She ran out of the hotel. Mick tried to follow her, but he was nearly blinded by flashing bulbs as soon as he stepped a foot outside. The paparazzi let Kayla by, but they swarmed Mick, making it impossible for him to get through them. It left him with no choice but to stand there, helpless and trapped while Kayla hailed a cab and jumped in, speeding out of his life forever.
Chapter Fifteen
For once Kayla was grateful for the big end-of-the-quarter report. Reconciling all the payroll numbers and double-checking that no one had been overpaid or underpaid could be tedious, but at least she got to stay in the conference room all day. Just her and Suzie and nobody else. A sequestration from coworkers, for which she was immensely grateful.
It was true that Americans weren’t big on soccer. It might be a huge sport everywhere else in the world, but it was barely even covered in the States. To the point where very few Americans would be able to pick Mick Attwater out on the street. Even if he was one of England’s top players, known throughout Europe as the bad boy of soccer before he was ordered into anger management. A soccer player could literally kill someone and it still wouldn’t make the American news cycle. It certainly wouldn’t get picked up by the media if he got busted stringing along an American woman who had no idea who he really was until she came back home to California and found out his whole sordid backstory via Google.
But that same American woman had been publically cheated on by a Suns football player several days prior to her showing up all over the European news sites, slapping the face of “the bad boy of soccer” in front of a restaurant full of onlookers. In that case, Kayla had found out the hard way—the story would definitely get picked up. Over the past five days, the story and well-documented slap had been featured on several sports news programs and quite a few gossip blogs. Whatever humiliation she’d felt over Marcus—well, this was ten times worse.
Kayla could barely walk through the office when she reported back to work the following Monday under the weight of her coworkers’ pitying stares.
The only one who didn’t treat her like the most gullible woman on the planet was Suzie.
Girl, don’t be embarrassed, she’d said after she flipped off the TV and scowled at the employees they’d found watching a recap of the story on a gossip show in the break room. That man is around-the-way fine. And I personally would be happy to be misled into bed by him.
Then she’d suggested that they get a head start on the end-of-the-quarter report to keep Kayla’s mind off the situation.
But immersing herself in numbers wasn’t making her feel any better.
She still hadn’t been able to make herself stop missing Mick. Their relationship had been a complete lie, but she’d come to cherish it over their short time together. And now, as the news stories were finally dying down, she still found herself getting sliced up by bittersweet memories of how happy she’d been and how complete she had felt when they were together.
It also didn’t help that on Saturday several wardrobe boxes had been brought to her door. The clothes Mick had brought her at Je T’aime Tourdin.
After signing for the deliveries, she’d grumpily ripped open the boxes, planning merely to catalog their contents so that she could decide which clothes should go to which charity. But what she’d found inside the box had been colorful and bright, like the underwear she always wore underneath her otherwise dull clothes. She’d known just by looking at the collection of tasteful pencil skirts and pretty blouses that she would look great in any of them. And that she’d feel like a million bucks—as opposed to the impostor she felt like when she used to dress to Marcus’s tastes. She’d wondered how Mick had been able to do such a good job picking an entire wardrobe out for her when he’d only known her such a short time.
Now sorting through the end-of-the-quarter report with Suzie in the conference room, she thought of those wardrobe boxes, still taking up too much space in her living room. She hadn’t had the heart to stuff any of the impeccably designed clothes into the trash bags she’d brought out for just that purpose.
“You know you’ve been staring at the same spreadsheet for over fifteen minutes, right?”
Kayla came out of the trance with a shake of her head. “I’m sorry,” she said and then remembered Mick chastising her for apologizing too much. The memory was almost physically painful, and she cringed, thinking of how her heart had exploded with so much joy when he’d said, “I love you, too” soon after.
Across the table, Suzie gave her a sympathetic smile. “I get it. I once let myself fall too far, too fast with the wrong person, too. That’s how I got Daniel.”
Daniel was Suzie’s eleven-year-old son, smart as a whip and a true credit to Suzie’s good parenting. But even though Suzie never complained, Kayla knew that being a single mother couldn’t have been easy.
Suzie’s eyes shadowed even further. “Speaking of wrong guys, Marcus had the nerve to call here last Friday. Said you didn’t answer any of his calls or text messages, and that was unlike you, so he just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Kayla rolled her eyes. Of course, Marcus, who’d never thought she was interesting or pretty enough when they’d been together, was acting as if he just had to have her back now that she was famous in the sports world. Perhaps remembering a different relationship than she did, he’d left her several long messages about how they needed to be together, how they couldn’t let stupid people keep them apart. As if it had been outside forces that had split them up and not his blatant cheating caught on camera for the whole world to see.
“As soon as we’re done with this I’ll send him a text message telling him never to call here again,” she told Suzie.
Then she started going down the list of numbers, but Suzie stopped her with a gentle, “C’mon, Kay, you’re not really here. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? I can finish up.”
Kayla shook her head. “No, I don’t want to stick you with all of this.”
“I swear, it’s no big deal,” Suzie said, taking the spreadsheet out of her hands. “Remember how you and your mom brought me ice cream when Latrell Jordan stood me up for junior prom? This is more like you cashing in a long overdue IOU—”
“’Scuse me, ’scuse me. This thing on?” said a voice over the interoffice PA system.
Kayla froze. The accent was unmistakably English. But just in case she thought some other guy with a growly London accent had gotten hold of the office intercom system, the man said, “This is Mick. Mick Attwater, doing something I shoulda done two weeks ago when I met the best woman I’ve ever known—that would be your own Kayla Edwards.” He heaved a sad sigh. “I’m going to be honest with her.”
“Oh. My. God,” Kayla said.
“You see, Kayla thinks I misled her for kicks and giggles. And she’s right. I did do that at first. Planned to get in her underpants and then get right out. The plan worked, and it was supposed to be like, ‘Well done, mate, let’s move on.’ But here’s where a simple story gets complicated—I couldn’t. I couldn’t move on because she was wonderful and she really seemed to get me and she’s soddin’ gorgeous. When you meet somebody whose wonderful, who gets you—even the bad parts—and is…soddin’ gorgeous but who has gone off professional athletes because of her wanker ex, what are you going to do? Tell Miss Wonderful, that’s all right, then, maybe next lifetime? So I misled her, and here’s the really bad part—the more I fell in love with her, the more I misled her. It wasn’t my best moment, mates, but what you don’t understand, what I don’t think she understood, is that the guy I was pretending to be so I could remain in her knicker territory—that guy is who I really am, who I always wanted to be. More than anything I wanted to be somebody who could make a woman like Kayla look at him like he was worthy of her, like he deserved a role in her universe. So yeah, I lied and all that. But not about the important stuff, not about how totally,
completely, impractically in love I was with her from day one.”
Kayla exchanged a stunned look with Suzie.
“So why am I telling you lot this? Quite frankly, because I haven’t really slept in five days. That’s another thing about Kayla. When I was with her, I’ll tell you this, mate, I slept like a baby. Now that she’s gone…no sleep for Mick. And the next thing I know I’m on a plane to Los Angeles, taking a taxi from the airport all the way here because all I really know about Kayla’s life here is that she has great parents, she has a best friend who’s also her boss and she works in payroll for the Suns. So here I am at her place of business to say, please, Kayla. Please believe me when I say I really do love you. Also, I want you to quit your job without notice and come back to Paris with me right now because I got a burning need to marry you and have a family. Preferably two girls because if I learned anything from this experience, it’s that boys are stupid. Please, Kayla, do it for your coworkers, who probably want me off the loudspeaker, though quite a few of them seem to be video recording this. Cheers, mates—hope you get a lot of money for the footage. Also, Kayla. Listen to me closely, Kayla. I’ve got your suitcase here with me, and I’m completely willing to return it to you…provided you agree to marry me and come back to France.”
Kayla could barely breathe her heart was beating so fast. She looked at Suzie, who said, “Girl, I will write your letter of resignation my damn self. You better go to that man.”
Kayla ripped open the door and ran into the main office, where she found Mick leaned over the microphone at reception, his neck craning around. “Kayla? Kayla? I’m beginning to suspect she’s not here and none of you got round to telling me that before I made a fool of myself. If so, let me tell you, that’s completely out of bounds.”
He stopped when he saw her, standing outside the conference room door, and his whole face lit up. “Oh, there you are, love.”
Kayla rushed past the cubicles into his arms. He caught her easily and kissed her like a man long deprived of oxygen, holding on to her like he would never let her go. And at that moment, she knew three things: they would both sleep like babies tonight, he was definitely not joking about how much he loved her and…
Their three wild and sexy nights had just been extended to a lifetime.
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781460331248
DIM THE LIGHTS
Copyright © 2014 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright
holders of the individual works as follows:
ISLANDS OF DESIRE
Copyright © 2014 by Lindsay Evans
LIQUID CHOCOLATE
Copyright © 2014 by Danita Carter
HER WILD AND SEXY NIGHTS
Copyright © 2014 by Theodora Taylor
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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