“I don’t have any expectations. We had our night and it was wonderful but it’s not like it can mean anything. I don’t want it to mean anything. It would be bad for business.”
Which was entirely the right attitude for her to have. There was a cue there, an exit stage right, and he stepped all over it.
“It meant something to me. That’s what I should’ve said on the card. If there is anything I can do to help you with your car repairs, or your business, I’d be more than happy to.”
“You don’t need to. . .”
He did need to. “I should’ve said it was a privilege to meet you. An honor to spend the night with you. I enjoyed your company. I loved our little games, and I adored being intimate with you.”
She made a sound of surprise. It was a prompt, and he ignored it.
“I should’ve asked you to stay another night, heck, stay the weekend. I’m supposed to be in Byron Bay surfing with the Hemsworth brothers, but I’d rather be here with you. If that was something you wanted?”
Teela quirked her head. She’d moved past defensive and cool into a new mood. “Why didn’t you ask me?”
That mood was interrogation. “I could tell you it was the best thing for you, a clean cut. That it was what you said you needed it to be. That keeping a one-night stand to one night is the rational, adult thing to do, especially as I’m me and that makes it complicated.”
“All those things are true and entirely reasonable. Except that you’re in my office.” A fact that had earned him the silent treatment from Rick on the way over here.
“They are true, but not for you. You know the score. I can’t afford to trust easily in circumstances like this and I trust you. All that stopped me asking you to spend more time with me was—”
“Ego.”
Cheeky. “I can see where so-so-Sophie gets it from. What stopped me was cowardice.”
Teela shook her head, but he finally got a genuine smile he hadn’t shocked out of her. “And yet you play the hero. Who knew you had a straw backbone?”
He folded his arms. A muscle-flexing pose. He was shamelessly messing with her now. “You know I’m not made of straw. Where it counts.”
At the blatant inuendo, she rolled her lips together. If this wasn’t a conversation where he was on the back foot, he would’ve leaned over and kissed her.
“You’re made of good things, Haydn, and I adored being intimate with you. I might have adored it a little too much. The whole night was magical. And you coming here like this to explain—”
“Apologize. I apologize for the way I treated you. It was needlessly impersonal, and a total dickhead move.”
She looked at his plan B lunch offering. “I don’t know what to say. It was meant to be a one-time thing. I don’t wear stilettos.”
She was a tough audience.
“You can stay barefoot for all I care. Say that you’ll hang out with me. Show me Sydney. We’ll have fun. I fly out Monday morning. We both go on with our lives. You’re too smart to need a brush-off card. What do you have to lose?”
SEVEN
The smartest decision Teela had ever made was to open her business. She eyed Haydn’s lunch offering as if it was the passport to the land of dumb decisions. Fancy bread and fillings should not be so potent an incentive.
She should’ve put shoes on. She should’ve accepted his apology, shaken his hand and put an end to this complication. It wasn’t smart to agree to spend the weekend with Haydn. There were all kinds of implications—professional, personal.
Physical.
Yes, please.
Emotional.
No, she was over that.
He was no more her fee-paying client now than he was before she let him seduce her with star power, statesmanship and a dry car. He wasn’t trying to lead her on. He had a straightforward proposal.
He’d made her feel good before she let her pride get in the way.
What did she have to lose? Only sleep. Her sanity.
She could wear stilettoes occasionally and not be crippled. She picked up a sandwich. At first bite it was sinfully delicious, and she was all in.
Especially since now he waited patiently, reading on his phone, while she cleared her inbox and dealt with a few issues that would not hold till Monday.
The Sexiest Man Alive, Hollywood’s most bankable star, a guy using his fame and fortune to make the world a better place, walked into her crappy, no security office with lunch, apologized, and cooled his heels without fidgeting while she did mundane tasks.
How is this my life?
He didn’t try to hurry her. He didn’t make sly martyred sighs. He settled in, loafers kicked off, lying full-length on her old leather couch and just hung out, as if he had nothing else more important to do.
She was his more important.
She let a deep breath go. The happy in it got caught in her throat and came out as a cough, making him look over. A checking-in kind of look that truly didn’t help her focus. She’d never been so aware of her fingers on a keyboard. It was typo central and backspace junction, which didn’t make a lot of sense given she knew how he kissed, how he smelled, what kind of smile made his dimple pop, and that he dictated shitty nice knowing you, now piss off to the swamp you came from cards and knew how to give a decent apology when he stuffed up.
He’d given her an orgasm in a private pool not eight hours ago. And she’d given him one right back.
“Pretend I’m not here,” he’d said when he stretched out.
Bloody impossible. “You soak up all the oxygen in the room.”
“I’ll try not to breathe.”
He could be stone cold dead a week and he’d still command attention and it wouldn’t be from the smell.
She got some work done. Kind of. You’re the martyr. Sophie got to take Haydn’s flowers home and her selfie, with strict instructions not to post it until Haydn left the country and a reminder about the value of confidentiality in the workplace and out of it. Since Rick came back to the office with a hot blush high on his cheekbones, confidentiality cut both ways.
Back in Haydn’s suite, Teela made another discovery. When he said he wanted to help her relax with a massage, it wasn’t code for a sex act they hadn’t yet tried.
“It will help with the post-show blues,” he said.
“The what?”
The man should not get all pseudo-medical with her if he was going to take his shirt off at the same time. He’d arrived in the office in well-worn jeans and a faded blue linen shirt, attractively crumpled and making his pale eyes look otherworldly. He was swapping the shirt for a tee and the pants for cut-off sweats. He had to pass through almost naked to achieve that.
She had to not pass out because he moved with a masculine grace that made it hard to function. This is why the camera loved him.
“That weird letdown feeling you’re trying to deny that makes you restless and low even though you have no need to feel that way. We call it PSD. Post-show depression. It’s what happens immediately after you’ve finished a movie. It’s an adrenaline crash, essentially. After all the effort and stress, it’s suddenly over and you’re not quite sure what to do with yourself.”
He was right. She’d started feeling it the moment she was locked out of the dinner and suddenly had nothing to do. An apocalyptic storm and a bingle and the most unexpected one-night stand ever had caused an onset delay. It was probably the reason she’d reacted badly to the words on the card and why she’d been harsh on Haydn when he’d arrived at the office. That and the shock of seeing him in her foyer, a scandal in the making.
“I thought I was going to do you,” she quipped, to keep it light and get specific.
“In time, impatient girl. How do you normally cope with a comedown period?”
Well now I just imagine you standing arms-length away without a shirt. Haydn lying on her ugly brown office couch would probably do it too.
“I usually buy something I don’t need.” Last time it happened she bo
ught an expensive slow cooker she’d used once.
“I always want to run out and get another dog. I’d have fifty dogs by now if I didn’t know about the power of massage.”
“How many dogs do you have?”
“At home with me now.” He held up two fingers. “Fred and Ginger.” Then added three more fingers. “Gene, Gregory and Channing. They’re all rescues.” All dancer’s names. He pulled a T-shirt on. So unnecessary. “Over the years, I’ve had a dozen different rescue dogs. All of them old, abandoned, sick, left for dead.” He made an up gesture. “Now, off with that dress.”
“You really want me to have a massage.” Would they have tables side by side? Did he hire one masseur or two?
“I really want to massage you.”
Pretty much all the air left the room. She couldn’t possibly have post-show blues because the show was still going on.
“You?”
“I am not just a pretty face and good with shoe sizing.”
He had a table brought to the room and he knew what he was doing. Soft music, fragrant oil and magic, magic fingers that made her feel inconveniently tense.
He started by warming her whole back with firm strokes from flattened oiled-up hands and she could not help groaning, part oh, that hurts and part oh, that’s amazing. And it’s not like she’d never had a massage before.
She’d never had a massage from someone she’d been intimate with before and that changed everything.
It put a tremor of excitement directly under her skin, a spike of anticipation in her bloodstream and every pleasure-seeking hormone she had was screaming with delight. It was impossible to stop the noise in her head that it was Haydn freaking Delany who was running his firm, slippery hands over her. That she’d had sex with him and would again, and they had a whole weekend set aside for more sex and yet he wanted to start it off by treating her to a personal massage.
“Try to relax,” Haydn said in a low murmur that woke up all her slow adopter nerve endings and made her tremble.
She made a sound more like a squeak than a reply. Was he kidding? Her body was sparking electricity and her brain was on sensory overload and she wasn’t allowed to move, only lie here with her head in a hole in the table, looking at the plush carpet and his bare feet, her heart skidding around in her chest as she waited for his touch.
“I’m a little rusty at this. Been a while,” he said, pressing his thumbs into the edges of her spine, making tiny circles in the muscle.
Because he sounded uncertain, as if her inability to relax was his fault—it was—but not the way he was thinking, she said, “I’m a little too aware of what you’re doing.”
“All I’m doing is working your kinks out.”
Oh, Christ, he had to say the word kink while she was totally at his mercy. “That’s not helping.”
He laughed. “Sorry, poor word choice. Stop thinking this is anything but a massage. After this you’re taking a soak in the tub and then we’re watching a movie. Something fun that I’m not in.”
That sounded so good, but so not what she was expecting. She gave him a mumble midway between a sigh and a questioning huh.
“Don’t sound disappointed.”
“Wondering if you’ve gone off me.”
His hands stopped moving, fingertips resting on her lower back. “I have not gone off you, woman. I lunch-bombed your office. I’m trying my hardest to be a professional and only touch you therapeutically.”
He was the most unlikely shoe fitter, sandwich guy, masseur. “Why is that again?” she mumbled.
“Because I belatedly realize I kind of stalked you and I might’ve cornered you into this weekend.”
“You did stalk me.” No kind of about it. “But I’m here because I want to be.” Because she trusted he had no agenda other than pleasure and didn’t need to call attention to them, having shown he knew how to keep things on the low down.
His hands had stilled after that admission but began to strum over her again. “Good. I’m doing this because you need it. Because I can. I have a lot of people in my life who care for me. Some of them get paid to. Some of them get paid to and care anyway. I can extend that care to you this weekend.”
And didn’t that sound like she’d make the right decision not ordering him out of her office.
“Like Rick.”
“Rick has been with me a long time. He’s special. Others only like the status of being in my life. They like what it can do for them. I’ve had to go after some of those people to stop them peddling lies.”
“Blackmailing you?”
“I wouldn’t use that word, but certainly trying to make money off me.”
It was so far from her life, where the only blackmail was the emotional type that Evie dished out, that it made her blink on a bitter little ache behind her eyes. She’d already had a moment of concern for Haydn back at the office, when it became clear the big phone call he’d been waiting on, the reason he agreed to headline the conference in the first place hadn’t happened. He’d brushed it off nonchalantly, but she didn’t buy his act.
“It’s reality. The more successful I became, the more I spent on legal fees. What I don’t have is a lot of people in my life I can care for. This massage is entirely selfish. It’s more for me than you. Give a guy a break and relax.”
Her head already seemed a little clearer for focusing on the conversation, her body was giving up its heightened state of awareness and starting to get heavy.
“Where did you learn to do this?” He was kneading knots under her shoulder blades. She could sense the muscle softening.
“I worked as a stagehand one summer. The dancers had to wear these incredibly heavy headpieces and massive capes. They were all complaining about neck and back ache. I learned the basics from a friend, got a second-hand table and set up in a corner of the backstage area doing massages for extra cash.”
“Dancers,” she mumbled, starting to feel as if she was made of elastic bands that he could stretch whichever way he wanted. They’d have had beautifully toned bodies.
“I was seventeen, big into women, desperately horny and broke. And it was a drag show.”
She must’ve stiffened up as she laughed because he smoothed a hand down her spine and under the towel placed lengthways across her butt and gave it a tap. “No tensing.”
The last of the day’s sunshine poured into the room where the table was set up. There was no disguising her body in mood lighting, pretty lingerie, movement, pool water or wrapping herself in Haydn. And he’d had such beautiful co-stars, there was no way an ordinary mortal could compete, but he’d done something wonderful to her neck and shoulders to make the idea of worrying about having big knees and a too prominent rib cage irrelevant.
Last night, insecurity about her body hadn’t been more than a fleeting concern. They’d shared a bright, consuming flare of irrepressible desire. The way Haydn had looked at her, touched her, had filled her with confidence.
Now though, they were two people getting to know each other and that added a new dimension. They weren’t sex crazed, though the arousal was there, banking for a big payday. This was foreplay and it was devastatingly good so her big knees could go take a hike and carry her prominent rib cage with them.
“Your shoulders were incredibly tight,” he said. “Too much time huddled over a computer.”
Exercising and eating well had become lesser priorities over the last few years. “I need to take better care of myself. Eat better, exercise more.”
He placed an unprofessional but heart-melting kiss on the back of her neck. “You are your own best asset, so yes, you do need to take better care of yourself. That doesn’t mean a damn diet or having work done.” He passed a hand over her well-padded hip as he said that. “You don’t need to change a thing, but if you’re going to work long hours you need to acknowledge the toll it takes and give yourself good fuel and adequate recovery time.”
Yes, Doctor Delany. I like your prescription. The dead-end fianc
é had suggested she have work done and she’d seriously considered fillers. Even in business, the world favored attractive people. The only thing stopping her was being too busy for the regular appointments.
“Doesn’t everyone have work done?” she mumbled.
“Other than character actors, it’s hard to find someone in my businesses who doesn’t need to freeze their looks, who isn’t expected to continue to look like they did a decade ago. I’ve had fillers around my eyes and mouth and my aesthetics consultant is beside himself about me being in the sun. Threatened to quit on me when he heard I was learning to surf.”
She lifted her shoulders to turn and squint at him. “You’ve had work done?” He had a whole person on staff who worried about how his face looked.
“I am not this pretty naturally,” he said, pushing her back down. “The camera is a harsh taskmaster and since it’s mostly the fantasy of attraction we’re selling on screen, it’s a circular argument. Much tougher on women. I’m allowed to age semi-gracefully. I can still play a romantic lead as long as I don’t get fat and jowly.” Another kiss to her mid back.
“What I mean to say is there’s no need to be self-conscious about how you look. I like what I see. I like who you are, but if you want to diet and have cosmetic treatments and that makes you feel confident and ready to take on the world then that’s what you should do. The only person who gets to judge you is you.”
Those words were as smooth as the massage oil and as soothing as they were exciting. She’d signed up for a weekend of sex and no regrets and it was turning out to be so much more. “And Evie. She judges me whether I like it or not.”
“The mysterious Evie. Who is still very much alive, I hope.”
Oh God, Evie. “She’s going to kill me.” Teela pushed up on her elbows. “What time is it?”
“A little before seven.” He put a hand to her shoulders. “Stay down.”
“No, no. She’ll be at my place at seven with food.”
Haydn passed her a towel and helped her sit. Her limbs were noodles and not completely under her control. “Easy fixed. Hassan can bring Evie here if you’d like?” he said.
One Night with the Sexiest Man Alive (The One Book 1) Page 7