by Avery Flynn
“Is everything okay?” he asked. “You don’t have to be here if you don’t want to.”
There was a short silence that lasted four hundred and eighty-two years while he stared into the dark beyond the partially closed bathroom door and felt like an idiot.
Finally, she asked in a soft voice, “Do you want me to leave?”
“Hell no.” Like he had to think about that.
She laughed. It was a smoky alto—one question answered—that went straight to his dick. “Then what’s there to talk about?”
Not a damn thing. He wrapped the towel around his hips and reached for the door.
Chapter Three
With the music from her phone filling up the dim space of the hotel room, Gina pushed past the adrenaline and anticipation pumping through her veins with enough force that she could practically hear it and reached her hands behind her back, making a desperate grab for her dress’s zipper tab. Maybe it was the pressure of the moment, maybe it was the fact that Satan had designed her dress, but she had to use all of her yoga stretching skills to reach the damn thing. Then, she had to not have an anxiety attack while in the process of inching the zipper down using only the very tips of her fingers.
She kept an eye on the bathroom to make sure Ford didn’t walk out and catch her looking like a twisted-up Cirque du Soliel reject.
Stress-induced perspiration curled the hair near her temples into frizzy ringlets. Okay, she couldn’t see they were frizzy because she’d turned off the lights, but she knew that’s what had happened.
Finally, she got the damn zipper down far enough to slide the dress over her hips right as the bathroom door started to open. Shit. She wasn’t prepared. She needed five more minutes. Didn’t he still need to condition his hair? Did guys even do that?
Shut it, Regina, this isn’t the time for stupid questions.
Right. She was right. A nervous giggle escaped. God, she was not only talking to herself, she was confirming her answers.
From her spot near the end of the bed, she could just see into the bathroom. That gave her a perfect view of Ford as he completely opened the opaque glass bathroom door. Or it would have, if total and complete panic hadn’t sent her flying onto the foot of the bed, where she scrambled on her hands and knees like a deranged gazelle on speed to the top of the bed and slid under the covers. Of course, her underwear went up her butt in the process.
She groaned out loud and squeezed her eyes shut. She’d worn her evil granny panty stomach minimizers. She hadn’t been planning on getting laid. Didn’t men know a woman had to plan for these types of things? Like, what if she hadn’t shaved in a week or was on her period? Didn’t they even consider the possibilities?
“Hey there,” Ford said, the pitch of his voice giving it a sexy gruffness.
Her belly fluttered, and her nerves melted away in the onslaught of hot desire that flooded her limbs.
“Hey yourself,” she answered as she hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her panties and used the kind of strength they talk about mothers having when they lift cars off their children to shove them down and then fling them over to where her dress lay in a puddle on the floor. Palms sweaty, she ripped off her bra before Ford stepped out of the bathroom, pausing in the pool of light coming out of the open door.
Thanks to her brief moment of sanity when she’d walked into the room and killed the lights, she had a better view of him than he did of her. Outlined by the light behind him, he stood silhouetted in the door. Broad shoulders, defined arms, and narrow hips that had a towel slung low around them. Wow. Ford was the exception to the looks-better-with-clothes-than-without rule, even when she could only see him in outlined form. She tried to think of something flirty to say, but her brain had checked out—right up until the moment when he reached for the light switch outside the bathroom door that would turn on the bedroom lights.
“No,” she said, slinking farther down under the covers. “Leave it off.”
Hello, this is your subconscious calling, and I know why you’ll only do this in the dark.
Yeah, because it was harder to notice her face this way. Oooff. That hit like a solid punch to the gut. However, before self-doubt could grab hold, Ford turned off the bathroom light and the room plunged into near darkness, thanks to the hotel’s mostly closed blackout curtains. Thank God enough light from the streetlamps snuck through the space between the curtains that she could watch as he walked toward her, unwrapping the towel as he did.
Thank you whoever is up there for letting me see this. I promise to be a much better person from now on.
And that was the last thought she had, because that’s when his towel hit the floor.
The bed dipped a little as he got in, and her nerves came rushing back. Saying it had been a while since she’d been naked in bed with a man was an understatement. Then, he reached over and cupped her cheek in his warm hand, and his lips came down on hers, and her nerves disappeared like free drinks at a wedding reception.
Strong, firm lips pressed against hers, and his tongue slid against the seam of her mouth, not demanding entry but not begging, either. He was…tempting her, and her body was responding like she’d been waiting her whole life to take him up on that offer. That realization of the rightness of the moment and the man—okay, and probably a metric ton of her pheromones crushing on his pheromones—made something click inside her, and all the doubt and insecurity disappeared.
In the next heartbeat, they were laying facing each other in the dark—but it didn’t matter because her hands were everywhere, the darkness heightening every touch as her fingers followed the muscular plane of his abs, glided over the high round curve of his ass, and slid down the outside of his hard thighs.
Could she get high from touching someone? Because that’s what it felt like. Her whole body had turned electric, and just when she thought it couldn’t get any better, he stopped cupping her face and his hand moved down to her hip, his fingers pressing into her flesh with just the right amount of pressure as he tugged her close and his hard, thick cock brushed against her tight curls. For once, she didn’t overthink. She brought her leg over his and tilted her hips so she could rock her wet, swollen core against him.
His low rumble of a groan brushed against the sensitive skin of her neck. “Fuck, I’m so glad you found a way to get in here.”
Gina froze, nothing but white noise filling her brain. “You left me a key.”
“What key?” he asked, swinging his arm back and hitting the button on the bedside table lamp.
For a second, she couldn’t see as bright light filled the hotel room. Blinking, she cleared her vision and— “Oh my God, you didn’t leave me a key, did you?” She planted both hands on his chest and shoved Ford away from her, panic buzzing through her body with the sting of a thousand bees.
He shook his head, then his eyes narrowed. “Who gave you the key?”
“The key,” she asked, repeating him because her brain couldn’t keep up. Then, the words poured out of her in a freaked-out rush. “You left me the room key with your friends, Johnnie—”
Understanding punched her right between the eyes, and the rest of her explanation turned to poisonous ash in her mouth. She wanted to throw up. It was a setup. The whole thing had been a setup. If not by him, then by his asshole friends.
It wasn’t the first time she’d been made a fool of just for laughs. God knows, she’d lived through it enough growing up. And Johnnie’s story hadn’t sounded that crazy. A little off, but still reasonable. Why? Because that’s what a liar did. He stayed as close to the truth as possible to make the lie believable. She knew and still had totally fallen for it.
Nice going, Regina.
Clamping her teeth together to keep from crying, she clambered over Ford and got to the edge of the bed with lighting speed.
“You didn’t want to be here?” he asked, curling his fingers around her wrist as he sat up.
She jerked her arm away. “Does it matter?”
&n
bsp; The question came out in a half croak as her feet touched down on the towel he’d let fall to the floor before getting in bed. How in the world had she let this happen? Why had she thought this time would be different?
Panic made her jittery so she had a hard time seeing her stuff scattered on the floor, but there was no missing the man in the bed. He was imprinted on her brain. Dark hair with the slightest wave, dark green eyes without any laugh lines around them, and a mouth—that mouth—that he may have used to kiss her senseless but didn’t look like he ever used it to smile. He was hot. Too hot for most of the population, let alone someone like her. Fiery tears of humiliation burned at the back of her eyes.
She needed to get out of here. Now.
She rushed forward. Her foot caught in a twist of the towel, and she went down. Her ass hit the carpet with a hard thunk that did more harm to her pride than her tailbone, but her pride was already pretty dinged up and didn’t need the extra scuffs. Closing her eyes, she hung her head so her hair fell in front of her face to form a frizzy curtain while she took a deep breath. Of course, it wasn’t like her humiliation would be complete with only one massive, sixty-story-skyscraper-sized gut punch to the ego. No, she had to be a total klutz, too.
“Are you okay?” Ford asked.
Huffing out a breath, she sent her hair flying out of her face, determined not to let this man know how embarrassed she was. So she looked up—way up—at him, and her brain stuttered to a stop as soon as her mutinous gaze landed on his thick, muscular body, hard dick poking against the sheet, and handsome face. Good Lord, did the fates have no mercy? Before she could reach out and touch him to make sure he was real and not another hoax, some last vestige of self-preservation kicked into gear and she averted her gaze and kept her hands to herself.
“Just peachy,” she said as she got up, her right ass cheek protesting after that tumble, and hustled over to the small piles of her discarded clothes.
Ignoring the granny panties in her hurry to get the hell out of there, she pulled on her dress and reached around in an awkward move for the zipper.
Ford stood up and reached out toward her.
Her heart leapt into her throat, and she jumped back. “Don’t touch me.”
His hand fell to his side, and his shoulders sank. “I was just going to help with the zipper.”
Okay, that would be nice since she was tugging for all she was worth and still only had the damn thing halfway up, but it wasn’t going to happen. She’d had all the embarrassment she could take, without adding being dressed by a man who’d never left her his hotel room key to the list. How pathetic must she have seemed, just showing up and sneaking into his room? It probably happened all the time to someone like him. That thought pissed her off, too.
She glared up at Ford. “How about you just pull the sheet around you instead?”
He swiped it off the bed and wrapped the thousand-count material around his waist. “I’m gonna get Gallo and Ruggiero to apologize to you. This was beyond going too far.”
The guy seemed genuinely pissed, as if this sort of thing didn’t happen in his world. In fairness, it probably didn’t to someone like him.
Tall, good-looking—her gaze landed on the police badge on the bedside table—and a cop, everything probably went his way. That last detail registered in her brain. Cop. Oh my God. Just when she thought the whole situation couldn’t get any worse, she’d forgotten that Ford was a cop, just like almost everyone else at the wedding. Shit. If her brothers knew, they’d kill her, or maybe him. Probably him. They may have been loan sharks but they were overprotective brothers right down to the cellular level. They’d lose their minds if they ever found out. Some things—some people—just weren’t done.
Giving up on getting her zipper any higher than her shoulder blades in her desperation to get away from the scene of the crime, she shoved her foot in a shoe. “I’m leaving.”
Ford’s face darkened, and his square jaw tightened. “Maybe we can figure something—”
“Let’s not, okay?” she interrupted him as she jammed her foot into her other shoe. A pity fuck? Yeah, she wasn’t going there. She counted to twenty in her head to distract herself from the tears making her eyes hurt and the sinking, fatalistic feeling of this-is-as-good-as-she-can-ever-expect that sucked the air out of her lungs. “Your friends are real pieces of work.”
What else could she say? Nothing. And to top it all off, those jerk friends of his were probably still at the bar, waiting to watch her walk of shame out of the hotel. They were probably laughing their asses off about the whole thing right now. And she’d have to fake being all right until she could get home and finally let her real emotions show.
Twenty minutes. That’s all you have to get through, Regina. You can do this.
Pep talk completed, she pivoted and headed for the door without giving Ford another look—she just couldn’t. Even with her high humiliation tolerance, this was right on the edge of what she could take. Her hand was on the doorknob when his voice stopped her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice soft, apologetic.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment to block out the kindness in his tone, because that was the last thing she needed if she was going to make it out of here without falling apart.
Steadier after a breath, Gina opened her eyes and pulled open the door. “Yeah. Me too.”
Then, her throat tight, she walked out the door.
If there was a silver lining to this shit cloud, it was that she’d never see Ford again.
The door felt like it weighed a million pounds as she started to pull it closed behind her. And saw the shocked faces of her brothers. She was too startled to even wonder why these two were at the same hotel as a cop’s wedding.
Rocco and Paul gaped at her. Both had their arms slung around women she’d never met before and wasn’t supposed to, guessing by the scarlet flush eating its way up Paul’s throat as he moved to stand in front of the bottle-blonde in the micro mini-skirt swaying just a bit in her four-inch heels.
“What in the hell are you doing here, Gina?” Rocco asked, his tone calm, not that that fooled her.
Older than her by four years, he’d assigned himself the role of guardian-in-chief when their parents moved down to Florida. The fact that she was a grown woman or that he wasn’t exactly on the legal up-and-up didn’t seem to make any difference.
Stuffing her granny panties farther down in her small clutch before reaching behind her for the door handle to steady her, she glared at her brothers. “I had a wedding.”
“In a hotel room?” This from Paul, who was recovering his equilibrium, no doubt as his suspicions grew about why she was walking out of a guest room.
“Not exactly,” she said, attempting to finish shutting the door behind her as subtly as possible. Too bad something hard blocked the way. If she had to guess, she’d peg the obstruction as one that belonged to the man she’d been in bed with moments before.
Some of her annoyance must have shown on her face, because Rocco dropped the hand of the tall redheaded woman he was with and took a step closer, peering over her head into the sliver of darkness slipping through the not-quite-closed door.
“Who’s in there with you?” he asked.
She yanked harder, but Ford didn’t take the hint. The obstruction remained. “No one.”
One of Paul’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “If our mother heard you lie like that, she’d be lighting candles at church.”
Their mother had been doing that for all of them since they’d been born—not that it had helped. Gina was still single, and her brothers were still involved with the wrong people. The blonde behind Paul took a weaving couple of steps forward and flashed a friendly smile at Gina. The woman may not be the smartest for getting involved with Gina’s brothers—definitely love-em-and-leave-em types, but that wasn’t Gina’s call to make, just like it wasn’t theirs to get all judgy on her. Of course, that didn’t mean she wanted them to know anything about the guy
lurking behind the door, and he was lurking. She knew that because she’d tried to yank the door closed twice now and he hadn’t moved his stupid foot. Time to get her brothers out of here. Now.
Gina gave her brothers her most innocent wide-eyed look. “You two look busy, why don’t you just go—”
Rocco interrupted, “Who are you with, Regina Marie?”
Her middle name? Really? Like she wasn’t thirty-one years old with a mortgage, job, and brain of her own?
“You’re not Mom or Dad, so don’t use that tone with me.” She let go of the doorknob so she could cross her arms and give her oldest brother the death glare he deserved, with a popped-out hip and everything. “And for the last time, I’m—”
The hotel room door swung open.
“With me,” Ford said from behind her.
And totally not shockingly at all, the floor did not open up and swallow her like she so wanted in that moment. Instead, she got an up close and personal look at her brothers’ faces as they turned blotchy with anger way out of proportion for even her overprotective, we-wish-we-lived-in-the-caveman-times brothers. Instinctively, she took a step back so she blocked a direct line of attack against Ford and, hopefully, made it harder for her brothers to notice that the other man was wearing only a sheet.
“Hartigan?” Rocco practically spit out.
Oh. Shit. “You know each other?”
The men ignored her while the women just watched with wide, unblinking eyes.
“Is this what your little task force has sunk to?” Paul asked, taking a step closer to where she stood in front of Ford. “Pillow talk with our sister?”
Crap on a gluten-free cracker. Ford worked on a task force. And her brothers knew him. That meant only one thing. He worked organized crime, and that meant he was all up in her brothers’ business. Judging by the way Rocco’s hands were fisted at his sides and Paul’s not-very-subtle move toward the inside of his suit jacket, things were about to escalate quickly. That she would not have.