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“I won’t keep you long.” Her tone reverberated with disapproval. Her golden eyes flicked to his with more of the same.
He arched a single brow, silently encouraging her to continue.
“I’m Maddie Young.”
His eyes narrowed imperceptibly and for the briefest moment, she thought she saw the cogs turning. A glimpse of something more than the playboy cad he was embodying.
“Jack’s granddaughter?” He reached for his drink—scotch, she guessed, from the colour and glass. “He’s mentioned you.”
That made Maddie’s pulse throb and her insides twist. “He’s mentioned you as well.”
“I’m not surprised.” Beneath the table, Rocco’s foot tapped the edge of the barstool. Maddie ignored the tattoo, even when it was adding to the anxiety wrapping around her. “What can I do for you, Maddie?”
“I came to tell you to stop calling him. Stop writing to him. Stop pressuring him. He doesn’t want to sell to you, and he never will.”
For good measure, she crossed her arms over her chest, as if to emphasize that she meant business. Only his gaze dropped lower in response to the gesture, landing for the briefest moment on the modest curve of her cleavage, so she lost her train of thought.
“Is that so?”
To her chagrin, he stood. And any hope she’d held of him being short in stature evaporated—she would have liked to think of him extending no greater than five foot. Annoyingly, he easily towered at least six inches over her.
“Damn straight.”
He lifted that same brow again but this time, it seemed to smirk at her. “I see.”
“I doubt it.” She couldn’t keep the scathing condemnation from her tone. “Anyway,” she fluttered her lashes at him. “Enjoy your night.”
It was an almost perfect getaway. She’d said what she wanted to say, delivered it with confidence and aplomb and now she was leaving him, hopefully with his jaw gaping, to sashay out of the luxurious hotel bar without a backwards glance. At least, that’s how it went in her mind. But Maddie was not someone who sashayed. Nor was she a ‘luxurious hotel’ kind of person, and unlike Rocco Santoro, she was far from effortlessly chic. So, it shouldn’t have surprised her that the moment she turned to leave him, a waiter should appear, having cleared another table then engaged in a direct collision course with Maddie. Or perhaps the collision course was all hers. It didn’t matter; the effect was the same.
Seconds later, Maddie was wearing the remnants of a brightly coloured cocktail down her front, as well as a handful of chips, smeared in ketchup. Heat infused her cheeks, and she could only stare at the waiter—who stared right back. He was young—a teenager, she’d guess—and he looked mortified. “It was my fault,” she quickly said, reaching a hand out to reassure him. The colour had left his cheeks; she was half afraid he’d pass out.
“It was my fault,” he corrected, shaking his head. “I’m new. I didn’t see you.”
“I moved abruptly; you couldn’t have.” She knelt down to pick up the bowl of upended chips.
“Please, don’t do that,” he begged. “Running into a guest is bad enough, my manager will die if she sees you cleaning up.”
“I ran into you,” Maddie reminded him. “And I’m not a guest.”
The young man closed his eyes, clearly mortified. Maddie took pity on him, ignoring the cold sensation against her chest as the cocktail made the wet shirt cling to her like a second skin. Another waiter appeared, whispering something to the young man before crouching down and commencing a cleanup. “We’re so sorry, madam. Please, accept this complimentary pass for the hotel restaurant.” The waiter, older by perhaps ten years than the guy she’d bumped into, handed a black card with gold writing to her. “And naturally, the hotel will pay for your dry-cleaning expenses.”
“That won’t be necessary.” She ignored the card for the restaurant—she’d never been to this hotel in her life, and she had no plans of returning. “It wasn’t his fault. I ran into him.” And with that, she turned and left.
“Maddie.” His voice was just as rich and commanding from a distance as it had been up close. She ignored it, striding across the foyer, pretending that the well-heeled guests weren’t all turning to look at her. “Wait a moment.”
She ground her teeth. “What for?” But she muttered it under her breath, with no intention of stopping to talk to the insufferable man, nor to let him see her humiliation.
“Because we aren’t finished.”
Intentions be damned. She whirled around, her face flushed, her eyes wide. “We? There is no ‘we’. You’re just someone who’s been harassing a sweet old man. You need to stop.”
His brows furrowed. “You’re upset.”
“I’m—covered in someone’s Vodka Sunset,” she muttered.
“Yes.” Again, his eyes dropped lower and this time, her whole body flooded with tingles. From the tips of her toes to her fingernails and everywhere in between. He was looking at the mess that was her shirt but just beneath the Jackson Pollock-esque arrangement of colour were her breasts and despite the fact they were nothing impressive, just having his gaze concentrated there was doing all sorts of things to her equilibrium, so she found it impossible to swallow. The tingling in her fingertips intensified, zipped back up her arms and focused in her bra, until her nipples were over-sensitive and taut. She practically groaned, because of course her body would betray her at a time like this. “Would you like to come up to my room and change?”
“Your room?” She stared at him as if he’d started speaking in a foreign language. “No. That’s the last place I want to be.”
