by Carrie Lomax
“Is that why you were up so early?” Trent pulled out a fresh shirt and started working on the buttons.
“I’m a morning person, generally.” She studiously turned her back while he finished dressing. Trent tried not to take it as an insult. He knew she felt bad about kissing him yesterday, and wished she wouldn’t. It wasn’t as if he’d resisted. At all.
“Me, too,” he responded evenly. “I swear I didn’t mean to surprise you this morning. I wasn’t really awake.”
“It’s okay.”
“Nothing you haven’t seen before, right?” Trent tasted bitterness, and it wasn’t from the coffee. Which was pretty bad, just as she’d warned.
“I…sleep however you want to, Trent. I’m not a prude. I’m in your space, not the other way around.”
If he were in the market for no-strings action, he’d give his left testicle to be in her space. She’d tasted so good, and now he couldn’t think about anything but kissing her again, about all the things kissing could lead to. Yet she’d been downright rude in her embarrassment last night, and now she was working awfully hard to pretend nothing had happened.
Which meant…he had no idea what it meant. Did she hate him? Or think he’d pounce on her if she acted normally?
Trent didn’t have time to figure out whatever was going through Janie’s restless mind. He had other priorities. A business to launch. Employees. Maintaining Olivia’s respect for his professional capabilities. Janie was self-sufficient, so she claimed. Let her work out her own issues. He had more than enough of his own.
“Here’s my phone. I’ll be back around eleven-thirty. There’s a breakfast bar in the lounge until ten. Get your situation sorted out, Janie.” Trent’s words came out curt.
“I will.”
The hurt in her eyes stayed with him all morning. Janelle was made for lighthearted banter and witty retorts, and she took criticism hard. Midway through the second conference session, Olivia poked him to ask if he’d slept all right, her lips mischievous.
“No,” Trent replied, and forced his attention back to the speaker. Maybe when he got back to the room, Janie would be gone. The prospect should please him, but it didn’t.
* * *
“Rach?”
“Hmm? Janelle?”
“Are you sleeping?” Trent would be back soon. Unlike her, real-life Rachel was decidedly not a morning person, but it was mid-afternoon, Florida time.
“It’s Saturday,” she yawned. “I was napping. With Caleb.”
Lovely. She’d interrupted their post-coital, blissed-out haze. Janelle’s resolve hardened. “I need your help.”
There was a beat of silence, then a rustle, as if Rachel was getting out of bed. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m in Las Vegas and I did something stupid. I lost my wallet. I’ve canceled my debit card, but I don’t have an ID to get on the plane to come home. I have an old driver’s license in a box at my parents’ house. Can you get it and send it to me?”
“Um. Not exactly. I’m camping this weekend with Caleb.”
“Oh. How’s it going?”
“Fine, except I have to pee, and the bathroom is like a million miles away.” There was more rustling and the sound of a squeaky door opening, then slapping closed.
“Bathroom? It’s the woods. Can’t you pee on a tree?” she demanded of her former roommate.
Trent chose this moment to walk in. Janelle scrambled to take the phone off speaker.
“It’s a campground full of people, Janie, and I’m not dropping trou—”
Janelle finally found the right button before Rachel described what she’d be revealing, and to whom.
“Who are you...? Oh.” The corners of Trent’s sexy mouth ticked up. The man was devastating when he smiled. He didn’t do it often.
“Janelle. Did I hear a man in the background?” Rachel gasped.
“Don’t sound so shocked. It was just, uh, someone walking by.”
Trent smirked and walked by again. Janelle almost missed her friend’s question. “I don’t believe you for a second, Janelle Carlisle. Why can’t you ask your parents to find your ID?”
“Because they don’t know I’m here. I told them I was house sitting for a friend in Miami for a few days.” Among other reasons. Janelle kept her attention riveted on the notepad on the table, her face burning. She pressed one hand against her cheek to cool it.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with Crystal’s ridiculousness about sugar buddies, does it?”
“Of course not,” Janelle replied a little too hastily.
“You’d never do that. You’re too…”
“Too what, Rach?”
“Too uptight.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Janelle glared at the phone, then at Trent, who was still smirking.
“I mean, Janelle, you have to get over Ben. You haven’t been on a date in like a year. It’s as if you gave up. Just sleep with someone and get it over with.”
“You do remember what happened last time I went on a date?” Janelle demanded. The horror at having this conversation in front of Trent made her skin prickle.
“You made out in the back of the car. You said it was a great night!” Rachel insisted.
Janelle rolled her eyes at the phone. “The guy texted me a dick pic two days later to show me what I was supposedly missing out on. Believe me, it wasn’t much.”
“Who’re you talking to, babe?” Trent asked over her shoulder, loudly.
“You’re totally with a guy!” Rachel shrieked.
“Gotta go. Enjoy camping!” Janelle disconnected the call and surrendered the phone. “If she calls back, don’t answer.”
He slid the phone into his pocket. “I dunno, you were getting into the good stuff. Maybe I should give your friend a call.”
“Don’t. You. Dare.” He was teasing. At least, she hoped he was teasing. “That wasn’t cool, Trent. I’m trying to keep this fiasco quiet.”
Trent laughed. “Apart from catching up with your girlfriends, any progress getting home?”
“Until now, I was kicking ass.” Janelle read from her notes. “My bank card is being overnighted. It’ll arrive at the hotel on Monday morning. The government won’t send a replacement ID, so that’s a dead end, but I can probably get past airport security with the card on Monday afternoon. Changing it to an earlier flight won’t work without the credit card, but at least I can get home. I also called the phone company. Records show it hasn’t been used since the Rich Jerk stole it, and I’ve temporarily disabled service.”
Trent cupped her chin in his palm. She resisted the impulse to nuzzle, and let him tip her face up.
“Nice work, Janie.”
The approval she read in his expression sent a warm thrill down her midsection. Or it might be the rough warmth of his fingers against her skin, or both. Trent Mason knew how to push every button she possessed, and a few she didn’t know she had.
No shit he does. He dated a porn actress.
She was deluding herself. Trent was a genuinely kind person who’d gone out of his way to help a stranger. Above and beyond. She’d kissed him, insulted him, and he still hadn’t kicked her out. “Thanks.”
“You like Vietnamese food?” he asked, breaking the tension.
“Yeah, sure. Why?”
Trent gave her a rare smile and jerked his head toward the door. “Lunchtime. Everybody’s gotta eat.”
As if on cue, her stomach growled.
“Okay, thanks. I’m keeping track of everything you’ve spent. Once my card gets here, I’ll pay you back for everything. Including the hotel room.”
“You don’t have to pay me back for anything, Janie. I haven’t spent very much on you. Pay me back by getting out of sex work permanently.”
Janelle shuddered. “My one foray was traumatizing enough.”
On the street, they walked down the Las Vegas strip for two blocks, then turned down a side street. A few blocks away from the action was a modest strip m
all. In the middle was an unassuming storefront boasting authentic fresh Vietnamese.
“This was my old haunt when I was playing pro poker. I’m glad they’re hanging on. The food’s great.”
They slid into opposite sides of a small table. Trent’s knee bumped hers. They both retreated.
“Sorry.” They spoke simultaneously.
“Jinx.” Janelle rested her forearms on the table. She had no idea how to smooth things over. The situation was awkward times infinity. “Do you ever miss it? Playing poker?”
“No.” Discussion over.
“Why not?” She couldn’t resist prying. Nothing about this man made any sense. He’d saved her ass and acted like it was no big deal. Despite that video—and the accidental exposure—Trent had been an absolute gentleman. He was built enough that she believed he was recently out of the army, but how did that square with his choice of literature and his tattoo? Janelle’s curiosity was a living, tentacled creature. It wanted to wrap around Trent and suck the information out of him.
“It’s not what it looks like on TV. It’s all about statistics. I was always good at math, and after my parents died—”
“Wait. Your parents died? When?” She didn’t need tentacles. Trent let details slip whenever he let his guard down.
“My dad when I was a junior in high school, my mom when I was halfway through my senior year. A heart attack and a car accident, respectively.”
“Oh, my god.” Impulsively, Janelle closed both hands over one of his. The light contact radiated up her arm and echoed through her body. Trent didn’t pull away.
“It was a long time ago.”
Their food arrived. He squeezed her fingers and let go.
“But how did you get into poker?” Janelle continued. She picked at her noodles with chopsticks.
Trent hesitated. “My Aunt Suzie had financial control over most of my parents’ estate. She moved me to New Jersey from Colorado. I hated it. I resented her for selling the house and putting everything into a trust fund, even though she was only following my parents’ directives. According to the will, I could use the money for education, but otherwise I couldn’t touch it until I turned twenty-five or graduated from college, whichever came first.”
Trent fiddled with his water glass, rolling it around the rim, idly making wet circles on the wood table. “But there was one life insurance policy where my mom forgot to change the beneficiary. It listed my dad first, then me. Turns out the beneficiary trumps a will, so Aunt Suzie couldn’t take it and stash it with the rest of the estate money. Since my dad was dead, I got a quarter-million-dollar check out of the blue. I’d just turned eighteen. I moved out of my aunt’s house, dropped out of high school and studied poker like it was my job.”
“But how does that happen? I mean, some of the guys watched it in college, but I didn’t realize it was such a huge deal. How’d you get into the professional circuit?”
“I’d been playing online for a while. The game’s a weird combination of control and chaos, and it was easier to focus on poker stats than on how fucked up my life was. There was a lifestyle that came with it, once I started winning. Girls. Drugs. I did a lot of incredibly stupid shit.” Clearly, he didn’t want to talk about himself anymore.
“Is that how you met Penny?” Janelle didn’t know why she was pushing. Everything she learned about Trent made him more appealing. If she’d met him in his poker-and-Penny days, she wouldn’t have liked him at all. But now, as a man who’d gone through so much and come out the other side? She had no business being fascinated by him.
Yet she was.
“That’s a long story, Janie.” He brushed her question aside.
Weird to think that they’d known one another for twenty-four hours and they already had a rhythm. She pushed, he gave up to a point, then Trent closed down. Little by little, she’d get his life story out of him. It wasn’t like he never pushed her, either.
When you know, you know.
Oh, shut up. Little voices bearing clichés had no place in this misadventure. She didn’t know what to call this feeling, but romantic it was not. Janelle wanted to fuck him so badly it made her hands shake and her thighs tingle. There was nothing sweet about it.
8
“Where’d you go this morning?” Trent’s curiosity overrode sense. They walked side-by-side down the bustling sidewalk, the early afternoon sun steamy, a temporary truce sealed by inexpensive noodles.
“Swimming.”
Trent had no response for several steps, his mind busily concocting a slideshow of Janelle in very skimpy bathing suits.
“I’m usually up early,” she continued. “I’ve worked at the coffee shop since my sophomore year in college. On days when I’m not working, I swim.”
“You like it?” Dumbshit, she just said she did.
“Any other form of exercise requires multiple sports bras. It’s a pain in the chest. Literally.” Janelle gestured vaguely to her breasts, over which she’d buttoned her pink cardigan, despite the warm day. “We’ll coordinate better tomorrow morning, if you’re planning to wake up at the same time.”
One form of exercise requires no bra at all. Trent mentally swatted away the unhelpful thought.
“What’s on your agenda for this afternoon?” she asked.
Trent inhaled hot desert air and dragged his mind out of the gutter. “There’s a conference panel at one I think I’m going to skip. The session after that starts at one-thirty. How about you?”
“No plans. Maybe walk around the city, but it’s too hot to go far.”
“You can come with me, if you want to sit through a boring talk on IT procurement and business development,” he offered, expecting Janelle to wrinkle her nose and decline.
“What’s that?” She peered up at him as if he’d spoken a foreign language.
“Business development? Applying for jobs, only as a corporation.”
“Huh. I used to apply for jobs all the time. Sometimes I even got offers,” Janelle mused.
“So, why are you still working a job you hate?” he asked, puzzled by her lack of ambition.
Janelle dark eyebrows knit over the cheap frames of her sunglasses. “The offers were contingent on a background check. A few days later, they called back to rescind it because of my credit report. It happened a couple of times, and I stopped trying.”
Trent whistled, low. “Cold.”
Janelle didn’t say anything for a few steps. “It’s illegal to do that in some states, but considering I can’t even sign a lease, it seemed like too big a risk to look that far away. I sound like I’m making excuses, but I wasn’t just throwing myself a pity party. I chose to stay in Florida and work extra hard to pay down my debt. I just didn’t quite realize what I was up against.”
They stopped at a street corner. Janelle touched his forearm. Trent glanced down, but her eyes were shielded behind black plastic. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I didn’t mean to be short with you. It was a long, weird day.”
Olivia must’ve touched him like this a hundred times over the years they’d worked together. He couldn’t remember a single instance. But Janelle? Trent felt the burn of her light fingers through the cotton of his dress shirt long after the light changed. “Does your apology include the hallway?”
She laughed, embarrassed. “I got carried away pretending to be Rachel Stone. I’m sorry about that, too.”
“Don’t be. But Janie, fair warning. If you make another move like that, I can’t promise not to take you up on it.”
The hotel lobby was dark and almost too cold, prickling his skin. Trent’s eyes adjusted to the sudden change in light. He couldn’t tell if Janelle had picked up on the subtext: if she made another pass, he’d respond with a guaranteed yes.
“I’m a good girl, Trent. Your virtue is safe with me.”
Bummer.
* * *
Back in the room, Janelle flopped onto the bed while Trent disappeared into the bathroom. He sure took a lot of showers. Maybe it
was his way of getting some privacy, since there was none to be had in the tiny room. Housekeeping hadn’t come by to make the bed yet. The scent of his hair clung to the pillow. Janelle nuzzled her cheek against the crisp cotton.
“Tired?” Trent had pulled on jeans, a clean shirt and a blazer.
Janelle sat up. “I didn’t sleep well. Too much on my mind.”
“I’m leaving for the panel. If you want to come along, I’ll wait, but don’t take long.”
Staying in bed wouldn’t help her get her wallet back. She might as well try to learn something while she was here. Besides, the only time she felt safe was with Trent. She wanted to be wherever he was, including boring conference panels.
“I’ll be quick,” she promised.
Five minutes later, she’d fixed her makeup and buttoned Olivia’s jacket over her tank top. With the silly reading glasses, she was back in her Rachel Stone persona. Her legs were freezing from the air conditioning. She should’ve worn her leggings, though they weren’t as professional-looking as the skirt.
“Here,” Trent dangled a plastic square on a string. “I photocopied my badge and stuck it in an extra holder. As long as no one looks too closely, you’ll be able to get in and out of the conference. It’s not like you’re here to enjoy the experience. I’m just keeping you out of housekeeping’s way.”
“Thanks.” Janelle tucked the counterfeit conference credentials into her jacket so the corner was visible, then trailed Trent down the hall to the elevator and through the lobby. She held her breath as they passed the entrance to the conference hall. No one stopped them. Her. Trent had every right to be here. She was the imposter. Janelle released a breath and tried to act normal.
Olivia found them outside the sterile conference room. She winked knowingly at the fake credentials. The three of them filed into the seats, Trent’s long legs nearly touching the chair in front of him.
Janelle found herself absorbed by the presentation. She scribbled notes on the free notepaper, and jotted down the link to download a copy of the deck later. “This doesn’t sound so hard. You said there’s jobs for people who do this kind of work?”