Page 16 of Cutter’s Lady

They said nothing else the rest of the way to the hotel.

Leslie couldn’t fault Cutter’s choice of hotels. It was a lovely, grand old hotel in the European tradition. She had always specialized in starting small, elegantly modern hotels. The kind frequented by children of celebrities and young tech moguls. But there was a definite appeal about this kind of hotel, too, and she found it beguiling. The lobby floor was Italian marble, and beautiful Persian rugs were scattered throughout, with conversational groupings of furniture set upon them. When they reached the desk clerk’s marble counter, Cutter ostentatiously stepped aside and gestured for Leslie to conduct the business of getting their rooms.

He’d done the same thing moments earlier with the taxi driver, lounging against the car, smoking a cigarette and saying nothing while she tried to communicate with the driver in Spanish. Leslie had taken Italian in school and there were some similarities between the languages, but in the intervening years she had gotten rusty, and while she could understand some of what he said to her, she struggled to ask him which of the San Cristóbalian bills she should give him. Then Cutter had crossed his arms and gazed at her blankly when the bellman delivered their luggage to the desk and turned for a tip. Leslie had handed the man a bill that, from his pleased smile, she understood was probably an even more overly generous tip than she would have normally given someone.

Leslie glared at Cutter as she stepped up to speak to the clerk. Trust Cutter to carry it to the extreme. The clerk looked at her a little oddly when she asked for two rooms while Cutter stood off to the side, idly looking around. But she breathed a sigh of relief when she realized he spoke English and quickly gave her two keycards. A bellman escorted them to their rooms, which lay side by side. Again Leslie tipped the bellboy, choosing a smaller bill this time, while Cutter watched the proceedings, leaning casually against his doorway.

“All right!” she snapped at him after the man had left. “You win. From now on, you can handle the money and other such transactions.”

Cutter grinned. “I’m not sure I want to. It’s a lot more fun watching you.”

Leslie didn’t deign to respond. “I’m going to bed,” she said shortly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He dipped the front brim of his hat to her. “Yes, boss.”

“Do you think it’s possible for you to stop being so infuriating?”

He chuckled. “I’d say it’s real doubtful.”

Leslie exhaled sharply through her nose and shut the door. She knew she should devour everything she could find on the internet about San Cristóbal and its currency, maybe even try to learn some basic Spanish—at the very least, she should check out the San Cristóbal wiki entry. But she was dead tired and all she wanted was to take a bath and go to bed. She set her suitcase on the luggage rack and opened it to take out a nightgown and matching peignoir. She peeled out of her clothes and threw on the light robe, tying the sash loosely. Then she pulled out her cosmetics bag, crossed the room and opened the bathroom door.

She gasped. The door didn’t lead into the bathroom at all; instead it opened into Cutter’s room next door! The hotel clerk hadn’t understood her so well after all; he’d given them connecting rooms. His room was the mirror image of her own. Cutter stood at the foot of his bed, less than ten feet away from her. His feet were bare, and his shirt was off. At the sound of the door he whirled, his right hand flying to the back of his belt.

When he saw who it was, he relaxed, and his hand fell down to his side. His eyes moved down her slowly, taking in every inch of her body, which was barely veiled by the thin robe. “Well, hello,” he greeted her, with a smile that reminded her of the Wolf meeting Little Red Ridinghood. “Do you have another job for me?”

“No!” Leslie’s face burned; she was humiliatingly aware of how much the peignoir revealed. “I—I thought this was the bathroom. I didn’t realize you were… that it was your room.”

“Too bad.”

She stepped back and closed the door, then turned the bolt to lock it. She should have known it wasn’t the door to the bathroom which she saw it had a lock on the outside but she had been up for almost twenty hours and it was the middle of the night New York time and she hadn’t been thinking. On the other side of the door she thought she heard Cutter’s chuckle when she locked the door. Of course he would find it amusing that she would think that he might want to enter her room. Obviously, he wouldn’t. He disliked her as much as she disliked him. But it made Leslie feel too vulnerable to know that her room was freely accessible to him.

Hurriedly she turned and walked over to the door on the other side of the dresser that she had assumed was the closet. She opened it more cautiously and found that it was indeed the bathroom. She turned on the water in the tub and set the soft cosmetics case down on the counter. In the mirror she could see that her face still glowed beet red. What an embarrassing thing to happen! Cutter would no doubt be perfectly odious about it tomorrow, insinuating that she’d done it on purpose. She dreaded facing him. But at least he didn’t know the worst thing—that even as she’d been mortified at his seeing her so close to naked, a liquid heat had started up deep in her abdomen at the intimate touch of his eyes. Not to mention the fact that she had immediately noticed how good he looked out of his shirt with perfectly developed, lean muscles that even in her embarrassment she couldn’t ignore.

It must be because she had gone so long without a man that anything was enough to spark her desire. After all, it had been two years since her divorce, and she hadn’t slept with any man since Blake. Sex had always seemed a lukewarm thing to her, but perhaps two years of abstinence was enough to make her start to want it—even with a man like Cutter, who was far too rough for her tastes and who made her furious every time they saw each other.

She turned back to her bath, shaking her head. It wasn’t worth thinking of. She was going to take her bath and go to bed, just as she had planned, and she was simply not going to think about it. Period.

***

The next morning Leslie, hair up, makeup on, wearing a raw silk blouse and pencil skirt in a gorgeous scarlet and feeling much more herself, went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Her spirits dropped considerably when she saw Cutter there before her, sipping a cup of coffee and tapping his pack of cigarettes against the table—obviously waiting on her. He glanced up and saw her and rose instantly to his feet. She was amazed at his quick politeness, not knowing that his movement was involuntary.

He had jumped up, drawn by the sheer beauty of her in red. The skirt hugged her hips and the line of her legs so tightly that only the six-inch slit in the back kept it from hobbling her walk. The shirt was perfectly fitted as well, no doubt tailor-made. She couldn’t have chosen anything that would have shown off her figure better or enhanced her coloring more.

Desire stirred in Cutter, as it had last night when she had inadvertently entered his room dressed in next to nothing. How did a woman who was so irritating and maddening manage to be so sexy, as well? He watched Leslie cross the room toward him and he warmed a little with pride, knowing that every male eye in the place was on her and that they would all assumed she belonged to him. He liked that. He felt a stir of suspicion that he might also like the reality very much. Too much. She was married to another man. She wasn’t for him. Hell, they couldn’t be together two minutes without arguing. There was no way he was going to let his body seduce him into something his mind knew was crazy.

As Leslie sat down across the table from him, Cutter scowled, angry at himself for allowing her to have such a strong effect on him. “What the hell are you wearing that for?”

Leslie raised a cool eyebrow. “Well, good morning to you, too.” She was glad for his surly attitude; it effectively wiped out the embarrassment she’d been feeling at facing him again after her mistake last night.

“I asked you a question. Are you planning to wear that thing on our trip?”

“Of course not. I thought I would pay a visit to Mr. Maldenado in the diplomatic office here. He’s the man I’ve dealt with since Blake was seized. I thought I’d see if he had any further news.”

“If they haven’t done anything yet, you can be sure they won’t have done it in the last day or two. It’s pointless.”

“Nevertheless, I ought to make the token gesture.”

“Don’t.”