How was she going to describe last night? How did she explain how wonderful Brent had been in 140 characters or less? And did she really want to?
She’d never worried about invading the privacy of her dates before, partly because her online persona was completely anonymous. She’d had some jokey business cards made that she would hide at the London nightspots she went to with dates, so people could track her whereabouts the next day. Something she was glad she’d forgotten to do last night. But only a handful of people knew her real identity and she never identified her dates, simply giving them handy hashtags, such as #DangerMan for the guy who had nearly shoved her under a bus when escorting her across Oxford Street, or #TheRiddler for the idiot who had wanted to play twenty questions on a first date. Or #GaydarAdonis for Sam.
But for the first time, she didn’t know what to tweet about an experience. For starters, she couldn’t think of anything to say that was particularly witty. Or wasn’t X-rated. Her followers wanted the full snark after one of her blind-date disasters, she doubted waxing lyrical about her perfect hot date would go over half as well. In the end she settled on a quick diversionary message about morning-after etiquette and stuffed the phone back in her bag.
She rationalised her reluctance to go into any detail as she took a long, leisurely shower in the suite’s enormous glass-tiled bathroom. It wasn’t sentimentality, or oversensitivity, or because she had any foolish expectations about her and Brent. It just felt tacky and inappropriate and disrespectful to share and discuss Brent and his skills with half a million people he didn’t know. And whom she didn’t really know either.
Cocooned in the hotel’s fluffy bathrobe, she returned to the living area to hear her phone pinging uncontrollably.
Good god, didn’t people have anything better to do on a Friday morning? Like paid employment? Another ton of tweets had come through in the last twenty minutes, all of them insisting she give an account of the night before the morning after. She strolled back into the bedroom with the towel over her head and tossed the phone on the bed before drying her hair.
Maybe it was time to get over her habit and let @BlindDateBitch die. It had been fun while it lasted, but now she had hit the jackpot, her posts were set to get a lot less entertaining. She let the towel drop to her shoulders and spotted the envelope with her name on it propped against the bedside lamp.
Her heart crashed into her throat. Anticipation and joy blossomed in her chest, propelling her across the room. He’d left a note. Did he want to do this again? Why not? Hadn’t it been good, better than good? Why did they have to finish it so abruptly? Surely they were in danger of getting orgasm withdrawal if they went cold turkey too quickly?
She ripped the envelope, excitement making her heart hammer her ribs. Her brows launched up her forehead as a bunch of twenty-pound notes fluttered to the floor. How odd. Had he left her money for the room? It looked like hundreds. She unfolded the starchy paper, her gaze flicking over the two sentences scrawled across it.
Tally, I figure Sam already covered your expenses, but I hope to hell this covers all the extras. Thanks for an amazing night. You were worth every penny. B
Horror slammed into her first as realisation dawned. Quickly followed by disgust and a slow-burning feminist fury. But underneath it all was the crippling, sickening, overwhelming wave of hurt.
She’d liked him. She’d genuinely liked him. She’d enjoyed his sardonic humour, his quick wit and the care and attention he’d shown her even when they’d been shagging each other senseless. But worse, she’d thought he liked her. She’d thought he admired her sharp wit and forthright attitude. She’d thought that when he held her that last time, and eased inside her, there had been an acceptance, an understanding between them that went beyond the sex.
When all the time he’d been thinking she was a bloody working girl.
She grabbed her phone, brushing the angry tears off her cheeks, and scrolled down to the photo she’d taken of Brent in the bar. Clicking through to Twitter, she stabbed out the tweet on her keypad, fury making her fingers shake and going some way to deflecting her attention from the agonising knot twisting under her breastbone.
As the post zipped off into the ether, she hoped the bloody thing got retweeted a billion times. Because as far as she was concerned, Brent O’Neill could go fuck himself.
He might be great in bed, every woman’s one-night-stand dream come true, but he was also as much of a stone-cold heartless bastard and user of women as Henry...and her dear old dad.
Which just went to prove her alpha-hole radar was still as crap as it had ever been.
Chapter Seven
#NewRule: Some dates should come w/ a public health warning: meet the #EpicHotLover AKA the #UltimateAlphaHole: pic.twitter.com/ghj78sjU
‘Hey, man, I got your voicemail. Sorry it didn’t work out with Tally. The way you were checking her out, I figured you would make a night of it.’
Brent’s temper exploded at Sam’s casual tone. ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’
He cupped his hand round the phone even though his office door was closed and his PA, Jenna, appeared to be well-occupied giving the poor guy who’d come to fix the printer the third degree.
‘The joke’s over, man. I saw her business cards.’ His insides clenched with the sour mix of regret and futile anger that had been festering in the pit of his stomach ever since he’d run out of the hotel suite two hours ago. ‘The problem isn’t that we didn’t hit it off, it’s that I spent all night banging her before I figured it out.’
Shame thickened his throat and made his head hurt. Had Sam set this up deliberately, to teach him a damn lesson? As if he needed any more of those after Della had crucified him.
‘You shou
ld have given me a goddamn heads up. I don’t know what the hell Della told you, but I don’t pay women for sex. You totally crossed a line.’
‘Whoa! Hold up a goddamn minute. Tally’s not a prostitute. What the hell?’
‘You think?’ Brent barrelled on, his fury gathering pace. ‘Have you checked out her business cards?’
‘No way. She’s a friend of Zack’s girlfriend, Melody. She works at MyPad, that hipster interior design magazine.’ Sam’s pained reply sounded sincere. ‘Jesus, man, I know Della kicked you in the nuts over the divorce, but you’ve gotta stop being so damn paranoid. Tally’s sharp and funny and my take is she’s also kind of fucked-up about guys. Which made you two the perfect match for a no-strings hook-up. But she’s not that fucked-up.’
Brent’s temper faltered. So Sam hadn’t known Tally had a side-line? He guessed the fact that he hadn’t been sold out by one of his best buds in London was some compensation. But it didn’t alter the facts. ‘She moonlights as a call-girl, you dumbass.’ In a lot of ways, Sam’s innocence only made the sickening roll of regret more pronounced. Because now he had no excuses. He’d crossed that damn line last night without any help from Sam.
‘Hold up. I don’t believe it. She can’t be a hooker, because if she is, she’s no good at it.’
‘How the hell would you know that?’ Brent shouted.
Jenna’s head swung round and he lifted his hand in a quelling motion. Dropping his voice back to a hiss, he gave Sam both barrels. ‘You’re not the one who slept with her.’ And she wasn’t good. She was awesome. But thinking about how awesome only made the heat flood back into his crotch. He shifted on his chair, ashamed all over again by the instant reaction.
‘I’m not talking about her bedroom skills,’ Sam said as if he were a harassed parent scolding a two-year-old. ‘I’m talking about her business skills. If she was looking to pick you up for money, she had a weird way of going about it, because she never mentioned a fee to me. Not once. Did she mention one to you?’
‘Not in so many words, but...’ Brent hesitated. He slipped her business card out of his wallet, thumbed the corner as he read it again, the way he’d been doing most of the morning, and the tiny flicker of hope drowned. ‘Her card says she is.’
The events of their night together came spooling back and the knowledge she hadn’t mentioned a price made him feel more depressed than encouraged. What if she simply hadn’t had the opportunity? He hated the thought that someone as smart and funny and sexy as Tally had to sell herself for a living, but what he hated more was his behaviour. He’d jumped her, and carried on jumping her, without asking her a damn thing about herself. He’d used her to make himself feel good, while shunning any kind of emotional connection because that had been the easy way out. She’d pretty much blown his mind. But what was he to her? Another guy who got his rocks off at her expense? How did he even know her orgasms had been for real? What if she’d been faking them? It wasn’t as though he had a radar on his cock, and in her profession she was probably an Oscar-winning faker.
He thrust his hand through his hair. To think he figured he’d reached rock-bottom a couple of months ago when he’d woken up unable to remember his date’s name. This was worse, way worse. Because he knew Tally’s name, knew how good she could make him feel, how much he loved her bad behaviour, and how captivated he was by her smart-ass attitude, but he’d still screwed her without bothering to find out a single thing about her.
‘What exactly does the card say?’ Sam’s wry comment interrupted. Brent flicked the card over and read out the words, front and back, as the pain in his chest began to strangle him.
‘You’re shitting me.’ The rich rumble of Sam’s laughter echoed through the receiver.
‘What’s so goddamn funny?’
‘You don’t have a clue, do you?’ Sam replied, making Brent’s temper ignite.
‘A clue about what?’
‘You hooked up with the Blind Date Bitch, man. That is so awesome.’
‘It is not awesome, Sam. Are you on something? She’s a hooker.’
‘You wish.’ Sam carried on chuckling, making Brent’s short hairs stand on end. This didn’t feel like being the punchline for one of Sam’s jokes. It felt worse than that. It felt like the time Della had posted that picture of him on Facebook. It felt as though he’d just been outed as the biggest jackass on the planet. Again.
‘She’s not a pro, Brent, she’s a social media sensation with a bad attitude and a seriously smart mouth.’
‘Huh?’
‘The Blind Date Bitch? You haven’t heard of her? She’s got like a billion followers.’
‘You know I hate all that social media BS,’ he said, but the comment lacked bite, as a giddy sense of relief washed over him.
This was good news. Tally wasn’t a call-girl. What had happened between them had been real. He hadn’t crossed that line after all. There was nothing that...
And then his mind snagged on the note he’d propped on the bedside table. He scrubbed his hand over his mouth, his stomach bottoming out. And the money.
Shit.
No woman, however ballsy and liberated, was going to take that as a compliment. And knowing the little he did about Tally—she was going to want to kick his ass, big time. Why that should seem kind of hot was probably a sign he’d finally gone off the deep end.
‘Oh, man.’ Sam’s ominous tone interrupted the new surge of heat to Brent’s crotch. ‘You are in serious trouble.’
‘How? Why?’ But he figured he knew why. And the tidal wave of relief was quickly being surpassed by a tsunami of really bad karma.
‘Do you have a Twitter account?’
‘You know I don’t.’
‘You might want to get one. Because there’s one hell of a shitstorm going down on there...and you are right in the middle of it, pal.’
‘But I don’t know the first thing about Twitter.’ Even though he was a tech geek who had built a million-dollar business portfolio around finding coding solutions for start-ups, he’d always hated the artificiality of ‘connecting’ with people on social media. He’d only ever had a Facebook account, and he’d deleted that three years ago after Della had decided to wage war with him via her status updates.
‘Doesn’t matter, there’s a hunt on for Blind Date Bitch’s latest date, and the photo she tweeted two hours ago has already been retweeted over a thousand times.’
‘She tweeted a photo of me?’ The flush of heat exploded in his cheeks as his balls shrank to a quarter of their normal size. ‘Please tell me I’ve got my pants on?’
Hell, no, not again. This cannot be happening again.
‘Relax, buddy, looks like she took it in the bar.’
‘Thank Christ.’ But even as he thought it, he could feel his temper brewing. And right beneath it was a sharp stab of hurt. Sure, he’d screwed up by leaving the note. But did that excuse what she’d done? Hell, no.
Had she been using him all along? As fodder for her damn Twitter feed? It sure looked that way.
‘What the heck did you do?’ Sam chuckled some more, not helping with Brent’s temper control. ‘She sounds pissed.’
She wasn’t the only one.
Brent grabbed his iPad. Maybe he’d screwed up, but goddamn it, he didn’t need to take this lying down.
‘Where did you say she works?’ he asked, doing a search for the location of the offices as Sam told him again. ‘I’ll go and see her, get her to delete the tweet.’ And while he was at it, he could give Tally Gladstone a lesson on the evils of social media—and screwing with people’s privacy.
‘Buddy, getting the tweet deleted isn’t gonna do you much good now.’
‘Why not?’ Brent asked, the tsunami of bad karma washing up his neck to incinerate his scalp.
‘Because you can’t delete the ret
weets.’
‘I can’t?’ He groaned.
‘Nuh-uh,’ Sam said, sounding as if he was still enjoying himself. ‘But don’t feel too bad—one of the hashtags is kinda cool.’
‘Hashtags? Plural?’ He was only vaguely aware what a hashtag was, but the creeping sense of dread had him opening his mouth to ask the obvious next question. ‘What hashtags?’
‘I think the one that’s driving all the retweets is #EpicHotLover. No wonder all the ladies want to find you. You’re a legend in your own laptime, bud.’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ he snarled at Sam, but his friend didn’t seem to be able to stop himself from coughing up a lung with laughter. ‘I’m gonna kill her,’ he added.
‘Good luck with that.’ Sam sounded doubtful. ‘I think you messed with the wrong woman this time.’
Brent shoved the phone in his back pocket and marched out of his office, ready to commit murder now as the vein in his temple throbbed. Tally had set him up. Had taken what he had to offer and then used it against him. It wasn’t that she’d made him look like a jerk to all her followers—he didn’t know any of them, so why should he give a crap what they thought—it was that she’d taken what they’d had, what they’d done together in private, and then made it public. Maybe he’d cheapened it too by flipping out and mistaking her for a hooker. But hell, that had been an honest mistake. The fact that it hurt to know that Tally had screwed him almost as royally as his ex-wife—and after only knowing him for one night—only humiliated him more.
‘I’m taking lunch, Jenna,’ he shouted to his PA, who had her phone at her ear, as he strode past her desk. ‘I’ve got some important business to attend to. Cancel any meetings for the rest of the afternoon.’
He didn’t know how long it was going to take to find Tally’s offices in Shoreditch, but once he did, the Blind Date Bitch was gonna find out she’d messed with the wrong man.
Chapter Eight