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Outside of Jake Mitchell’s suite.
She’s trying not to laugh as she heads my way in her beanie and trendy jeans with holes. She can’t be much older than twenty. An assistant, I’m guessing.
“I am,” I say. I don’t acknowledge anything else, though I really just want to sink into this carpet and disappear.
She squints up at me and scrunches her nose, her nose ring glinting under the hallway lights. She either can’t see well or is contemplating whether to let me around her boss. “He’s just through the door and to the left,” she finally says, pointing behind her.
“Okay, thank you,” I rush out and scamper on my way.
So much for getting it together.
She watches until I make it through the door and when I turn back to see if she’s joining us, she’s already pushing the elevator button.
Probably off to get coffee or something. For Jake’s hangover, I’m sure—the notorious playboy of the Nascar world. Constantly in the tabloids. Constantly partying and dating everything from Hollywood starlets to Hooters waitresses.
When he’s not winning races.
And meeting AJC reporters in the back of dive bars.
I honestly don’t know what I was thinking.
You weren’t, my thoughts retort. Your vagina was. Afterfive merlots.
“The reporter?” someone on the couch says. He doesn’t bother to tear himself away from his phone for my reply. Curtiss Banks, his manager.
My eyes rake over the room of equally disinterested people. There’s only one other person I recognize—the team owner. He’s also Jake’s uncle. Draper Mitchell.
“Yes,” I reply. “AJC. Scarlett R—”
“In there,” Curtiss says distractedly, pointing through the double doors to my left.
I do as I’m told.
The room is the size of three normal-sized hotel rooms, with one sprawling king bed dead center, unmade, a sitting area to my left, and what I’m guessing is the door to the bathroom to my right. He’s not in here yet, so I make myself at home in one of the wingback chairs and busy myself with my phone. Work really damn hard to not think about the fact there’s a bed in here, and what we did on a similar bed. Many ways. Many times. Over a twelve-hour timeframe.
I squirm in remembrance. Rub my thighs together to quell the ache.
Focus.
What will he think of me popping up over a year later?
Once he realizes why, I have a pretty good idea what he’ll think. And it won’t be good. For either of us.
I press my palm against my stomach, my skirt suddenly too tight.
Don’t puke. Don’t you puke all over this nice carpet.
As if my inner monologue can summon absurdly attractive, half-naked demons, the bathroom door slides open and out walks Jake in all his lean and chiseled glory.
And wearing a very thin towel.
I freeze.
Why did they send me in here if they knew he was in the shower?
I turn my head away to brace for his reaction, my hand squeezing the armrest so tight a nail might break, but there isn’t one.
I brave a peek. He hasn’t spotted me yet as he fumbles with something in a drawer, so I rock forward out of instinct. Maybe I can sneak out of here while he’s distracted, but there’s no way. He would see me.
