by Lisa Suzanne
I stand with my feet in the water as I stare at the reflection of the moon. It shimmers as the waves roll in and out, and the soft lapping of water on my bare feet brings back a sense of calmness as I feel the anger start to dissipate.
Viv was upset we crossed some imaginary line she drew, and I suppose I can understand that. Tonight just felt like it brought us closer together, and I was expecting it to go somewhere. Instead, I find myself alone after I gave in to all the realizations I wanted to be with her tonight—and maybe beyond.
Maybe Mark knew what the hell he was doing when he sent her. I’m starting to think it wasn’t just for the company. Of course he wants his brother to be happy, and what type of woman is more suited for me than someone as savvy—and sexy—as Viv?
I draw in a deep breath. I haven’t been near the ocean in far too long. I love Vegas, but I’m landlocked in the desert there. I was born and raised in Chicago, which had awful beaches compared to this, but somehow sand and sun has always been a soothing balm to my soul.
My phone rings, the sound both shrill and unexpected in the stillness. I grab quickly for it for no other reason than to quiet the loud shriek breaking the quiet of night, and I’m shocked when I see Viv’s name flash across my screen.
“Hey,” I answer, my voice surprisingly warm.
“Where are you?” she asks.
I glance around as I wonder how she’ll take my answer. “The beach,” I finally admit.
“I was getting ready for bed and, um...” She takes a deep breath and then she blurts, “One of those huge toad thingies was in the shower.”
I want to say I told you so! I want to say that’s why we don’t stay at the roach motel! I somehow manage to refrain when I hear her sniffle.
I think she’s crying, and my chest tightens with concern. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Viv. What do you want to do?”
“I don’t want to stay here. I called Mark and he’s in the process of unfreezing your card. He approved wherever you choose for tonight.”
A rush of relief filters through me.
“Our bags are still in the room and I’m not,” she says. She says it in a way that tells me she’s not going the fuck back in there with whatever the hell that mutant toad is.
“I’m already at the Ritz.” I start walking up the sand back toward my shoes. “I’ll head up and reserve a couple rooms and then come get you.”
“You’re at the Ritz?”
I clear my throat but don’t answer. “I’ll be back soon, okay?”
“Thank you, Brian.” She says it with so much gratitude that I can’t help but want to run over and hold her in my arms.
Wait.
Hold her in my arms?
That’s new.
Fuck her, sure. Kiss her like we did on the pier again—of course.
But hold her?
That’s the sort of relationship shit I’ve avoided since the day I found out my girlfriend was only with me because my brother was famous.
I trudge up to the reception desk as I wonder what the hell I’m getting myself into here. I ask for two rooms, and the clerk with a shiny gold nametag that says Rebecca on it shakes her head. “I’m afraid we’re nearly at capacity tonight due to the textile convention. I don’t have any of our regular rooms available, but I can offer a two-bedroom suite instead.”
I think about it for all of a half a second before I agree. “That’ll be fine.” After the roach motel, we deserve some pampering. I hand over my license and the black card I kept in my wallet for old time’s sake.
“Welcome back, Mr. Fox,” Rebecca says as she taps the keys.
I give her a tight smile and a nod, and then my phone starts ringing again. I figure it’s Viv calling me back to check where I am, but it’s not. It’s Tess.
I send the call to voicemail and get two room keys from Rebecca. I call for a driver since Mark’s footing the bill, and when I’m comfortable in the back of a town car, I check my voicemail.
“We’ve got a problem.” Tess’s voice is urgent through the recording. “Call me as soon as you can.”
I dial her back.
“Jason wants to get back together,” she answers. “He wants something serious with me.”
“So?” I’m confused here as to why this is a problem for us. Besides, I sort of already knew.
“So I’m fucking you!” She says it like the answer’s obvious.
“Three times,” I remind her.
“We just made plans to fuck some more this weekend!”
I school my voice to calmness. “Have you been drinking?”
“A little, but that’s beside the point.”
I chuckle. “It’s exactly the point. Look on it tomorrow and it won’t seem like that big a deal. Look, what we have is casual. If you want to get back with Jason, I won’t stand in your way. In fact, we should probably just cancel our plans and keep what happened between us.” Sleeping with my best friend’s ex wasn’t the smartest move in the first place, and besides, the more time I spend around Viv, the more I think I want to try to pursue something with her.
“Three of us. Maybe four.”
“Who else knows?”
“Reese. I told her. And she probably told Mark,” Tess says. Each word is a little more frantic than the last. I don’t mention Vivian also knows since she walked in on the two of us her first day at FDB.
“It’s fine. Jason never has to know.”
“God, I don’t know what to do,” she says. “Maybe I never wanted it to end with him in the first place, and now I’ve slept with his best friend.”
“Is the guy you’re casually screwing really the right person to discuss this with?” I ask. She’s quiet in response, so I continue. “I won’t tell anyone if you won’t. If you want to be with Jason, be with him. Have fun. He could use the brand of excitement I know you can give him.”
She lets out a long breath, and then she finally says, “Okay. Thanks, Brian.”
My chest puffs with pride as I hang up. I feel a little like a superhero. I’m saving women left and right and I’m back on top of my game with unlimited spending at my disposal and the Ritz in my rearview.
When we pull into the Miami Airport Hotel, I immediately spot Viv. She’s standing out front in slippers and apparently what she wears to bed—a white tank top and black shorts that are so short her ass cheeks are practically hanging out. Her hair is twisted up off her neck and her arms are crossed over her chest. I can vividly picture very hard nipples poking through the incredibly thin material of her shirt despite the way her arms are crossed.
I stare at her unabashedly from the back of the car as the driver puts it in park, and I leap out of the car as soon as it’s safe.
I’ll admit I like seeing her like this, but that doesn’t mean I want the entire world to.
“Oh, thank God,” she says, and I feel a rush of desire bolt through me as she drops her arms to her sides. Sure enough, her hard nipples are right there for me to stare at. My eyes flick down automatically, but I focus them purposefully back on her eyes.
“Is our shit still in the room?” I ask.
She nods. “I abandoned my toiletry bag in the bathroom.”
“Would you like to get it or would you like me to?” I ask dryly.
She shakes her head. “You.”
I nod. If I hadn’t seen one of those same toads myself in my own room, I’d be rolling my eyes. But that fucker was huge and scary, and I’m not about to abandon Viv in her time of need. “I’ve got this.”
“Thank you,” she whispers.
My eyes flick down to her chest again and it’s exactly the sustenance I need to get me through this task. “Now get your half-naked ass in the back of the car before I...” I trail off. Before I what?
What am I going to do? Take her right here in front of the hotel?
“You gonna finish that sentence?” she asks as she raises an eyebrow.
I grin at her before I turn to go into the hotel. “Use your imagination.”
I stop at the front desk first. “We’ll be expecting a full refund for both rooms,” I announce. Some people standing in the lobby look over in my direction as they wonder what the issue is, so I don’t beat around the bush. “The poisonous toads we found in two different rooms are disgusting and I’ll never stay here again.”
The desk clerk mumbles an apology, I give him our room numbers, and then I head up to Viv’s room to battle whatever mutants are in there so I can get our stuff.
chapter twenty-two
“Did you see it?” she asks after I return to the car. Her eyes are wide with worry. “Was it bigger than the one in your room?”
I chuckle as I hand her my suit jacket—it’s the only warm thing I have with me on this trip, and further, it’s the only thing within reach that can provide some coverage for her.
“I didn’t see it. Your screams must’ve scared it off.” She narrows her eyes at me in a glare, and I laugh. We’re both quiet for a beat as she wrestles into my jacket, and I finally glance away from her as I mutter, “I’d like to hear those screams.”
She shakes her head as she rolls her eyes. “You have got to stop.”
My jacket is big on her small frame. Her torso is entirely covered, but my eyes land on the curve of her neck for a beat as I wonder what it would feel like beneath my tongue. She gave me the sweetest preview earlier with that kiss, but I need more. I suddenly crave more with a voracious appetite I’m not sure how to control.
I sigh. “I feel like if you really wanted me to stop, you wouldn’t be in the back of this car with me right now. You’d have figured out your own solution rather than calling me.”
She’s quiet, and I know it’s because I’ve cornered her. She could’ve called the front desk to get her stuff, but she didn’t. She called me. She wanted me to come save her. And here I am, her knight in shining armor, ready to battle the toad and get our bags and provide her with my jacket in the way only a real, true superhero can do.
I might be giving myself more credit than I deserve...but I need the confidence boost. She manages to knock me down another peg every time I’m around her. Being able to do something for her this time pushes me almost back to an even playing field.
Almost.
I have a feeling I’ll never really be on an even playing field with her, but I haven’t exactly figured out why just yet.
“Your bags were in there, too,” she mutters. It’s a weak defense and we both know it. She ran into a crisis and somehow she chose me to be her savior. If she hated me like she claims she does, she’d have ditched our room and my bags and gotten herself some new digs.
But she didn’t.
I don’t respond as that thought settles between us. When we get close to the Ritz, she digs through her bag and finally pulls out some clothes. “Turn toward the window,” she says, and I wonder for the first time why she pulled my jacket on when she had her stuff inches from her feet.
I do what she says, and I watch the landscape as it passes us by. It’s dark in the back of the car, yet a light from outside draws my attention to her silhouette in the reflection of the window.
She bumps into me as she wrestles out of her shorts to pull on her jeans. I catch a glimpse of panties—they’re dark, and I can’t tell the color or the pattern, but my dick hardens painfully as I imagine their soft silkiness beneath my hands as she’s climbing on top of me.
I close my eyes for two reasons. She asked me to turn toward the window, and a dagger of guilt pierces my gut as I watch her when she asked me to turn away.
The very idea that I feel guilty watching her change tells me she’s changed me already.
In the past, I wouldn’t have cared. I’d have turned toward her in the middle of her changing and openly ogled her. I don’t want to do that with Viv, though. I respect her privacy. I respect her, and I don’t even know when the hell that happened.
But I also want to give into the image in my mind for a beat. I’m only snapped out of it when she says, “Okay, I’m decent.”
I open my eyes and turn from the window, and she’s wearing jeans and the same Raiders sweatshirt she wore on the plane earlier. She looks different—younger, more innocent, not quite as hard and proper as I’m used to seeing her, yet that image of her in that white tank top and tiny black shorts is seared into my mind.
“I liked the other outfit better,” I admit.
She giggles as she hands me the suit jacket. “I didn’t think it would be appropriate for waltzing through the Ritz.”
“Neither’s the Raiders sweatshirt.”
She narrows her eyes at me, but before she can retort with some witty comeback about how great her team is, we pull in front of the hotel. It’s late, and suddenly I’m exhausted. It’s been a long day, and tomorrow won’t be any better since we have an early morning, but at least I got my way.
“They didn’t have two single rooms, but I got us a suite with two bedrooms since my brother’s footing the bill,” I say as I help her out of the back of the car. She opens her mouth to protest, but I cut her off. “It’s one night and it won’t even dent his checkbook. Trust me.”
She closes her mouth and nods, and I feel like I’ve sort of won this particular round.
We make our way through the lobby and toward the elevators, leaving our bags with our driver, who will work with the bellhop to get our stuff to our room. This is the life I’m used to, and I enjoy the look of appreciation on her face at the opulence of the lobby—the stately mahogany columns are a far cry from the Miami Airport Hotel we just left.
We take a semi-private elevator to the eighteenth floor. I haven’t stayed in this particular suite before, but I know this hotel and I know our room faces the ocean. I walk through the sitting area and open the doors leading to the balcony. The air is thick with salt and humidity, and I collapse into one of the chairs out there. I need a few minutes of listening to the waves lap at the shore to clear my mind—especially after that tank top and especially knowing she’ll be wearing it just one bedroom away from my own tonight.
She slides into the chair beside me a few minutes later. “Our bags are here. I see why you like this place,” she says.
I glance over at her with my lips tipped up, but I don’t respond as I turn my attention back to the moon’s reflection on the water again.
“I’m sorry, Brian.”
Her voice is soft beside me, and I’m surprised at her words.
“For what?” I ask.
She blows out a breath, and I keep my focus ahead to allow her to get out what she’s trying to say. “For choosing that hotel, for making this trip harder than it needed to be. Mark gave me free reign to choose any hotel I wanted, but I was trying to prove a point. I guess I was wrong.”
I finally turn toward her as I allow my tone to soften. “You couldn’t have known about the poisonous toads, Viv. I’m sure that hotel is fine to stay in and it was just a fluke.”
She shrugs, and I notice she doesn’t yell at me for calling her Viv. “I was sure it was fine, too.”
“I get what you’re trying to do...what you’re here to do.”
“Do you?” she asks, her voice full of genuine curiosity.
I nod. “Yeah. I need help. I’ve gotten myself into quite a mess, and I’m finally ready to admit you’re the one who can straighten it all out.”
I’m shocked at my own words. They tumbled out of me without censorship, but regardless of that fact, they’re true. Maybe it’s the whiskey from earlier getting me to speak the truth, or it could be the magic of the ocean air—or it could just be the woman sitting beside me. Maybe she makes me want to admit the secret truths I do my best to hide.
It’s with that thought that I finally stand. I draw in one more deep breath of ocean air, and then I glance down at her. She stares straight ahead silently like she’s shocked by the words I just spoke.
“I’m gonna call it a night,” I say. “We’ve got an early morning with Porter. Meet me in the sitting room at s
ix-thirty, okay?”
She nods and stares ahead at the water. “I’m gonna stay out here a few minutes longer,” she says. I open the door to head back in, and just before I close it behind me, she says softly, “Goodnight, Brian.”
I fight the urge to kiss her. I did it once tonight already, and I don’t want to end the night on a note where she feels like we’ve done something wrong. Not after I just saved her.
“Night, Viv,” I say, and I hear her annoyed chuckle just as I close the door.
chapter twenty-three
Viv is tapping away on a laptop in the sitting room when I emerge the next morning a little after six. It’s too goddamn early and I haven’t even had a cup of coffee yet, but she’s back to perfect in her professional little skirt and blazer combo. Her hair cascades around her shoulders again, and she reaches for the paper coffee cup beside her that tells me she’s already left our room this morning.
I, on the other hand, haven’t even showered yet. I wipe the sleep from my eyes. I didn’t put on a shirt—just a pair of basketball shorts I packed—because I didn’t think she’d be up and at ‘em this early. I just came out here to make myself some coffee because I’m useless before I’ve had my first cup. I watch for a beat through bleary eyes as she pulls the cup to her lips, and I find myself jealous of a stupid coffee cup.
“Good morning,” she says when she lowers the cup. She finally glances away from her screen and up at me, and I’m instantly grateful for the time I’ve spent on sit-ups recently. A small gasp falls from her lips as her eyes land on my half-naked form and the abdomen I’ve given up pizza and French fries for.
I strut over to the coffeepot on the counter to set myself up, acting like I don’t feel her eyes on my backside as I walk past her. “What are you doing up already?” I ask once I’ve poured the water in.
She clears her throat. “I, um, always get up early. I went for a run on the beach and grabbed myself a coffee.”
“Sleep okay?” I ask. I look over at her, and I have to look away before I do something she’ll regret later.
She shrugs. “The bed was comfy.”