Chapter Eighteen
Darryn had had enough. This was a bloody waste of everyone’s time. The meeting wasn’t going as planned. This was supposed to be a mere formality so the papers could be signed, and now one of the sellers had all sorts of ridiculous stipulations.
They decided to build another hotel, somewhere along the Garden Route, a stretch of road along the southeastern coast of South Africa which extended from Mossel Bay in the Western Cape to the Storms River in the Eastern Cape.
It was a popular tourist destination and included towns such as Knysna, Plettenberg Bay, and Nature’s Valley, with George being the Garden Route’s largest town and main administrative center.
They’d decided on the picturesque town of Knysna for their hotel.
The piece of land they were interested in was near the Knysna Lagoon and would suit what they had in mind.
Now all of a sudden, one of the owners was worried they’d put up something that wouldn’t fit in with the environment.
And this after Dale, the architect of the group, had spent weeks there before he’d drawn up plans for the hotel. But the guy kept finding fault.
Just as he opened his mouth, though, his phone rang. The caller ID indicated that Hannah was calling, and he promptly forgot what he was going to say.
Frowning, he got up and excused himself, in spite of Don’s raised eyebrow.
Hannah never phoned him, especially this time of day.
He was usually the one who called and he hadn’t spoken to her in a few days.
A sense of urgency had him nearly running from the room. Something had to be wrong, very wrong.
“Hannah, what’s wrong?”
“Hi, Darryn.” She breathed in his ear. “Nothing is wrong. I…I was wondering…”
Silence.
“Yes?” he asked in a clipped voice, his heartbeat settling. She was obviously fine.
“What are you wearing?”
Stunned, he took the phone from his ear to make sure it was actually Hannah. What the hell?
“Hannah? I’m not sure what—”
“I’m wearing pearls and a smile,” her voice whispered in his ear.
And his body reacted. Immediately.
“Damnit, Hannah, I’m in an important meeting! And you call me to tell me what you’re wearing? Are you crazy?” He hissed, looking around if anyone was close by. He turned around so he could face the wall. How the hell was he supposed to walk back into the meeting now, looking like this?
“I’m—”
The next minute the line was down, and Darryn groaned out loud. The full impact of what had just happened only now dawned on him. If he wasn’t mistaken, Hannah contacted him for some phone sex and he reacted like an absolute idiot.
He tried to call her back, but her phone didn’t even ring, she had to have switched it off completely.
At that moment, the doors to the conference room opened, and the three sellers walked out, all clearly fed up. They briefly nodded in his direction before they headed for the elevators.
Dumbstruck, Darryn stared after them. The meeting couldn’t be over already, damnit. They hadn’t solved anything! He stormed back into the conference room where his three brothers were still sitting around the table.
“What the hell happened?” he asked.
“Well, if you were here, you would have known,” Don said irritably while he got up and closed his laptop.
“The ball in is their court. They know they won’t get another offer like ours for the land. They have until tomorrow to give us a final answer. There is an alternative piece of land we can try, but the plans I’ve been working on are based on this property. Damnit, what a bloody mess!” Dale growled.
“What call was so important that you had to leave?” David asked, obviously also irritated.
“It…it was Hannah,” Darryn said, frustrated. So not only had the meeting been a waste of time, Hannah was also not talking to him.
“So, what was so important that you had to leave to take her call?” asked David.
“She phoned to…” he began before he realized there was no way he could tell his brother about the mess he’d just made with Hannah’s call.
Don slapped his shoulder as he passed him. “As long as you weren’t having phone sex while we were battling alone inside—”
“How the hell did you know that?” Darryn asked. Only when the words had popped out of his mouth, did he realize he’d said them out loud.
His brothers all stared at him.
“Oh, man!” David finally chuckled. “I hope it was worth it.”
“At least someone had some fun this morning,” Dale grumbled.
“I wasn’t having fun, damnit! I thought she was in trouble and then—”
Now all three of his brothers were openly laughing at him.
“So, you’ve screwed up phone sex?” Dale snickered. “You really need help.”
“I could give you some pointers,” Don said with a poker face.
“Me too,” David piped in.
“Get the hell off my back,” Darryn snarled, walking toward the elevator. “I’ll fix it myself.”
As the elevator doors closed, he looked up to see his brothers still laughing.
Bloody hell. He didn’t even want to think what was going on in Hannah’s mind at the moment.
He had never been good with any kind of telephone conversation, never mind the sexy kind.
Which, come to think of it, he’d never even considered up to now.
And, to be honest, he hadn’t thought Hannah would be this adventurous. But then he remembered her as she was standing behind Stephen White—arms held high, ready to clobber him with the heel of her shoe.
Man, she was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman—so why the hell was he here in South Africa when she was New York?
*
Hannah wished there was a hole she could crawl into and stay there.
She was mortified. Of course, Darryn would be busy in the middle of the day.
What was she thinking calling him without checking what time it was and telling him what she wasn’t wearing?
It hadn’t even occurred to her to look at the time, to think about what he might be doing.
But, hell, he could have been nicer about it!
If he was in love with her as he’d said… That was obviously the problem. Over the past two weeks, he hadn’t mentioned loving her once. Yes, he had phoned and they’d talked, if the one-word sentences she got out of him could be described as talking.
This whole thing was messing with her head, and she should be concentrating on what she was doing.
“Hannah, sweetheart, please focus,” the photographer said, his smile much stiffer than it had been earlier that morning.
She tried to clear her head. The shoot had been scheduled for that morning, and it was now already way past lunch. It was her fault entirely. The photographer was being very patient with her. She was a professional; she should be doing her job, not thinking about Darryn.
And for the next hour she managed to clear her head, kept her focus on what she was supposed to be doing. When they were done, she walked over to the photographer and apologized for being distracted.
“Don’t sweat it,” he said, much happier now that they were finished. “Man trouble?” he asked with a grin.
Hannah shook her head, fed up with herself. Darryn was interfering with her life, with her work. This kind of thing had never happened to her before. The last thing she wanted was to have a reputation as someone who behaved unprofessionally.
As much as she didn’t want to believe it, it was now obvious to her that Darryn’s feelings had changed. It was time she moved on with her life.
*
At eleven o’clock, Hannah crawled into bed, too tired to even bother switching off the light.
They rehearsed the whole afternoon and then she had a personal trainer come over for a gym session.
Now she was bone tired and fervently hoped she would be able to fall asleep.
She had a day to herself tomorrow and wouldn’t have to worry about getting up early.
Her phone rang. Her eyes closed, she felt on her bedside table until her fingers found it. It was probably her agent.
“Hi,” she said, answering without checking who was calling.
“Still wearing only that smile and pearls?” Darryn asked huskily in her ear.
Her eyes flew open. “Darryn?”
“Or are you wearing that sexy red lace thing you sometimes wear to bed. The one that leaves those long, sexy legs of yours bare so my hands can slowly stroke…”
Wide awake now and ticked off, Hannah sat upright, pushing her hair back. “I’m trying to sleep, Darryn, good night.” She ended the call.
She’d brazenly tried to talk sexily to him last night, but he hadn’t been interested. Now, after she’d been suffering from humiliation for a whole day, and she was finally tired enough to go to sleep, he wanted to say sexy things to her and she was supposed to be happy about it? Aaargghh!
She looked down at herself. It so happened that she was indeed wearing the damn red lace thing Darryn mentioned.
And, to make matters worse, the delicious chills that went through her body while he was talking to her hadn’t stopped yet.
Irritated with herself, she stood up. She wasn’t going to go back to sleep right now, so she might as well have a cup of tea.
Not bothering to put on anything over her nighty, she walked to the kitchen. The intercom beeped as she put out a hand to switch on the light. Who would be visiting this time of night? It could be a courier, although they usually deliver stuff to the security guard downstairs.
She pressed the button. “Yes?” she said.
“It’s me.” The voice sounded remarkably like Darryn’s.
What was going on?
“Hannah? I’m sorry about yesterday. I’m sorry I acted like an idiot, but I’m here, in New York and I…I have to see you. Please let me in?”
She pressed the button to let him enter the building and stood staring at the door, her breath lodged somewhere in the back of her throat.
Was she dreaming? Had everything that had happened over the last two years finally caught up with her and she’d lost it completely?
Because she could swear Darryn was on his way up to her apartment.
A loud knock propelled her forward and she flung open the door. And there he was, gorgeous and sexy and—she put out a hand to touch his face—and real.
His eyes were bloodshot, his hair standing on end, but it was Darryn. His gaze slowly traveled over her, igniting flames just below the surface of her skin so that when he finally dropped his suitcase and opened his arms, she was ready to burst into flames. With a cry, she walked into his embrace.