One Night With Her Husband (1Night Stand)

by Sara Daniel

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  One Night with Her Husband

  Copyright © 2015 by Sara Daniel

  ISBN: 978-1-61333-853-7

  Cover art by Syneca Featherstone

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

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  www.decadentpublishing.com

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  Also by Sara Daniel

  More Than a Fantasy

  One Night with the Bride

  Captivating the CEO

  One Night with the Bridesmaid

  One Night with the Groom

  One Night with the Best Man

  Once Upon a Marriage

  A Model Hero

  Dedication

  For anyone who fell in love and married while in college.

  One Night With Her Husband

  A 1Night Stand Story

  By

  Sara Daniel

  Chapter One

  A quarter million stolen credit card numbers was the best news Adrian Torres had heard in seven years.

  “You want to lead the team to San Diego to repair Sunburst’s image?”

  “Yes, sir.” Adrian didn’t flinch under his boss’s skeptical stare. “If you’ve read my proposal, you know I have a solid plan to reinstate their reputation as one of the most venerable, trusted names in the upscale hotel industry.”

  He’d spent hours perfecting the plan, so he could be Marcia’s knight in shining armor. Business success mattered more to her than anything he could do on a personal level to convince her their marriage deserved another shot.

  Mr. Gladstone rubbed his hand through his thick gray hair. “Sunburst is an important account, one I courted personally. You haven’t proven yourself with a campaign for a client half this size yet, let alone one in this much turmoil. Why should I trust you to lead the charge?”

  Adrian leaned forward. Regardless of the sweat dripping down his back, he’d be damned if he’d show his uncertainty to the older man. If he couldn’t convince someone he’d worked side by side with for the past six months to have faith in him, he wouldn’t have a chance with the woman he hadn’t seen in seven years.

  “Excuse my bluntness, sir, but my career didn’t start the day you hired me. I turned down a partner position with my former employer, where I successfully revamped the reputations of accounts larger than Sunburst Hotels. I can remove the tarnish from their image, and, if you look at my plan, you’ll agree.”

  “You’re a cocky bastard, aren’t you?”

  “Sure of myself, sir.” With the business portion. He only hoped his confidence would translate to his personal life, where he needed it most. “I won’t let you down.”

  Gladstone nodded once. “You’re leading the team to San Diego, using your PR plan as a guide. If you succeed in saving Sunburst’s reputation, the account is yours. If you fail, you’re fired.”

  Failure was not an option, and it had nothing to do with Adrian’s career.

  ***

  With her boss taking leave to be at his wife’s side for the birth of their first child, Marcia’s sole responsibility was to keep the company humming along on autopilot. But at the precise moment Luciana went into labor, hackers had broken through Sunburst Hotels’s firewalls and stolen sensitive account information, including credit card numbers and addresses of past and present hotel guests.

  By the time Blake texted, it’s a boy! Marcia had hired the best Internet security firm in the country to patch the breach. Over the past three days, she’d hovered over the tech team, ensuring their system would never be compromised again.

  Crisis over.

  If only.

  Instead, the real crisis had just begun. The media hit them harder than the plethora of retailers who’d been in and out of the news with the same compromised security. No one wanted to share their credit card information with a company whose trustworthy reputation had been reduced to a joke and a disgusted shake of the head. Their corporate promise of a worry-free night’s sleep had become the opposite, the hotel lobbies across the country resembled ghost towns, and the marketing VP and publicity director had both quit.

  “The Gladstone PR people are getting settled in the conference room,” her secretary informed her.

  “Thanks, Cindy.” Marcia headed toward her last hope to save Sunburst Hotels. The promotion to Vice President of Operations she’d been working toward for over a year had disintegrated, as had her marriage seven years earlier when she’d made a career her first priority.

  Leading her team into the conference room, she marched with her head held high, refusing to let her uncertainty show. Three people sat on one side of the table, all of them appearing to fall into the same category as the team following her—far too young and inexperienced to trust with her company’s future. She needed their boss, the much older Mr. Gladstone with his familiar, thick gray hair to infuse her with the confidence she could no longer continue to fake.

  But the man was nowhere to be found. The only other person in the room had dark-brown hair that curled around his ears, a trait she’d always found adorable but that did nothing to calm her growing panic. Accented by a dark suit coat, his shoulders appeared broader.

  Dear God, with all the stress, she’d lost her mind. She couldn’t have found a worse time to start hallucinating about her past-relationship mistakes.

  Her laptop slipped from her hands and clattered onto the table.

  Her husband lifted his head from his iPad, and his fathomless brown eyes met hers. “Might want to be more careful with that.”

  Okay, so she hadn’t lost her mind. Yet. Not the least bit comforted, Marcia stared at him, the faint Hispanic lilt in his tone coiling tendrils of heat through her middle. What was he doing here? Why now?

  If only she’d been more careful with her marriage. But she hadn’t, and she couldn’t deal with the past and couldn’t change the reality. The reality of him in her conference room amidst her colleagues, though, made no
sense. The only thing she knew for sure was the most handsome man she’d ever met had become more gorgeous than ever.

  Meanwhile, she— Oh shit.

  Her appearance had definitely changed, too, and not for the better.

  Chapter Two

  Pushing back his chair, the man who haunted her dreams rose to his feet and smoothed his tie over his flat stomach. “I’m Adrian Torres, a relatively new member of Gladstone PR. However, I’ve been in public relations for my entire career. I have a lot of good ideas to turn your image around.”

  Okay, so he hadn’t appeared out of nowhere to suddenly reclaim their relationship. His appearance made more sense, but damn if she didn’t feel let down. Of course, Marcia had no right to be disappointed when he’d chosen the same work-over-relationship priority she had.

  “You’d better,” she choked out, fumbling with her laptop. Either they’d become such complete strangers Adrian thought he needed to reintroduce himself or he didn’t want the others in the room to catch on that she knew him. Hell, she more than knew him. She could have written a report on the amazing experience of his cock thrusting inside her.

  Not that anyone would believe he’d once found her attractive enough to cuddle with. Working late and shoveling down meals at her desk had caught up with her until her curvy figure had become undeniably fat. She’d left him to build her career, but she’d stayed away until she could return to the same physical shape as when she’d left. Unfortunately, she continued to move further from that goal, rather than closer.

  Karma, the bitch, hadn’t given Adrian a gut and a double chin. Nope, he’d become more fit, along with giving every appearance of being on the road to a successful career.

  Instead of attempting to shake her hand, he glanced at her junior-level marketing team seating themselves around the oval. “I assume we’re still waiting for a few more people before we get started?”

  Since she alone represented upper management, somehow she had to push all her personal turbulence aside and match his fixation on business. “Everyone is here, except Mr. Sunburst, who is under strict instructions from his doctor not to overexert himself. He will, however, be in later today to hear our report.” And Marcia needed to deliver good news if she had a hope of saving her career.

  “Let’s start with introductions.” Adrian nodded to his team to go first while she settled into the empty seat across from him. She’d assumed, if they ever faced each other across a table, divorce lawyers would be present on both sides. So, despite the surreal experience, the situation was far better than the worst-case scenario she’d both imagined and dreaded through the years of minimal phone and mail contact with her husband.

  The introductions traveled around the table until, all too soon, the collective gaze turned to her. She cleared her throat. “I’m Marcia Johnson.”

  Adrian arched an eyebrow.

  She’d never officially taken his name after they’d married, and, despite his silent challenge, she had no intention of cluing in the employees who looked to her for guidance that they were witnessing her reunion with her estranged husband. Especially since he’d given no indication he wanted to clue them in. His unwavering composure suggested they weren’t in the same room by coincidence. But surely he recognized he’d dropped into her life at the worst possible time for her to deal with a personal crisis.

  “I’m the executive assistant to Blake Wellington, Sunburst’s CEO,” she explained, pushing down her inner turmoil. “I am acting CEO this week while he’s out on family leave.”

  “Hell of a week to be in charge,” muttered a woman from the Gladstone team who’d introduced herself as Jasmine.

  “Tell me about it.” Marcia shared a wry smile with the woman, grateful for the opportunity to tear her gaze from her spouse. Legalities aside, could she still claim him as hers? He could have moved on to someone who would put her relationship before her career. She balled her hands into fists under the table.

  While mentally tallying the ways she came up short in comparison to any new woman in his life, she recapped the hacker damage to their computer systems and the mass exodus of the marketing department to bring the Gladstone people up to speed. “The security leak is fixed. We have the very best firewalls, encryption, and consumer protections in place so this will never happen again. We just need to convince our guests and the public they can hand over their credit cards, book a stay with us, and carry on with business as usual.”

  “I have a plan to make that happen,” Adrian said, his voice confident and authoritative.

  For the first time since the crisis had begun, someone offered assurance instead of looking to her to provide it. Tears pressed against her eyelids. She didn’t have to be strong on her own anymore. Someone had her back.

  “We’ll start by appealing to your most loyal customers, the ones you never thought would go elsewhere, the ones who never planned to leave you,” he continued.

  That sounded personal. He’d meant a business context, not their past, right?

  “Shouldn’t we ensure they have something to return to, first?” she asked.

  If he no longer loved her, having him in the same room didn’t matter. And how could he love her? She no longer bore much physical resemblance to the woman who’d attracted him in college, when they had been so crazy in love they’d eloped over spring break of their junior year. Eight years later, she lived alone without so much as a pet goldfish to keep her company and only contacted her husband to discuss official things, like their tax-filing status.

  “These customers are the heart of your business. If they come back, you can save the company. If they don’t….” His sentence hung in the air.

  She’d left him and never returned, and he’d never chased after her. After years of minimal, strictly-business contact, they had nothing left to save. Working until at least 10:00 p.m. each night, she had no friends other than her boss’s family and turned to food for comfort when the loneliness became unbearable. Instead of taking Adrian’s words and his presence personally, she needed to focus on the corporation and career she still had a chance to salvage.

  “Are you suggesting we give our loyal customers a free night’s stay?” She could do the same thing. Her pathetic, warped brain refused to give up the personal angle. When Blake and Luciana had gotten married, they’d given her a certificate for a free night with a one-night stand matchmaking service as a bridal party gift. She could call the number and ask for a night with her husband. But would he accept a freebie with her? If he did, she had to brace for the possibility her new physical shape would turn him off for good.

  “A free night is a tool at our disposal, but we need something bigger for the main thrust of the campaign.” He captured her gaze and leaned forward. “You need to win back their trust and prove you deserve their loyalty.”

  Marcia’s stomach twisted until she fought the violent urge to heave. She couldn’t prove she deserved him because she didn’t. Maybe if she’d returned to his side within the first couple months, they could have worked out their differences, but the years hung between them, a chasm of time…and heartache. After she’d already left him once, she couldn’t imagine why he’d ever trust her again. The meeting continued, but with despair overwhelming her, she couldn’t process the flurry of words.

  “I’m losing you,” Adrian said.

  Through no fault of his own. Once again, she’d proven herself unworthy.

  “Everyone take a ten-minute break,” he continued. “Get some water or coffee, whatever helps you focus. I expect 100 percent attention when we reconvene.”

  A break. She could escape and regroup without every eye in the company watching her reaction and counting on her vote of confidence.

  “Marcia,” he called.

  Pretending not to hear, she bolted from the room. She needed every second of those ten minutes. The elevator doors opened, and she jabbed the button to the sub-level parking garage before anyone could follow her. As soon as the doors opened, she hurried toward
her car, tears blurring her vision as she fumbled in her purse for her keys.

  Not yet. Hold it together a minute longer.

  At last, she yanked open the door and climbed inside, slamming it behind her. Finally, she was alone. All alone. Her life stretched before her as an endless, empty highway.

  A sob burst from her throat. When she’d bought the one-way plane ticket to California, she’d expected her husband would follow and they would make up and pick up their relationship where they’d left off.

  But he hadn’t followed. And they no longer had anything left to pick up.

  Chapter Three

  For the first time since he’d found his “in” with Sunburst Hotels, Adrian’s confidence wavered.

  Other than the initial laptop incident, Marcia hadn’t been rattled by his appearance. He’d hoped for an outburst. Anger or outrage would have been welcome, anything to show she still had feelings for him.

  Pride had kept him from going after her when she’d left. But it had gradually been replaced by a choking fear she would look at him and feel nothing, that they would be strangers with nothing between them as confirmed by every phone call and mail correspondence to deal with their joint lives.

  He watched the numbers at the top of the elevator plunge to the lowest level and then questioned a nearby employee, who explained the building had an underground parking garage. Determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past, he took the next elevator down and walked through two rows of cars before he found Marcia. Through the car window, she slumped over the steering wheel, shuddering with heart-wrenching sobs. Opening the door, he settled his palm on her back.

  She lurched, horror mingling with the pain in her eyes—pain he’d caused. “No! Go away.”