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Her tongue felt thick and heavy in her mouth. This was the most conversation she’d ever had with someone staying in the hotel. She usually interacted as little as possible; that’s how she liked it. But Leandro was different. There was something about him that seemed so human, so normal, despite his obvious wealth and stature.
“Skye,” she answered eventually, sinking back to her knees in a move that was a total miscalculation, because she aimed wrong and was way closer to him than she’d meant to be. “And yes. That’s my job.”
“You’re not a housekeeper.”
“No, but things like this happen more often than you can imagine. If I see them and can help, I do,” she responded with a wry twist of her lips. “I really don’t mind.”
They worked in silence, but it was not companionable. Skye was too aware of his closeness, of the fact that he didn’t move away from her, and she didn’t shift away from him. She was aware of the way his breath sounded as it emerged from his parted lips, of the way his hand moved in a rhythmic method over the floor, until each press of their hands ceased to bring up any more liquid.
“Okay, time for this,” she said, her voice emerging like a husk of its usual self. She reached into the bucket and removed the magical spray they kept for just such occasions. In Skye’s experience, this product had managed to remove just about anything from the carpet. She thought with distaste of the time a superstar actress had brought her toddler to stay and the toddler had decided to decorate the place with mommy’s collection of lipsticks and the actress had thought it was adorable so had allowed it to continue. Some things had been easier to replace than attempt to repair—like the plush white sofas—but by and large, this spray had worked wonders, even then.
Skye looked at the bottle with a frown. “You’d better stand back. I don’t know what’s in this, but going by how effective it is, it’s probably full of things like bleach. I’d rather not ruin your clothes.”
“Stop worrying about me,” he growled, reaching for the spray, his fingers brushing hers as he took it from her hand.
She gasped a little, surprised by his determination, surprised by the fireworks that had been set off in her bloodstream. Their eyes connected and the world seemed to tilt sideways, so much so she half-wondered if there was an earthquake trembling.
His lips tugged into a small frown, but he didn’t move.
“You’re very beautiful.” He said it conversationally, dispassionately, as though he was simply observing a fact, but nonetheless, her heart sped up.
She blinked away, the compliment one she rarely welcomed. “The carpet,” she reminded him, wondering at her urge to say something else back to him. Like, ‘you are too’.
“You must get told that all the time.”
Her smile was wry. She didn’t answer. If she told him that yes, she was, it would run the risk of sounding immodest. What she wanted to say to him was that she was sick of hearing it. Sick of the way her looks had ruined her life. It was one of the first things Jay had said to her, something he’d never been able to stop saying to her, something that had eventually come to be like a form of torture for him. He had become so convinced that she was being hit on by all and sundry that he couldn’t bear to let her out of his sight. He’d hated that men looked when she walked down the street, hated that she got flirted with by random guys in coffee shops. His jealousy had become the bane of her life.
“But you don’t like it.”
Her eyes zipped back to Leandro’s. “How do you know that?”
“You’re very beautiful and very expressive. Your eyes are telling me everything you wish to keep secret.”
“Everything?” She repeated, in a panic. Her pulse skyrocketed at the very idea that this guy might be able to see just how hard she was finding it to concentrate on anything other than his stunningly symmetrical face, his strong, masculine body.
“Everything,” he growled, and her heart skipped a beat. Her cheeks flushed pink.
“The carpet,” she whispered, like an incantation, a plea to return to sanity and common sense.
“Screw the carpet,” he muttered, and then he was leaning all the way forward, his lips brushing hers in the simplest, smallest gesture of an inquiry. Not a kiss, so much as a question: may I kiss you?
The answer was no. Or it should have been no. He was a guest. An expensive, handsome, successful, rich guest, and it was completely forbidden for Skye to be up here getting kissed by him. Completely forbidden. Plus, she could taste whisky and wine on his breath. He’d obviously been drinking, but she hadn’t. He had an excuse, she didn’t.
Not to mention, Skye didn’t do things like this. Skye didn’t let random men kiss her. She was so guarded with this stuff, so careful. That had been true even before Jay, but afterwards, she’d become so much more careful. Because now she had Harper to think about, and Jay’s ever-present threat that he’d sue for custody if he thought she was seeing someone else.
He'd done everything he could to make sure that his control over her life continued, despite the fact they’d broken up more than two years earlier.
She needed to say no.
But her mind and body were in a state of total disconnect. Something had snapped inside of her, and she was struggling to remember anything of who she was and what she wanted.
“Skye?” His voice was imperious. Demanding. It sent hot shivers down her spine. Her eyes widened. It was impossible to mistake what he was asking.
Think of your job. Your debt. Your pride.
But something wild and hungry was spinning inside of Skye. The last man to kiss her had been Jay. She shuddered to remember the way she’d hated that, his thick lips against hers, his kisses had become something she’d dreaded. He’d controlled so much of her life, and she’d let him, and she was still letting him call the shots.
Well, what if she didn’t? What if right here, right now, she let this guest kiss her properly. Only she would know, but it would bring her one step closer to removing Jay’s power over her. Her breath snagged in her throat a little and she nodded once, a quick, urgent gesture, because having made this decision, she wanted him to kiss her before she lost her nerve completely.
