When the door dinged open on the fourth floor I said, “You know, I could just go to my room and dry off there.”
He raised one of those pristine eyebrows and pushed me clear of the closing doors. “You’ve got spare clothes? You seem to be going through them at quite a clip tonight.”
“No, I figured I’d just wrap up in a couple of towels and stay under the covers.”
He rolled his eyes. “Come on. I’ve got an endless supply of T-shirts. I can spare one.”
I stared at him for a moment, realizing that although I’d become comfortable enough over the past couple of hours to endure looking upon his beauty without turning into a pillar of salt, getting completely naked in his suite was upping the ante a bit.
He must have correctly interpreted the hesitation in my expression.
“What, you don’t trust me?”
“I don’t want to inconvenience you.”
“Oh please. I told you I wanted the company, didn’t I? Come on. I have the perfect shirt for you.” He smiled so his dimples deepened.
I melted into the hallway carpet just a wee bit and nodded. With those dimples he could have asked me for my credit card number, expiration date, and security code and I would have recited them while standing on my head.
He let the door close behind us and immediately riffled through a large duffel bag atop the luggage stand. I shuffled into the bathroom and stripped down to my bra and underwear, wrapping one of the hotel towels around my body and a second one around my hair. I felt a bit silly and a lot uncomfortable in the wet underwear, so my patented Macy practicality won out over any shame I might have felt. I was stepping out of my panties, thinking I’d let them dry in the shower, when Cole walked in with a soft gray shirt draped over his arm.
He quickly averted his eyes.
I flicked the panties into the tub and cringed when I heard them splat.
“Sorry.”
“No, I should have closed the door.”
“Well, here.” He handed me the shirt and I used one arm to hold my towel up and the other to examine the print on the tee. It said “Carolina Girls Do It Best” and had a picture of a slightly-too-masculine pin-up girl in a little polka dot bikini. The words on the bottom indicated the shirt came from Johnny Tuesday’s Cabaret in Charlotte. I giggled.
“That was the first show I did in North Carolina,” he said, smiling wistfully. “It was a good night.”
I squinted at him. “Do I want to know why?”
That made him laugh outright. “My son drove down from school. It was the first time he got to see his old man in heels and hose.”
“How’d he react?”
“He couldn’t stop laughing. Really gave me a complex for a while.” He grinned at me again, and then left me to dress.
When I exited, Cole was sitting on the edge of the bed holding a very fancy blow-dryer in his hands. It had more buttons than my work calculator.
Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but there were a lot.
“May I?” he asked, pointing to my head with the diffuser end. I nodded and knelt in front of the bed with my back to him. He tipped my head forward and started drying front to back, pushing aside dry sections as he worked.
“Why do you straighten it?” he asked while pulling hair back from my face. “Must take a lot of effort as wavy as it is.”
“I’m just used to it. I’ve had this haircut for ages, even since I was a little girl. My hair didn’t start getting wavy until I was a teenager. I had to start blow-drying it straight to keep the style.”
“Maybe you should change the style.”
I didn’t respond, but it didn’t matter because he was finished anyway. He pulled out his own hair elastic and pulled my dry hair back into a low ponytail.
“There. No wet pillows now,” he said, reaching over to unplug the machine.
I got up using the dresser for leverage and patted my hair in the mirror. Shiny. I gave an appreciative grunt. I found my purse and keycard and was about to bid him goodbye and thanks until the morning when I’d come back and fetch my wet stuff, but he’d stopped paying attention to me.
He stood beside the bed, extended the remote toward the wide-screen television, and scanned robotically, hardly assessing each channel before he clicked to the next. Finally, he stopped and a gleeful grin spanned his face. He put the remote on the right nightstand and looked at me. “I’ve found that no matter where I am in the country, and no matter what time of day, I can always find one of these.” He pulled back the bed’s heavy comforter and sheets on the left side and patted the cozy space he’d made. “My favorite crime drama show. I think it’s a weekend marathon.” He locked his eyes on the screen again.
I spent about fifteen seconds deliberating on the propriety of the situation. Get into a stranger’s bed, or head back to my room? If I stayed, would he think I was brazen? Desperate?
“Macy?” He pointed to the bed.
I swallowed. Quietly, I set my belongings back on the dresser and skirted around Cole.
He turned when I lifted my legs up to the bed, and didn’t address me again until the covers were up to my waist.
“I’m sure I’ve seen this episode before, but I’ve seen so many of them that I can’t remember what happens,” he said.
He walked around to the other side of the bed and sat next to me, but with his legs on top of the covers while I was beneath them. When a commercial break came on he looked at me and squeezed one of my knees I’d pulled up to my chest. “Warmer now?”
“I am, thanks.”
“Good.” He looped an arm around my back against the headboard and I snuggled into it without thinking. He didn’t seem to mind, so I leaned the side of my head against his chest, too.
He toyed with the end of my ponytail. “Macy?”
“Hmm?”
“You know…if the situation were different and I wasn’t such a rolling stone, I’d ask you out on a proper date.”
I could feel my eyes going wide as I turned to face him. “Me?”
“Yes, you. Why not you?”
I tried to sit up, but he pulled me back into him. “I…I don’t know. You could do better. Someone more glamorous. More worldly.”
“You seem to have me pegged wrong.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“I like brainy women.”
“Oh? Am I brainy, or simply cerebral?”
“Quit it.”
My heart pounded, and if he could feel the burn of my cheek against his chest, he didn’t comment on it. “I think maybe the beer has gone to your head.”
“Nope. I’m stone-cold sober.”
“Then you’re insane. You could have any girl. Any woman out in that courtyard would throw herself at you.”
“What’s wrong with the one I’m holding?” He squeezed me tighter, and rubbed his chin across the top of my head.
I let out a little pleasurable whimper I hoped he didn’t hear, and then sighed. “I’m thirty. Boring. Plain. Frumpy.”
“Add insane to that list. Maybe you need a new mirror and a long weekend of self-reflection. The pretty is just a bonus.”
“Whatever.” I whispered it, but really—hearing him suggest that I was pretty made me feel pretty…at least for the moment.
“Bradley has been trying to introduce me to his English composition instructor, but we’ve really only exchanged emails. She goes to all of his performances and brags on him. I’m worried she might be some sort of cougar.” He chuckled, but instead of laughing, I ground my teeth, feeling instantly murderous. Odd sensation, that.
“Maybe Bradley needs a new hobby,” I said.
Cole chuckled. “He worries about his old man. Thinks he needs an anchor somewhere.”
“Well, does he?”
He gave my little ponytail a tug and let it go. “I think…maybe he does.”
CHAPTER FIVE
I was sleeping soundly—the kind of sleep that’s so deep and good that you could pee yourself
and think it was part of the dream—when I figured out that the banging I was hearing wasn’t a part of my dreamland Nirvana.
In my dream, I was in a magical place where there was not guilt about taking a day off from consultations, computers, and numbers. I lounged on the beach—no doors to be found to knock on. That’s why I opened my eyes, and when I did, the room was dark except for the glow of the muted television. I shifted my gaze at the bed’s movement to find Cole tipping himself off the edge.
I ogled, slack-jawed.
At some point in the hour or so I’d been asleep, he’d stripped down to his boxer briefs and had been laying on top of the bedclothes under one flimsy blanket from the armoire.
I ogled his muscular back and firm rear as he padded to the door and paused in front of it. He wore his years really damn well, and that tree-climbing thought came to mind again. He was all smooth, lean muscle. Gorgeously fit without all the bulk.
He pressed his hands against the door and squinted through the peephole. “Shit.” With a grunt of frustration, he pulled the knob, opening the door just a crack.
Trying to preserve my modesty, I guess. I could see the door, so it made sense that whoever was on the other side of it could see me, too, if they looked in.
“What’s up, Dom?” Cole leaned against the doorframe, thereby obstructing Dom’s view into the room.
A familiar giggle in the hallway made me sit up straighter. “Shit,” I whispered.
“He’s hot!” the feminine voice said between little girly laughs.
I cringed. Just my luck, I’d get caught.
“That’s the same guy from your group?” she asked.
Dom cleared his throat and said in what was supposed to be a whisper, “You got any condoms? You know, big ones?”
Beth giggled again and I slumped, easing beneath the covers and pulling them over my head. God.
“Why would I have condoms?” Cole asked.
“Oh yeah, I forgot. You’re a monk.” Dom cackled and Beth joined in.
I stole a look over the blanket edge and saw Cole casting Dom a dirty glower. I could see just a sliver of Dom from where I lay, and saw that he’d pushed the top of his spandex dress down so his chest was nude. The rest of his dress rode his narrow hips like some sort of odd, sparkly kilt. “Come on, give them up. I know you keep an emergency supply kit for the rest of us hussies.”
Cole backed a bit away from the door, intending to push it closed, but Dom jutted his foot into the crack before it could close all the way. Cole trekked to his overstuffed duffel, ferreted out a leather toiletry case, and as he unzipped it Dom poked his head into the door crack.
He scanned the dark room, and I thought he had missed my supine form huddled under all the covers, but then his face jerked back to center and his eyes narrowed. “Whoa whoa whoa.” He stepped into the room with Beth on his arm. “Didn’t know you had company, man.”
Cole flicked a strip of condom packets at him. “Now you know, so leave.”
Dom caught them handily and tore off one, holding the rest out to Cole. “Sure you don’t need that?”
“Oh my God!” Beth shrieked. My dear old friend un-looped her arm from around Dom’s elbow, and tottered close to the bed to stand over me. “You really did come upstairs to take your hose off! Wink wink!”
Her giggles put her blood alcohol level at around a point oh-seven, if past experience was any indicator. She was likely still capable of reciting her address and phone number in case of emergency. Good enough.
I clamped my teeth and turned my gaze to the new man in the room. Dom was okay-looking as far as men-dressed-as-women went, I guess, but he damn sure was no Cole. Dom was sort of scrawny in comparison and reminded me a bit of Jon Cryer.
“I don’t want that. Keep it,” Cole said, pushing the offending strip back to Dom and guiding the smaller man out of the room by the shoulders.
Beth looked back and forth as if she were uncertain whether she should stay or go, and it wasn’t until Dom said, “Come on, babe,” that she shuffled toward the door.
Her footsteps sounded a bit odd, so I sat up to survey her feet. One of her heels had broken off.
I furrowed my forehead. “What happened to your shoe?”
Beth giggled again. “Okay, see, what happened was me and Gretch got into a widdle biddy fight. No big deal. Totally NBD.”
“She was awesome!” Dom said from the door, gesticulating wildly.
Italian. I knew it without even learning his last name.
“She jumped up on that bitch and wrapped her legs around her waist while pounding on her face. Best fight I’ve seen in ages. And that other chick, Gretchen, man, I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley. She has a spot-on aim throwing shoes.”
“Sorry I missed it,” Cole mumbled disinterestedly, following them both out.
I had a thought. “Wait, Beth—where’s Gretchen?”
“I dunno,” she called from the hallway. “She said something about scrapbooking something for Marko. She’ll show up. She always does.”
Cole closed the door, locked it, and slid the chain into place. Then he turned to me and took a deep breath. “Sorry. That was mildly embarrassing. Normally I deal with Dom without an audience.”
“Embarrassing friends seem to be par for the course tonight.”
“Yeah.” He chuckled and took his previous spot on the bed, leaning back against the headboard. “Me and the little guy go way back to my Air Force days. He introduced me to this shit. He’s the guy they’re trying to team me up for that reality show with. They’re going to have to call it Hot Mess if he signs on.” He smiled and shook his head.
When he reached down to pull his blanket up a voice said, “It’s okay if you want to get under the covers.” Took me a few ticks to realize the voice was mine.
“Really?”
I nodded. “I don’t have cooties. At least, I don’t think.”
He studied my face for a moment, and then said, “Good to know. Cooties make things harder.”
I picked up the blanket edge, and he worked himself beneath, putting about a foot of space between the two of us. It wasn’t nearly enough. I could feel his heat. Smell his cologne.
He turned off the television and the room darkened to pitch black. “Goodnight,” he said.
“‘Night.”
“Oh, just so you know, I move around a lot in my sleep. I might accidentally smother you.”
“I drool in my sleep, so I suppose we’re even.”
“You’re cute.”
“Like a puppy, right? Or a Cabbage Patch doll?”
“Quit it.” He draped an arm over my waist, and chuckled.
* * *
When the alarm clock bleated in the morning, the sun was barely up and the room still dim.
Cole hadn’t mentioned that in addition to moving in his sleep, he also went as deaf as the dead. Although the alarm was howling at a pretty loud volume, he slept right through it, and a part of me was really okay with that. The brazen hornball part of me I never knew I had. It must have been passed to me through some airborne contagion via Beth.
Sometime during the night, Cole had snuggled up against me. I guess I had been moving around a fair amount, too, because my borrowed shirt was hiked up around my waist. His knee nestled between my thighs, and I had an acute reminder that my panties were still in his tub. I guess I shouldn’t have felt embarrassed, because his crotch was nestled against the side of my leg. He was either really happy to be there, or was having one hell of a dream.
I didn’t want to shift, but at the same time didn’t want there to be any sort of awkward conversation about our positioning when he did wake. I mean, what could I say? Please don’t move, I like bumping bits with you? I tried to roll myself away a bit, but in the process grazed against the tent in his shorts, prompting his olive eyes open.
He rolled over slowly, groaning, and rubbed his eyes before slapping the alarm clock off. “Sorry. Hope that didn’t disturb you. Been a long ti
me since I’ve shared a bed with anyone. I think my body went into autopilot.”
I pondered that for a moment, but didn’t see fit to question his celibacy. I mean, if he had initiated sex, I would have had my legs wrapped around his waist in three seconds flat. Intelligent, mature, and sexy as all get-out? Cut me some slack. Even accountants need to get laid.
“It’s okay,” I lied. If it’d been up to me, we would have woken naturally, perhaps with him sliding a hand under my shirt or pressing some of those soft kisses against my neck. I sighed and looked at the goddamned alarm clock. Six thirty.
He must have saw where my gaze fell, because he offered a preemptive explanation. “We’ve got one more show in Greenville tonight, but since it’s Father’s Day and I’m so close, Bradley wanted to take me to lunch. I’m going to get a rental car and drive to Winston-Salem. He’s got a concert at a church this morning I’ll go see and then we’ll hang out until I need to head back this way.”
I nodded. It seemed like a pretty decent reason to be kicked out of a guy’s bed at the crack of dawn. My sense of shame ebbed, but not my jealousy. “His English teacher going to be there?”
Cole raised one of those perfect brows and before he could say anything I put up my hands in a conciliatory gesture.
He gave me a forgiving smile before I walked to the bathroom. When I re-emerged, wearing my undergarments, skirt, hose, shoes, and Cole’s T-shirt and carrying my still-damp blouse and drink-splattered jacket over my arm, he gave me an assessing look. He’d had the good sense to pull on a pair of sweatpants and was sifting through items in a hanging garment bag.
I cleared my throat. “If you give me an address I can send your shirt back to you.”
He pulled out a pair of black flat-front dress slacks and a very tame Oxford shirt and closed the closet door. “Don’t worry about it.” He winked. “Keep it as a souvenir.”
“Thanks.” I found my purse and keycard on the dresser and headed toward the door.
Cole followed behind me. “If you want to come to come back for tonight’s show,” he started, holding the door open for me, “I can leave your name at the entrance. It’d be nice to see a sober friendly face.”
Accounting for Cole (Natural Beauty) Page 5