8. June
8
JUNE
H is words send a shiver through me, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever felt. After so much tension for a day and a half, I am ready to cut loose. I need it. Funny how a run-in with the law shifts perspective. Saturday night, I fell asleep as a newly engaged woman in the arms of her fiancée, and Sunday morning, I woke up as a criminal. It’s been a rough couple of days.
But then, I knew this would happen.
Ever since my father’s conviction, I have done everything I can to keep myself on the straight and narrow. I pay my taxes early, I drive below the speed limit and when I do, if someone is behind me, I get out of their way so I don’t bother them, and I certainly never text and drive. Breaking the law has never appealed to me. There’s no thrill in that kind of thing for me. I know the cost it entails, so the night my world came crashing down around me, I knew something like this would happen because Devlins never get away with anything for long.
Seems to me I should enjoy everything I can before I ’ m behind bars.
I snag a few things and throw them into Anderson’s overnight bag, and as I do, I tell him, “You know, it was really shitty of you to tell me I can’t find a movie actor attractive. I mean, of all the petty things you could have started a fight over, you picked that?”
“What?” It’s his turn to be confused.
I smile so he knows I’m playing at his game. Hopefully. “Remember? That’s how the fight started. We were watching the commercial for that new action flick, and you asked what I thought of that guy. It was the whole reason we had a blow-up, and you don’t even remember it?”
Recognition brightens his crystalline blue eyes from within. He grins and rakes his fingers through his shining black hair. It’s become a little shaggy since his surgery, and I like it. He chuckles, shaking his head. “Oh, right. I forgot all about it. But I remember now. The way you looked at him … I’m sorry, baby, but it gutted me.”
“An ‘I’m sorry’ followed by a ‘but’ is worthless.” Playing or not, that much is true.
“You’re right, you’re right.” He holds his hands up to calm me down as if that is not the equivalent of waving a red flag at a bull. If this were a real fight, he’d be so very dead right now. But he grins at me, and it has a rakish quality that makes me want to do nasty things to him. He sheepishly says, “I will try not to get upset when I see you blatantly lusting after another man.”
I press myself against him, and he holds me there. “Good.”
“Just so long as you don’t get upset if you see me lusting after another woman.”
I smack his chest. “Oh my god, you don’t learn, do you?”
“That there are separate rules for guys and girls? I think they call that a double something,” he says facetiously.
“It is not the same thing!”
“I beg to differ.”
I roll my eyes. “If a girl lusts after a guy, it’s harmless. If a guy lusts after a girl, he might actually do something about it.”
“Oh, because women don’t have affairs?”
“With actors? Are you kidding me?”
“I see it all the time at work?—"
“Because you’re in entertainment law, Anderson! I mean, for fuck’s sake, between the two of us, who has access to the attractive Hollywood elite? Me or you?”
He frowns. “Well, me, but?—"
“And which one of us has a history of being a womanizer?”
He opens his mouth and pauses, realizing he’s walked right into my trap. I grin at him, knowing I have won this round. A smirk flickers in his dangerous eyes. “Alright, Devlin, just for that, I’m going to surprise you.”
I laugh, but I’m intrigued. “Haven’t there been enough surprises for one night?”
“Not hardly. You ready?”
“Let’s go.”
The trip to the Ritz is over in a blink. Anderson clearly has more than a legendary cocktail in mind tonight, and he is as anxious as I am. The play fight weirdly got me going, and I am practically climbing the walls. However, that might also be because his car smells so deeply of him and leather, and those two scents get my brain tangled. It is all I can do to keep my hands to myself in the car. I hope this drink doesn’t take too long. I need to see my man naked.
We walk into the lobby, and it’s gorgeous. Golden lighting cascades from chandeliers, and the modern neutral palette is inviting, but I want to make a run for the room—oh hell. We don’t have a reservation. How in the hell are we going to make this work?
I steer toward the lounge so we can figure it out, but Anderson takes my elbow and guides me to the concierge desk. I object, “We need to book a room?—"
He only laughs and strolls to the desk. Being a Monday night, there’s no line. Thank goodness for small favors. No one will see us get booted out of here. “Good evening,” he begins. I wonder what he’ll say to try and get a room. The Ritz books far in advance, so the thought we could just walk in is ridiculous.
When the concierge looks up at him, her face practically glows. “Mr. West, a pleasant surprise.”
“Melanie, you’re slipping. You should have known I’d be here,” he teases. “I booked over an hour ago online.”
He did? Sneaky bastard. But I feel better knowing we have a room booked.
But then I catch the look in Melanie’s eyes. She laughs musically while she stares at his mouth. They’re so familiar with each other, and it becomes clear they’ve had a thing, and well, I hate her now. But she gives me the once over and smiles just as sweetly at me before turning to him. “Apologies, Mr. West, but it has been months since we last saw you. I thought perhaps you had taken your business elsewhere.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“The usual?”
“Actually, is the Presidential available?”
Her blond brows lift for a moment as she goes to check it. “For how many nights?”
“Just the one for now, but I’d like to keep the option for tomorrow night, as well.”
Oh, he would, would he? After keeping his Melanie secret, I plan to make him pay for this. He should have told me we could run into his ex. For that, I’m getting all the room service I want. Maybe I’ll make her bring it.
She purrs, “Anything for you, Mr. West.” She passes him a keycard, and her fingers linger just long enough to irritate me. But then her smile deepens further when she looks at me. “And anything at all for his guests.”
Oh my god. She’s flirting with me.
Before I can react, he says, “Have a lovely evening, Melanie.”
“Don’t forget—our twenty-four-hour service is available at any time. And I get off in two hours.”
I bet she thinks she will.
He smiles, then takes my hand and sweeps me away to the elevator bank. He presses the button and offers no explanation of Melanie or anything else whatsoever.
“Was the drink a ploy to get me here?”
“The Ritz is notorious for taking its guests’ privacy rather seriously. It’s practically sacrosanct here. Particularly the upper-tier suites. They are swept for bugs regularly.”
I blink up at him. “How do you even know that?”
“A side benefit of the job.” He lifts a shoulder. “When we have a celebrity client under allegations or getting hounded by the paparazzi, and we need to stash them someplace safe, this is where we send them for exactly that reason.”
“And is that why you’re so friendly with the concierge?” I ask pointedly.
“No.” He doesn’t offer any explanation. Again.
As if I’m going to let this drop. It’s like he doesn’t know me at all. “So, is Melanie an ex?”
Anderson chuckles. “Erm, no.”
“But you’ve slept with her.”
“Is that a question?”
“Is that an evasion?”
He grins, staring at the doors as they open. “Counselor, I have never slept with her.”
“Had sex, whatever. Don’t wordplay your way out of this one.”
“No. I have never had sex with Melanie the Concierge.” He gestures for me to enter the elevator. So, I do. Once the doors close, he mutters, “However, I have watched her have sex with two other women.”
“Oh my god! You could have?—"
But he cuts me off with a kiss hot enough to peel paint. He backs me into the corner of the elevator, and I’m wedged there, trapped by his big body and the walls. He reaches up my dress, and I am officially scandalized that he’d do anything like this in the elevator. My blood screams in my veins as his hand slips higher up my thigh, past the top of the thigh high. His fingertips breach the edge of my underwear so methodically that he has me trembling like a leaf. When his finger slips around my clit, the elevator stops.
But it's not our floor yet.