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“When?”
“They’ll contact me tonight. I’ll let them know our decision.”
He glares at me for several seconds and then scrubs his jaw and walks away. And that is when I realize that Reese is standing just outside the hotel door, close enough that had Dan turned just right, he’d have seen him. Close enough to have heard everything. For several beats, neither of us move, speak, even breathe, it seems, the overhang attached to the building shadows his face. But I don’t need to see his expression to feel the anger in him. He thinks he knows something he does not know.
“Whatever you think you saw, you didn’t,” I say, and my voice seems to set him into action.
He walks toward me, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Angry at the moment, a man of power and control, but that anger is palpable. He stops in front of me, so damn tall and broad, a chilly breeze lifting that spicy scent of him, which wraps around me. Everything about him in this moment is overwhelmingly large.
“What I saw isn’t what pisses me off,” he says. “You have a job to do. You have interviews to do. I get that. It’s what I heard that pisses me off. A book deal with that man? Were you feeding your book partner information?”
“No,” I say quickly. “God. No. Reese, this isn’t—”
“Were you going to fuck me for information?”
“That’s not what this is. Why would I wait, if that’s what I wanted?”
“You got me talking. And I admit it. You were good, sweetheart. You look good. You taste good. You fuck people over real damn good.”
“Don’t be an asshole because you think I’m an asshole. Because I’m not an asshole, and that makes you a really big asshole. And the very fact that you’re going off the deep end like this tells a story. You’ve been burned, and guess what? Whoever she was is not me.”
“Maybe you can put that in your book with Danny boy. Maybe you can even turn me into a monster defending a monster.”
“No,” I breathe out, hit hard by those words, and I don’t even know why. “I don’t think you’re a monster.”
“But you need to sell books. However you can sell them, right?”
“That’s not who I am. I know you know that.”
His voice softens ever so slightly. “I barely know you, Cat.”
“Then don’t judge me. My publisher set this up, and—”
“You should have warned me.”
“This is my job. We aren’t dating.”
“Right. Just fucking. No. Wrong. We aren’t even fucking. We were waiting while you milked me for more than an orgasm. And now I know where I went wrong with you. The minute I heard you were a reporter, I should have pulled your skirt up and had my one and done, and got you the fuck out of my system.”
“Stop being an asshole.”
“It’s who I am, per you.”
“You’re reading this all wrong, and you’re—”
“I don’t want more information,” he bites out. “Let’s keep this simple but not sweet. Hard and fast. Hard and long. As long as it ends. I’m in. If you want to fuck. Let’s fuck.”
“You ruined the joy of that little adventure.”
“Fine,” he says. “If you change your mind, if you want your one and done, call me. Otherwise, don’t.” He turns and walks away, leaving me on the sidewalk, staring after him as he re-enters the building.
I take a step to follow him and quite possibly punch him, but several high-profile lawyers walk into the hotel behind him. And I amend my earlier statement. Meeting here wasn’t stupid. I have nothing to hide with Dan. With Reese, it’s different. We’re one big, combustible ball of angry, sex-driven tension that’s hard to miss if you’re in the same room with us.
Rotating, I start an angry walk toward my apartment, and with every step I take, that anger vibrates through me. Being pissed off morphs into images of my ex screwing his secretary and a playlist of his lies. Reese didn’t deny being burned. He didn’t deny that it was driving his reactions to me now. Damn it, I’ve seen beneath the asshole. It’s a wall. I get it. I have my own. My anger plummets.
I make it one block and I dial Reese’s number. He doesn’t answer. I walk another block and try again. He doesn’t answer. I start getting angry all over again. This emotional rollercoaster and attempts to contact him repeat for seven blocks until I stop walking. At which point I realize that he must think that I’m actually calling for sex. Now he’s toying with me the way he thinks I’ve toyed with him.
I turn around and start walking back toward him.
