Chapter 21
Angela
What the hell did I just do?
Like, from start to finish, what went on this evening?
Garrett was so hot and cold at dinner; I couldn’t tell which way was up. And now, I offer to share a room with him? Because that will make ignoring the swelling in my ovaries any easier?
Like it or not, I want him. And not just in an “Oh golly gee, I’d like to see him naked” way.
I’m talking full on, I want to have a torrid love affair with this man.
One that haunts my dreams for years. The kind they make movies about, where I’ll be old and gray and still thinking back to the night of passion I spent with Garrett Cooper in a small town called Bliss.
When he looks at me, the whole world falls away. I feel safe with him. Complete. His intensity feels comfortable—when it’s not making me want to strangle him. It’s like his energy matches mine, yet is the opposite of mine.
Like yin and yang.
Masculine and feminine.
Two halves of a whole.
He balances me, which is so freaking annoying I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The clerk checking me in hands over a set of keycards and Garrett and I walk down the hallway, side by side, drenched in awkwardness.
He’s mad. It radiates off him like heat waves off the pavement.
I don’t understand. There was a problem, but it’s solved.
And maybe, just maybe, the solution is fate looking out for us once again.
My keycard slides into the lock and we jostle our way into the room, then pull up short once we’re inside. The space would feel small without him beside me but now, with Garrett’s energy sucking up the oxygen, it’s downright claustrophobic.
Worse, there’s only one bed.
Just one giant bed and the two of us standing there, staring at it like it might bite.
“Fuck this day.” Garrett pauses in front of the thing with its cheap hotel comforter and uninviting pillows, hands in pockets, looking unsure what to do with himself. A few uncomfortable seconds tick by with him just standing there.
“It’s fine.” I swallow hard and wheel my suitcase deeper into the room. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“Like hell you will.” Garrett leans his bag against the wall. “You get the bed. I’ll take the floor.”
Footsteps thunder down the hallway with shrieking laughter and girlish yelling following behind.
“Not like we’ll get any sleep anyway,” he finishes, pinching the bridge of his nose with a sigh.
My mind immediately presents a list of ways we could entertain ourselves with one bed, while not sleeping. All of them require us to be indisposed and most of them have me sounding like the kids in the hallway. Shrieking. Squealing. My voice rasping its way up my throat…
“All I can think about is what I want to do to you in that bed.” Garrett’s eyes swim with something dark. Something needy. “That’s all I’ve been able to think about since our phone call.”
Would you look at that. We’re thinking along the same lines.
And that calls for emergency tactics.
“Wow. Okay. We’re gonna jump right in there.
” I move past him to sit in the chair near the windows with the thick, blackout curtains drawn.
“Look, Garrett. Whatever’s going on between us, you’re right.
I’m not the kind of woman who wants to be a distraction.
I feel like it’s important I put that out there before things get more complicated than they are. ”
“Sorry. Sorry.” He holds up his hands then rakes one across his mouth. “You’ve got me off balance, Ms. Hutton.”
“Ditto, Mr. Cooper.”
There has to be a way to break the tension because he’s just standing there and I’m just sitting here. How is this even real? I shift in my seat and clear my throat. “What would you be doing right now, if you weren't here with me?”
“I’d probably climb into bed, turn on the TV, and wish I’d thought to bring a bottle of whiskey.”
“Aha! Great minds!” I stand and cross the room, aware of every inch of Garrett’s body as I pass.
The desire to leap into his arms is so strong, I clasp my hands together until I’m clear.
“It’s not whiskey but…” I dig through my suitcase and pull out a bottle of wine.
“Feel like having a drink? We can sit. Talk. And if we run out of things to say, we’ll turn on the TV. ”
Garrett grunts, folding his arms over his chest as he considers. “Sounds harmless enough.”
I can’t help myself.
I laugh in his face, which shocks a quizzical smile out of him.
He physically wipes away the expression. “And that’s funny because…?”
“Because the last word I’d use to describe you is ‘harmless.’” I dig for the bottle opener and go to work on the wine while he strips the paper cups near the coffee pot of the protective wrapping and sets them on the dresser.
“Show me the harm I’ve caused you,” Garrett says in such a pompous, condescending, utterly unaware of himself way, my eyebrows launch into my hairline.
“Would you like me to explain my embarrassment when I walked into a meeting with my dad and uncle, only to find the guy I’d drunkenly chewed out the night before?”
He folds his arms and looks unimpressed. “That one’s not entirely on me.”
“What if I said the guy totally knew who I was and chose to keep it to himself? Or perhaps I should highlight the time I invited said guy out for drinks to apologize for that behavior and he kissed me. Just out of the blue. For no reason. Or what about the night he called and told me to get naked—”
“Okay, okay.” Hands up. Lips tight. “I get the point. I’m not harmless.”
“We haven’t even gotten into the emotional whiplash you’re giving me,” I say with a shake of my head.
“First you hate me. Then we’re friends. Then you’re flirting.
Then it’s all just business. Then, after that, you…
you stand in front of that bed and tell me you want to… to, uh…to do things to me in it.”
Great. And now I sound like I’m twelve again. What happened to powerful women not lusting after bad matches?
Garrett slides the paper cups my way with a smirk. “Like I said, you’ve got me off balance.”
“Is that why the hotel mysteriously didn’t have a room for you?” I pour wine into the first cup, then hand it over. “This whole thing is a cheap ploy to get me into bed?”
He shakes his head as he accepts the drink, his eyes locking onto mine with intention. “If I’m trying to get you into bed, you’ll know.”
Well, shit.
If Garrett’s going to be making statements like that, I need to be significantly less sober.