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For the next month. Or two. Or six.
He got into bed, turned off the light and stared into the darkness.
Five hours of tossing and turning later, dawn came and he watched the sun come up, wishing Joy was with him. When room service brought him the breakfast he'd or?dered, he wondered idly if she would have shared what was on his plate. Did she take her eggs scrambled? Over easy? He would have enjoyed feeding her bits of crois?sant, and if she liked strawberry jam, even better. He could have licked the sweetness from her lips.
Maybe she would have licked it from his fingers.
He went to his meeting aching as though his skin had shrunk or his body had swelled. And when he pulled up in front of Cassandra's building, he couldn't help imag?ining what would have happened if he'd stayed. He and Joy would have made love two or three times during the night. He'd have satisfied her until she was hoarse from calling out his name and then he'd have had the pleasure of watching her sleep in his arms.
It was hard not to feel as if he'd cheated them both.
But it was better to have walked away when he did. Hell, his retreat was arguably moral, a righteous act of self-control he could use to balance the scales against all the crap he pulled for a living.
“Mr. Bennett?” The doorman's voice was muffled as Rodney peered through the car window. “Are you wait?ing for someone?”
Yeah, wrong verb there, buddy. Try desperate.
Gray got out. “I'm picking up Mrs. Cutler's guest. I'll be right back.”
The doorman tipped his hat as Gray strode into the lobby. Cassandra was just coming out of the elevators.
She looked a little confused as she saw him. “Did she forget something?”
“Sony?”
“Joy. Did she leave something behind?”
He frowned. “I'm here to pick her up.”
“She's already left. She took a train back early this morning. Didn't she tell you?”
Gray felt a strange kind of panic. “No, she didn't.”
Cass's eyes narrowed. “That's odd.”
He dragged a hand through his hair and cursed, think?ing if he drove like a bat out of hell, he could be at White Caps in four hours.
“Did she, uh, did she look okay?”
“Maybe a little tired. She said she couldn't wait to get home, but other than that, she was perfectly happy.”
Perfectly happy.
And then it hit him. She was on her way back to Tom.
Tom. Her boyfriend.
“Gray, are you all right?”
He smiled, thinking his cheeks were going to split open. “I'm great.”
“Sure you are. You look miserable. What's wrong?”
“Talk to you later, Cass.”
Gray went back to his car. By the time he was on the New York Thruway heading north, he decided it was best not to make White Caps his first stop when he got to the Adirondacks.
Best not to make it any destination at all.
Though he would never forget those moments be?tween them, she was, after all, going home to her boy?friend. And in the light of day, she was no doubt relieved that things hadn't gone any further.
A narrow escape, he thought. They'd both had a nar?row escape.
Because a small voice in the back of his pea brain told him that once he'd had her, he'd want her again.
Chapter Seven
Three weeks, Gray thought. Three damn weeks and I still can't get that woman out of my head.
He eyed the squash ball coming at him as if it were alive and carrying a knife. Slamming the face of his racket into the thing, he sent it into the wall with vicious force. The ball ricocheted wildly out of bounds and al?most caught his partner in the chest on the rebound.
Sean O'Banyon, a powerhouse on Wall Street, and no momma's boy even on Mother's Day, came at Gray like a tank.
“Goddamn it! That's four times I've had to duck for cover!”
As the guy pulled up just short of their chests touch?ing, it was easy to see the South Boston street thug Sean used to be. If Gray wanted a fight instead of the civilized game they were supposed to be playing, he was going to get one from his friend. Right here. On the squash courts of the elite Congress Club.
No wonder folks called Sean “SOB.” And not just be?cause of the man's initials.
“What the hell is your problem, Bennett?”
Yeah, where to start with that.
Gray cursed. “Sorry. I'm trying to burn my edge off. It's not working.”
And he should have known a quick game of squash wouldn't help much. Chasing a little ball around wasn't going to bust through the frustration of three weeks of insomnia, three weeks of being tortured by hot dreams, three weeks of missing a woman he wasn't supposed to be missing.
What he needed was Joy.
On top of him. In his arms.
And now that he was back in New York? Naturally, she was on his mind every second of the day.
God, only poll results used to get him this preoccupied.
Sean stepped back. Bounced a ball on his racket. “You got problems?”
Gray shook his head. “I'm just on a hair trigger right now. I should have warned you.”
“Or we should have gotten in a ring together.” Sean smiled darkly. “Listen, why don't we shower and head to the bar? You look like you could use a drink and I have no interest in needing a cardiac surgeon.”
“Can't. I'm due at Allison and Roger Adams's in an hour. They're throwing a party for Ken Wright.”
Sean cocked an eyebrow as they walked over to the court's exit. “Wright's running for mayor, isn't he?”
Gray held the door open for his friend. “Yeah, but his campaign's in the crapper. He's hired me as a hail Mary, last-minute miracle, so from now until November, you'll have plenty of opportunities to get me back. I'm going to be mostly here in Manhattan for the duration.”
“I'm always up for a game.” Sean laughed coldly. “Or a fight.”
“And you think I've got issues?”
“At least I kept my balls in fair territory today.”
Gray smiled as they walked down the marble corri?dor, nodding to other members who were also dressed in whites. The men's locker room was down on the left, marked by a pair of glossy black doors. Inside, the air was heavy with steam and the mingling of different after?shaves. Mahogany lockers with brass name plates ran from floor to ceiling behind a fleet of varnished benches.
They stripped and went into the old-fashioned, com?munal shower. The twenty-by-twenty-foot room was white-tiled on all sides with four drains set into the floor and at least a dozen showerheads on the walls. They took two in the back.
“So what's her name?” Sean asked as they cranked the chrome fixtures.
The rush of water drowned out Gray's curse.
“You want to try that again?” Sean prompted dryly.
“There's no her.”
“Yeah, right.” Sean worked a bar of soap in his hands and then covered his face with suds. “Come on, Bennett. Talk to me.”
To buy some time, Gray squeezed some shampoo into his hand and then rubbed the stuff through his hair. “I've lost my mind, SOB. I really have.”
Sean made a noncommittal noise through spray. “On account of?”
“Her name's Joy.”
Rich, masculine laughter made Gray wish he'd clammed up.
“Nice name, Bennett. This someone you're sleeping with or working on?”
“I'm not sleeping with her.” Gray realized he was blushing and stuck his head under the water. “I'm just desperate to.”
“So take her to bed. What's the problem?”
“It's complicated.”
Because after replaying everything that had happened between them over and over again, he just didn't know whether Joy was the sweet, gentle girl he'd always assumed her to be, or a calculating woman capable of giving even him a run at the sex game. Every time he thought about how amazing she'd been with him, how high she'd taken them both, he reminded himself that she'd been with him while that poor Opie guy was waiting for her back home.
“And the problem is?” Sean prompted, squeezing shampoo onto his palm.
“I respect who I've always thought she was too much to be with her. And I can't bear who she might be.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“It does. One of the most attractive things about her was her...God, I guess you'd call it innocence. I've known her for years, since she was a teenager. I was so sure she wasn't...”
“Like the others?” SOB arched under the spray to rinse his hair out.
“Yeah. I was feeling guilty as hell for wanting her like I did and that was even before I saw her with her boy?friend. Then she came here to the city, we hooked up and it was insanely hot...” Gray soaped his chest. “But, damn, she's with someone and she let me crawl all over her. What kind of decent woman pulls that stuff?”
It was his mother's favorite game and look where that had landed them all.
“How'd you leave it with her?” Sean asked.
In the middle, Gray thought. And he'd been a sexu?ally frustrated madman ever since.
“I left when she told me she loved me.”
Sean dropped the bar of soap he was using on his legs. “What?”
“It wasn't like that. She didn't mean it. She couldn't possibly have. But it shocked enough sense into me to get me out the door.”
“Yeah, those three little words will bring a man back to reality, all right.”
“I just can't figure out who she is. If she's the nice girl I've always assumed she is, I can't be with her because I'll do one hell of a number on her.”
“But what if she's not?”
“Well, I guess that's a different story. Except I don't know if I want the truth.” The letdown would be oddly painful.
With a final rinse, Sean turned his water off. “She in town?”
Gray shut down his showerhead. “No. Up north.”
Water dripped onto the tile with a casual, tinkling sound. After grabbing thick white towels from a neat pile in the corner, they went back to the lockers.
“The thing is, I can't stop thinking about her.” Gray opened his and took out his shirt, shrugging into the but?ton-down. “And the dreams. Holy hell, I feel like I'm fourteen. I wake up every morning with aÑwell, you know what I mean.”
“If memory serves, yeah.” Sean's dark smile returned as he hit his pits with some deodorant spray. He tossed the can over so Gray could use it. “You got it bad, my boy. You got it real bad.”
After pulling on his boxers, Gray stepped into his pinstriped slacks and tucked the shirt in with vicious stabs of his hand. “Maybe I just need to get busy with another woman.”
But as soon as he said the words, the idea didn't ap?peal.
“Don't know if substitution's really going to work in this case,” SOB drawled, pulling a black cashmere sweater over his head. “Sounds like you're not hard up for sex. You're hard up for her.”
Gray shot his buddy a glare, even though he knew the guy was absolutely right. “You're not giving me a whole lot of relief here.”
“You want a kiss-ass liar, talk to someone else.” Sean strapped on a heavy gold watch. “My advice? Get her out of your system. Ask the woman to come down for a visit, hole up in your suite with her and don't leave until the mystery's gone. What you have is a classic case of ob?session. A little exposure therapy and you'll be back to normal in no time. Unless of course...”
Sean brushed his black hair straight back from his proud forehead.
“What?” Gray paused in the middle of knotting his tie. “What?”
“Unless she's the real deal for you. In which case you're screwed.” Gray started cursing and Sean laughed. “But the probability of that is next to zero. Men like you and me, we're not hard-wired for that kind of thing.”
