Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Hartford
As I stepped out of the lift, my entire body buzzed with excitement at seeing Joshua.
He’d said sleeping together wouldn’t change anything between us, and I hoped that was true.
I really wanted to talk to him about Calmation.
We could strategize together—a pastime bound to be more successful than baking together.
That wouldn’t happen tonight because of having to keep Gerry’s contact confidential. But soon.
I paused at my front door to find my keys. Joshua’s door opened behind me.
“Good evening,” he said, in that relaxed, gravelly tone that usually meant he’d just woken up or had been deep in thought. “How was your day?”
I turned and smiled at him. God, he was pretty. “Good. Busy. Gerry’s pleased with my extracurricular activities.”
Joshua’s eyebrows lifted. “I hope you didn’t go into too much detail.”
I laughed and tried to ignore the flush of heat creeping up my neck.
“Well, I’m going to show you another way to spend your time outside of the hospital tonight.” Joshua picked up my bag and held out his hand. I took it, and he led me into his flat.
As I followed him inside, I spoke to his back. “We should have a conversation before we get naked again. You only do the casual sex thing, and I know that. Like, I really know that.”
“We can talk, but first, I’m going to let you in on a secret of mine.
” He guided me to the kitchen island, dropped my bag on the side, and pulled out a glass from the cupboard and a bottle of wine from his fridge.
He poured, but instead of handing it to me, he picked it up in one hand and held out the other.
I didn’t question him. All my energy was being channeled into curiosity about what he had in store for me.
I followed him into the bathroom, where he placed the glass on the inset marble shelf and pressed some buttons on a pad on the wall; water started pouring into the bath.
His bathroom was like something out of a hotel—walls of marble and mood lighting.
Which fit, I supposed, as we were in a hotel.
Sort of. He pulled towels and a robe off the shelves at the far end of the room and placed them on the bench opposite the bath.
“Okay,” he said, turning his attention back to me. “Do these scrub things have buttons, or do they just pull off?” He tugged at the hem of my top and I pulled away from him. What was he doing?
“This is your secret? This is how you seduce your women? You bathe them?” Now that we’d slept together, was this what was going to happen? I was going to get the full Miss Tuesday Night treatment?
“No, this is a bath that I ran for you. And if you’re going to get in, you need to be naked. I’m going to sit the other side of the door and we can talk about anything you want.”
I felt like I’d skipped a chapter. “And this is your secret?”
He nodded. “Baths. They’re the key to relaxation, creativity, and taking care of yourself.
Or in this case, me taking care of you.” He withdrew a wooden box from a drawer under the sink, and inside were tiny bottles of who-knew-what.
“We need some frankincense, chamomile, and of course, lavender.” He selected what he wanted and set about dripping the contents of each into my bath.
“And some plain bath oil.” He reached for a bottle that sat next to my glass of wine and added a generous dose to the water. “It’s all organic.”
The man had lost his mind.
“Right, get in. You can put this in your biweekly report for Gerry.”
Next he’d be teaching me how to meditate.
“Save the skeptical glares, Hartford, and take off your clothes. I can’t tell you how many solutions I’ve found to problems in this bath.
This tub has provided everything from breakthrough ideas for pitches to solutions for profitability issues.
” He turned to me and fixed me with a smoldering look.
“And I’ve never shown anyone this. Not any other woman. Not my best friends.”
I pushed him out of the door so he didn’t see my widening smile. That bath was looking pretty inviting right now.
“Are you in?” he called. “I’m going to get a cushion and a beer; I’ll be back.”
I pulled off my scrubs and stepped into the first bath I’d had in over a decade.
“I put the towels and a robe on the bench,” Joshua called from the other side of the door.
Was the bench here so someone, or a couple of people, could talk to the person bathing? Were the business set taking meetings in the tub these days?
“You want music on?” he shouted while soothing, classical piano music drifted through the speakers.
“I don’t think so,” I called back. The concerto stopped abruptly.
“I forgot to switch on the candles. The ones around the bath are battery operated. The switch is on the base.”
Candles were the last thing on my mind.
“Are you in yet?” he asked.
“Just sitting down.” How had he convinced me to do this? I felt ridiculous. But this water felt like sliding between silk sheets.
“I hope the temperature’s right. It will be thirty-eight degrees exactly. That’s how I usually take my baths.”
I let out a small laugh. “Joshua Luca, I bet if you surveyed the entire British population, you and the Queen would be the only two people in the land who would know their preferred bath temperature.” As I lowered myself into the water, I had to acknowledge that the guy knew what temperature to run a bath.
“The essential oils in there will help you relax. And also, it might help lift the smell of Yemen.”
“Hey. I do not still smell of Yemen.” But hell, this bath smelled delicious. Like a garden full of flowers. I took a deep breath and allowed my body to sink deeper into the water.
He laughed. “No. Not anymore. So, let’s talk.”
A ripple of anxiety circled in my stomach. I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I liked Joshua, there was no doubt about it. Could my forcefield handle casual sex with him? I knew he couldn’t give me anything more.
“I really enjoyed last night,” he said, his tone low and gravelly again.
“Me too,” I replied. “But let’s not talk it to death, okay?
” I didn’t want some awkward dance where he had to tell me that he didn’t do serious relationships.
Or that once was nice and everything but there wouldn’t be a repeat performance.
My forcefield had taken hits last night and I needed to power up before I could handle a relationship talk.
I just wanted it to be us. I didn’t want last night to have ruined anything. “We’re still friends.”
“Right.”
“I’m well aware you only do the casual thing, so let’s be casual about this. If it happens again . . .” If it happened again, I’d have to power up my forcefield in advance. That way, it wouldn’t feel so full of holes the way it did now. “Then it happens again. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”
“Right,” he said. “The casual thing.”
“Right,” I replied.
“Right. Can you stop saying casual?” he asked.
“Can you stop saying right?”
Despite him being the other side of the door, I could feel his grin between my thighs.
“Whatever you say, Hartford. So if we’re not going to talk about . . . last night, do you want to talk about work?”
I’d love to chat through the whole Merdon and Calmation thing, but it would have to wait until everything was out in the open. Then I’d pin him down and make him give me input into my plan. “Not really. There are things brewing I might want to talk to you about in a few weeks, but not now.”
“How’s the leg?”
I lifted it out of the water, watching as the water slid from my decade-old scar. “It’s okay. I think it will always be my weak spot, you know?”
“We all have them.” I heard his head fall back onto the bathroom door.
“Weak spots?” I asked.
“Yes. And scars.”
“But not you. Isn’t Joshua Luca completely flawless? Super successful, pussy magnet billionaire.”
“Pussy magnet?” I could hear his smile in his words and for a split second I wanted to tell him to come in and join me in this perfectly warm water. To show me what weak spots and scars he had, and offer to wash them all away.
“Where are your scars, Joshua?”
Silence settled between us like the steam on the mirrors. We were at a crossroads in our relationship—he could make some quip about his bone never having broken, or we could dive deeper.
“I’m not sure I have scars exactly. But I’m not flawless either.”
“Really? Tell me something you’re not good at. Something you’ve failed at. Something you want but can’t have?”
“I’ve had my share of challenges. Work is . . .” He paused, and I imagined him doing some mental gymnastics about what he should say. “I suppose Diana breaking things off was a low point.”
Diana. Was she the woman he’d wanted to marry? I remember there being a lot of phone calls and hushed conversations around the time of the wedding, but I didn’t recall any specific details. I supposed I’d assumed it had been Joshua’s decision.
“Looking back, it was completely the right thing for both of us. We were far too young and didn’t have a clue what we were doing.”
“Do you still miss her?”
“No, I don’t think I ever did. I just wish she’d told me rather than just not turn up to the ceremony, you know?”
I sat bolt upright and water sloshed over the sides of the bath.
I’d had no idea he’d been jilted. I’d been deep in my I-don’t-want-to-hear-about-Joshua phase at the time, which seemed to have lasted about ten years.
“That must have been rough.” I wanted to get out and comfort him, but the last time the subject had come up, while we were baking, he’d shut me down.
I couldn’t help but think that the only reason he’d opened up now was because there was a closed door between us.
“Yeah. I suppose I had life planned out in a certain direction and all of a sudden . . .”
Plans changed.
I knew that feeling.
“Did it happen before you set up Luca Brands?”
“Yeah, just before.”
“So you channeled all your energy into creating a successful business.”
“I suppose.”
It made sense. It also explained why Joshua didn’t get serious with anyone, although I wasn’t sure he saw it as clearly as I did.
His scars were well hidden and after all this time, unlikely to heal.
Without a marriage, Joshua had wedded a casual-relationship lifestyle, and I needed to respect his boundaries.
I could keep my forcefield fully charged, keep the feelings that always managed to rage out-of-hand for him in check.
It was the only way to let myself have more of what we’d shared last night—and every moment I spent with him, it became clearer that more of Joshua was what I wanted.