by Lisa Suzanne
“You too, Travis,” she said, my name rolling off of her tongue for the first time like butter dissolving in a hot fry pan.
I saw it in her eyes, too.
She wanted me as much as I wanted her.
Whatever bizarre, miraculous coincidence had brought us together didn’t matter.
What mattered was how I was going to get her back.
“This is my date, Tracy,” I said, finally remembering that there was a woman standing behind me. “Trace, this is my colleague Spencer. And his girlfriend Lindsay.” I emphasized the word “girlfriend” as I shot her a look.
She looked back at me, confusion in her eyes. I had purposely called Tracy my “date” so as to give the impression that it wasn’t serious. I needed to find a way to get Lindsay alone, and pronto.
We had some things to sort out.
“Anyone up for drinks?” I asked, figuring that walking to the bar would at least get Spencer’s hands off of her.
We walked over to our table, where we found Dan and Melanie sitting. They got up to go dance when we arrived, and I volunteered to get the next round while everyone else sat. “What does everyone want?” I asked.
“Same,” Tracy said, lifting her empty glass of wine.
“Bud Light,” Spencer said. It figured he’d order Bud over my preference, Miller. Pussy.
“I’ll come with you. I’m not sure what I want,” Lindsay said, that same look of shock still evident on her face. I idly wondered if she was still talking about her drink. “Excuse me,” she said to Spencer, and he held onto her hand for a second longer than absolutely necessary, as if he didn’t want to let her go. Maybe somewhere deep inside he had a feeling that he wasn’t just letting her go to get a drink, but I was certain that he didn’t have any knowledge of our night together.
I felt a low growl form in my throat as I watched his hand in hers, but I managed to swallow it down. He was touching her when it should have been me touching her.
How the fuck did this happen? How was she here? I was monumentally confused, but at the same time, I didn’t care about the hows of it. All that mattered was that it was.
I walked ahead of her to the bar, not sure what to say or how to react. On the one hand, I couldn’t believe that she had a fucking boyfriend. Had they been together when she and I had been? Did she love him? Was it serious?
On the other hand, I couldn’t believe that she was really here, in the flesh. All the times I had pictured her in my mind flashed before my eyes, the times when I thought I saw her or caught her scent on a breeze. These things hadn’t diminished one little bit in the two weeks since I had met her; my memories of her and our night together were as vivid as if they had happened only seconds before.
But she had a boyfriend. A good guy who had become my friend, too.
I got to the bar first, and she stood next to me, fidgeting in her beautiful silver dress.
“Tiger,” she breathed softly as the bartender got to work on our order.
“Gorgeous,” I whispered. I wanted to reach out to her. My heart was racing in her presence. I wanted to pull her in close to me, to run my fingertips down her cheek, to feel her skin under my hands. To kiss her. But she was here with someone else.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
“Please.” I was furious about the boyfriend bit, but one look into her beautiful brown eyes erased any reservations I had.
“Not here.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “No. I need to, um, clarify some things.”
“Get rid of Spencer.”
“It’s complicated.”
“No, it’s not,” I said, gazing down at her. I lowered my voice to a husky murmur. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you for one second since our night together.”
She looked up at me, tears filling her eyes. “It appears we’ve suddenly got some strings.”
I nodded. “Yeah. We do,” I muttered.
The bartender handed over our drinks, which happened to be complimentary, and I dropped a ten dollar bill into his tip jar. He nodded at me in thanks, and Lindsay took her drink and Spencer’s in her delicate, perfect hands as I grabbed mine and Tracy’s.
“Wait,” she said, as I turned to leave. “Meet me in room 204 in twenty minutes.”
“What?” I asked. I heard her, but I didn’t know what she was getting at.
“It’s a vacant room. Just trust me.”
How did she know that and I didn’t? “Twenty minutes?”
She nodded, and we headed back to the table.
It was the goddamn longest and slowest twenty minutes of my life.
I had to concentrate on sipping my wine so I didn’t just throw it all back in one gulp. Then I had to concentrate on not staring at Lindsay while she sat next to me. I was fully aware of her presence and still in total shock that she was really, actually sitting at the same table as me. I felt the magnetism between us, as strong as that first night. Her leg brushed against mine in the small quarters, and TJ screamed with pain against my zipper. I thought for a moment that he was going to claw his way out and make an appearance.
Finally, finally she excused herself to the restroom. I glanced at Tracy, knowing it was wrong on so many levels to go do what I wanted – needed – to go do, and then I excused myself as well.
I headed toward the restrooms and then cut off to the hallway with the hotel rooms. I found the elevator and got on it, and my gorgeous mystery woman slipped in next to me. I stared at her as she pressed the button for the second floor, and the doors closed. The two of us were alone, the music and noise from the party a distant memory in the silence that engulfed the elevator. We stared at each other, both of us unable to rip our eyes off of the other and equally unable to move or speak. The elevator skidded to a stop on the second floor, and we stepped out. She took my hand and led me to room 204. She pulled a keycard out of her purse and slipped it into the slot, and then she pulled the handle. The door opened.
“How did you know about this room?” I asked her as I walked in behind her. My voice sounded low and gravelly.
She closed the door and bolted it behind me. “Let’s not get into that. We don’t have much time, and I don’t want to waste a second.”
I glanced around the hotel room that Sunset Cliffs would rent out to potential guests. I wondered where her key to the room had come from. It was a beautiful room, posh and luxurious like the rest of the place, but the only beautiful thing I could focus on was the woman standing in front of me.
She moved into me, clasping her arms around my neck. I groaned, not believing that this was really happening, and I tightened my arms around her waist.
“I missed you,” I whispered.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” Her face came to a rest against my racing heart.
“I didn’t, either. And it was hell.”
“Tiger,” she murmured, pulling back to look me in the eyes. She ran her fingertips across my cheek, as if she needed to touch me to assure that I was real. “I can’t believe it’s really you.”
My lips found the top of her head. I breathed in her scent, that citrus picnic on a summer day scent that she had mastered. I wanted to taste every inch of her.
I leaned in to kiss her, but her palms found my chest.
“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to soften the rejection.
It didn’t work.
“I… I can’t,” she said, pulling fully away from me.
Panic set in. “Why not?” I asked through a clenched jaw.
“Because my boyfriend and your girlfriend are downstairs.”
“For one, she’s not my girlfriend.”
A flash of relief passed across her features. It wasn’t fair for her to look at me like that and tell me in the same breath that I couldn’t kiss her.
I had to know. “Were you with him when we…?”
She shook her head. “We were broken up.” She wouldn’t look me in the eye.
I gazed at th
e floor, because it hurt too much to look at her beauty. “Why are you back together?”
“Because of you.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
She gazed at me, her eyes heated. “Tiger, that night with you was… out of this world.” Her voice was soft and delicate and everything inside of me screamed at me to pull her back into my arms and never let go. She broke her gaze and walked over to the window, staring out at the beach. “And when I got home, my heart was broken. Not because of Spencer. Because of you.”
“I broke your heart?”
“Yes,” she said simply. She turned around and looked at me again. “I held what we shared that night in my heart, and the second I left your place, I knew I had made a mistake. I knew that I should’ve gotten your name or your number. I went to Starbucks, and I sat there drinking my coffee and contemplating everything.”
She paused, and I gazed at her, silently urging her to continue.
“I thought about going back to your place, but you had said you were moving, and I was serious about the no strings attached thing. I couldn’t get into a relationship because Spencer and I had just broken up and you were moving and it just wasn’t the right time. You never told me where you were moving, but never for a second did I think you’d end up in San Diego, not out of all of the places on earth where you could’ve gone.”
“But I did.”
“But you did.”
“Get to the part about getting back together with Spencer.”
She glanced nervously at the clock. “We need to get back.”
“Then hurry.”
“When I got back from my trip to Phoenix, I had to face reality. I was shattered. I wanted you, but I couldn’t have you.”
“Yes, Gorgeous. Yes, you could have had me. You can still have me. All I’ve wanted since that night was to find you again. I just didn’t know how.”
Her eyes softened. “Spencer called me and said he wanted to talk. He begged me to go back to him. He was familiar and comfortable, and I was so broken that I agreed to give it another try. He comforted me and made me feel better, even if he isn’t what I really want. What I really need.”
I noticed she had stated the last part of her confession in the present tense. That was enough of a window to give me hope. She still wanted me, and I for damn sure still wanted her.
I walked over to her and took her in my arms again, and she melted into me. I knew that what she had told me took a lot out of her; hell, it took a lot out of me.
Unfortunately, it didn’t change the fact that she was with Spencer.
“We need to get back,” she murmured again behind the threat of tears.
“I know.” I clutched her body tighter against mine. “Just tell me one thing.”
She pulled back enough to look up at me.
“Tell me that I’ll see you again.”
She glanced away for only a moment, and then my lips crashed down on hers before she knew what hit her. I had to taste her again. I couldn’t possibly let another second go by without kissing her.
She froze at first, and then she melted into me like she had that day at my place in Arizona before she had left. Her mouth opened to mine, and my hands gripped her hips closer to me. She thrust her hands into my hair and a soft moan escaped her, and I was ready to throw her down on the bed and bury myself deep inside of her. I had to feel her again. She was as necessary to me as oxygen.
My lips moved from her mouth down her neck to her shoulder where I bit her skin tenderly. She moaned again. She kissed my forehead and then I dragged my lips back to hers.
She backed away from me, her lips swollen and her cheeks flushed, and her beauty in that moment was an absolute work of art.
I couldn’t get enough of her.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, you will see me again.”
“You look so fucking beautiful right now that it hurts.”
Tears filled her eyes. She swiped them away and then took a deep breath.
I pulled out my phone and snapped her picture. I wanted to remember how she looked in that moment for the rest of my life. And then I stood next to her and snapped another one of the two of us together, a self-portrait. Seeing the two of us together would be my hope and my way of getting through the days ahead of living without her despite knowing how close she was to me.
“You’re not leaving here without giving me your number this time,” I said.
She rattled off some numbers and I programmed it into my phone. “Text that picture to me,” she said, her voice breathless.
I pulled her into me one more time and pressed a kiss to her lips. “You go first,” I said, my husky voice sounding foreign to my own ears. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.” I needed a minute to catch my breath after my encounter with her.
She popped into the bathroom and came out a few seconds later with fresh lipstick. Her cheeks were still flushed, but I figured the elevator ride down would give her a moment to compose herself.
She gazed at me for a minute, and then she unbolted the door. “Bye, Tiger.”
“Bye, Gorgeous.”
She grinned at me and then she left.
I stood in the room in a daze, totally disbelieving what had just happened.
Gorgeous was back in my life.
And this time, I was going to find a way to hold onto her.
I hit the bathroom of room 204 and checked myself in the mirror. My mouth was swollen and my cheeks were flushed just as hers had been.
Good God, she was a shock to my system. The feelings I had for her were unlike anything I’d ever experienced in my life.
Having seen her again made me realize that the depth of my feelings for her was so completely different from what I had felt for Julianne. Jules had been the object of my love for as long as I could remember, and I spent most of my life pining away for her only to find out that my feelings were unrequited. I wondered now whether it had simply been a lifelong crush and not the deep feelings of love I thought it had been, because what I felt for Lindsay was so incredibly different. The clarity that I had after experiencing these brand new feelings showed me that I had been blinded by Julianne for so long that I had been unable to see any other prospect around me. I briefly wondered how many opportunities I’d missed because I’d been so stupidly hung up on the wrong woman.
But none of it mattered now, because I wasn’t missing my opportunity with Lindsay. I couldn’t, not when I felt as strongly for her as I did. I pledged to myself and to her that I would be relentless in my pursuit of her. We would end up together simply because we were meant to.
I ran the cold water and splashed a little on my face, and I used the towel sitting on the counter to dry off. My normal coloring returned, and I headed back to my table where my date sat waiting for me.
“You okay?” Tracy asked, concern on her pretty face as she sat alone. I wondered where Lindsay had gone.
“Yeah. I’m good. Sorry I took so long. I ran into a client who wouldn’t stop talking,” I lied. I glanced around, trying to find Lindsay, but I didn’t see her. Maybe she was out breaking up with the jackass who ordered Bud Light.
“It’s alright. Just missed you.” She smiled.
“Want to dance some more?” I asked, not touching her comment about missing me with a ten-foot pole. I felt bad, but I hadn’t thought about her for even a second when I was up in that room with Lindsay.
“I told Dan I’d hold the table while he and Mel danced.”
“Want another drink, then?”
“Are you trying to get away from me?”
“Not at all,” I lied again.
“I saw the way you two looked at each other. Neither one of you went to the bathroom.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“For what it’s worth, she seems as hot for you as you are for her.”
I met Tracy’s eyes, and I knew that it would be okay to tell her. I was just worried someone around us would overhear, and I didn’t want to risk that
. Not at an office event.
“Travis, it’s okay to talk to me. This thing between you and me? Just friends. Not even with benefits, because you’re not available for it. And after seeing the way you looked at her, I am even more convinced that you aren’t. Available, I mean.”
I blew out a deep breath. I glanced around us, and no one was in hearing distance. I gazed at Tracy, who looked lovely sitting in front of me, and I knew she was right.
“I think I’m in love with her.”
She nodded. “I thought so.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Trav, we were dancing when she bumped into you. I was still holding onto you when you looked at her. I’ve never had a man tense up in my arms like that before.”
I smiled ruefully. “That was her.”
“Her?”
“The mystery woman. From the bar. From that night I told you about.”
Understanding dawned in her eyes as she gasped. “Holy fuck,” she murmured.
“Tell me about it.”
“What are the chances?”
“One in a million.”
“At least.”
“I’m sorry, Trace. For ditching you for a minute there.”
“Don’t be. Go get her.”
“She’s with Spencer.” My friend, my colleague, and the guy who had helped me out countless times since I had started at the Miller Designs San Diego branch.
“She wants to be with you.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it,” she said simply. “I saw the way she looked at you, and I saw the way she looked at Spencer. You win. I just pray for the day when some guy will sweep me off my feet and look at me the way you look at her.”
“Let’s dance, Trace.”
She grinned and held her hand out, and I stood up and took her hand in mine.
I had the sudden sensation that everything was going to work out, and I was glad that I had made a new friend in Tracy. She seemed to have all the answers, and I was grateful for her understanding.
I just wished I knew where the hell Lindsay and Spencer had run off to. I hoped it was for her to break things off with him so that she could be with me, but my gut told me there was more to it.