Layover Rules

Chapter Twelve



True to their word, Steven and Ross came to New York for a day trip. They made the drive in less than four hours, arriving late Saturday morning.

It was just the three of us at lunch. Alicia, who had gotten to know Steven and Ross through me, couldn’t make it but planned to catch up with us later for a Broadway show.

As we ate, I told them about the new job possibility, and then about Sam.

“That’s quite a nice setup,” Ross said.

“Love the name,” Steven said, referring to the Layover Rules.

“All mine,” I said, pointing at myself. “I get all the credit for it, and I have to say I’m pretty proud of that one.”

Steven followed baseball so he knew all about Sam. Ross and I had more in common when it came to sports—neither of us knew or cared anything about it—so when he’d been quiet for a long time while Steven was talking about the Yankees, I assumed it was just because he wasn’t interested in the topic of conversation.

But he was quiet beyond that, even when I was talking about Sam’s die-hard devotion to casual clothes. Ross was into fashion and I was surprised he hadn’t chimed in on that.

Finally I asked him what was going on, and he said, “What happens when you start to feel more for him?”

I finished chewing, swallowed, took a sip of wine and stated firmly, “It’s not going to happen.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because,” I said, wiping the corners of my mouth with my napkin and placing it back on my lap, “I just know. After what I went through with Trevor, I’m not putting myself out there for any guy for a long, long time. And what Sam and I have is good. No, better than that. It’s great.”

Ross pointed his fork at me, “That’s why you’ll start feeling more.”

Steven said, “She’s a big girl. She can handle it, no matter what happens.”

“Oh, it’s going to happen,” Ross said.

I looked at Steven for more support. He frowned and said, “Sorry, Blair. But he’s right.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine, believe what you will. You’ll see. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“Yeah,” Ross said, “setting yourself up for a whirlwind romance with a hot ex-baseball star. I can’t wait for the wedding.”



. . . . .



I arrived in San Francisco late Monday night, checked into my hotel room, and called Sam.

“Are you here yet?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.”

“Where are you staying?”

My company picked the hotel, and the TV network picked Sam’s, so we couldn’t plan to stay in the same place. It would either happen or it wouldn’t, and it wasn’t that big of a deal either way.

He told me where he would be staying and then asked me where I was.

“Marriot on Fourth Street,” I said. “Room 444. Easy to remember.”

“That’s not too far from where I’ll be.”

He told me the first game of the series was at 4:30, for primetime viewing back east, which meant he wouldn’t be too late.

“I’ll pick a place to eat,” I said. “You like seafood, right? Because the place I’m thinking of is kind of famous for it.”

“Love it. Every time I’m here I spend most of my time at Fisherman’s Wharf.”

I walked into the bathroom and unpacked my toiletries. “It sounds like you might be more of an expert than me. You pick the place.”

“We’ll go down there together and find one. Hey, I have to get going. Sorry to run.”

“Call me when you get here,” I said, “just so I know.”

“You got it. Talk to you tomorrow.”



. . . . .



The hotel room phone rang and woke me up at 7 a.m.

I barely emerged from the fog of sleep to answer it.

“Wake-up call, ma’am.”

I turned over onto my back. “I didn’t request one.”

“Well, you’re getting one anyway.”

I sat up. It was slowly coming to me. “Sam?”

“Took you long enough.”

“Why are you calling this phone and not mine?”

“The wake-up call would come from your room phone. Never mind. It wasn’t a very clever joke, and you’re obviously too tired for it anyway.”

He was right. I was too tired and I just wanted to go back to sleep.

I lay back down and groaned. Not a sexy one. A tired one. “What are you doing?”

I heard a knock on my door. “This.”

I sat up again. “What are you…hang on.”

I put the phone down, went to the door, looked through the peephole and saw Sam’s face. He was looking directly at the door, smiling.

Through the door he said, “Room service.”

I unlatched the door, swung it open. “You said wake-up call.”

“Ah, that’s right. Close the door and we’ll do it over.”

I laughed and stepped aside to let him in. “Get in here.”

Sam came into my room, closing the door behind him and reached for me.

“No, wait.” I moved out of range of his arms and went into the bathroom, where I took a swig of mouthwash and swished it around.

I looked at Sam, who was standing there watching me. I put up one finger, closed the door, turned on the water, and spit the mouthwash into the sink.

When I opened the door again he said, “That whole spitting thing? So, so sexy.”

“Thank you.”

“Come here.”

I took one step toward him and he took my hand, leading me to the bed. I sat on the edge. Sam got down on one knee. “I’m not proposing, don’t worry.” He leaned forward and put one hand on my cheek, pulling me closer to him.

His stubble was rough against my chin, but it was the best feeling I’d had since…well, since the last time we were together.

He moved away from me, putting his hands on my bare thighs. “I’m not breaking any of your rules, am I?”

“Our rules.” I looked down at him touching me, then back up to meet his eyes. “Which one could you be breaking?”

He shrugged. “Just making sure.”

Rubbing his hands lightly along my thighs, he moved in for another kiss. This one deep, hungry, needy.

“I thought you weren’t getting here until later,” I mumbled into his mouth.

His tongue slid along mine, then his lips closed around mine. “I lied. I was here last night, but I’ve been dying to have you in the morning.” He kissed me hard again, and I gave it back to him. Then he said, “It was all I could do not to come over here last night.” Another deep, full kiss. “But this was worth the wait.”

A girl with any sense doesn’t turn down oral sex in the morning, so when it was clear what he intended to do, I let him go for it. I remained sitting until I could no longer support my body in that position, and I threw myself back onto the bed, lifting one leg and wrapping it behind Sam’s neck, pulling him in, closer to me.

I closed my eyes and let Sam’s touch envelope me. He dragged his lips and tongue along the inside of my left thigh, stopping to tease me before moving to my right leg, then back up….

He took it slow at first, picking up the pace, switching up the direction of his tongue. I could feel his hot breath on me.

It wasn’t long before my legs—now wrapped around his head with my ankles locked—jerked involuntarily as I let myself go, pleasure surges controlling my muscles.

As soon as I regained my composure, I said, “Switch places with me.”

Sam didn’t waste a second getting on his back, as I moved to the edge of the bed.

Telling a man what to do was something that never would have happened in my previous relationship, and I took full advantage of the opportunity to make Sam react to my mouth as I had reacted to his.

I unbuckled the belt, lowered the zipper, and freed him.

While I had stayed on my back, looking up at the ceiling at first but ultimately closing my eyes, Sam propped himself up on his elbows and watched my every move. I let his noises and various facial expressions tell me what he liked. When I noticed he reacted more to the swirling tongue, I teased him more with it, listening to his shaky breath, watching his stomach muscles twitch, enticing him to finish before he wanted to.

I was in complete control and I loved every second of it.



. . . . .



“I hope the rest of the day is as good as the morning,” he said.

“Somehow I doubt that’s possible.”

We were lying on the bed, and I couldn’t stop thinking that I could easily go back to sleep for a few more hours.

I asked Sam where he grew up.

“Connecticut. Just outside Bristol, which is where ESPN is headquartered.”

“Do you ever go there? To the headquarters, I mean.”

He shook his head. “Only once, and that was over a year ago. I never have to be in the studio. I’m always on the road.”

“And you never go back just to visit? What about family?”

We were lying next to each other, both on our backs, and I moved onto my side, putting one arm on his chest so I could rest my chin on it and see his face.

“No,” he said. “My parents live in Florida. I’m an only child. So, there’s no one to visit there.”

I was a little surprised by the fact that I found myself wanting to ask him questions, considering the fact that I didn’t want anything serious, not just with Sam, but with anyone. But since our rules barred us from talking about current personal matters, past ones were the only option.

I was about to ask him something else when I noticed the time. Almost 8:15. I needed to get ready for work. My question could wait until later.

As he was leaving, we made plans to meet later for dinner. Sam said he’d call and we’d meet in the lobby of my hotel, then go down to Fisherman’s Wharf and find a place to eat.



. . . . .



I spent my lunch hour in a café down the street from the store. I got my iPad on wi-fi with no problem, and I scanned the news sites for more information on Trevor. Almost every news story was now using the “Baker’s Dozen” moniker.

Most of what I found was old news, but one article contained a quote from a former federal prosecutor who specialized in financial crimes, stating that if convicted, Trevor could be sentenced to as much as forty years in prison.

He’d be seventy years old by the time he got out. I knew he’d never make it that long.

It was almost impossible to believe this was happening, but the images on TV and everything I’d read on the Internet was all too real. Trevor. My ex. The guy I’d lived with. A fraud on so many levels.

Maybe it was almost impossible to believe because I didn’t want to face that fact that he’d been a part of my life. How could I have let myself get so involved with him?

I called Alicia, just to chat, but got her voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. Instead, I texted her and said I’d get in touch with her later.



. . . . .



Sam and I went to a waterfront restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf when he finished his broadcast. We started with the most amazing clams I’d ever tasted, a nice wine, and for the main course we both went for the almond-encrusted cod.

I thought back to the morning and how I had wanted to ask him more about his past, but we had been pressed for time so I decided to ask now.

“What were you like as a kid? Athletic, that’s a given. But, I mean, tell me something different.”

He flaked off a piece of fish but didn’t bring it up to his mouth. “Something different?”

“Yeah, like…” I thought about it for a few seconds. “Something you don’t normally tell people.”

He put the piece of fish in his mouth and thought as he chewed.

Then, finally, he said, “There was this one thing that I never told anybody, and I mean anybody. Aside from me and whatever animals were around, you’re the only person who will know this.”

Animals? Oh, God, this sounded like something that would have happened on one of Alicia’s disastrous dates.

He must have seen the concern on my face because he said, “It’s not that weird. Just a little embarrassing.” Then he went silent.

“Well, now you have to tell me, Sam. Come on.”

“I was walking in the woods one day and found this pipe sticking out of the ground,” he began. “I was out there alone. Sometimes I would walk in the woods for hours. Never got lost, though. I was always good with sense of direction. The pipe was only this big around…” He put his hands together, fingers touching, making a circle that was maybe six inches across. “Old, rusty, with jagged edges. It looked like it had been there for a hundred years. The first day I saw it I dropped some rocks down there…” He paused to sip his wine.

“How old were you?”

“Seven. Just turned seven, actually.”

“Your parents let you walk around the woods by yourself when you were seven? You weren’t scared?”

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “I had a gun. So I find this pipe—”

“You had a gun when you were seven?” I said that way too loudly, and I noticed people looking at our table. I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Seven years old and you had a gun?”

“It was a cork gun. You know, cork on a string, it pops out, that’s really it.”

I shook my head. “So it wasn’t a real gun.”

“No.”

“Then why did it keep you from being scared?”

Sam picked up an asparagus spear with his fork. “I was seven. At that age, a gun was a gun.”

“What is it with boys and guns? My God.”

He finished chewing, then, ignoring my rhetorical question, said, “I don’t know why I came up with the idea, but one day I pretended that the pipe was a wishing well. Only I didn’t know that term at the time. But I convinced myself that whatever I said into the pipe would go all the way to wherever it ended, and there was a wizard at the other end who would grant my wish.”

“Wow.”

“I guess you could say I had an overactive imagination. Ridiculous, huh?”

“I think it’s cute,” I said.

The waitress asked us if everything was fine. Sam told her everything was great, and ordered us a couple of beers from a local microbrewery.

“I did that off and on until I was twelve years old, and even started writing the wishes on pieces of paper and dropping them down the pipe. You know, like it would be more official to put them in writing. Then they bulldozed the whole area to build a new subdivision. The end.”

“God, that’s a terrible ending,” I said, laughing.

Sam shrugged. “That’s how it went.”

Our beers arrived. The waitress took our empty dinner plates and said she’d stop by to check on us again shortly.

“So,” I said, “there are all these pieces of paper way down in the ground somewhere with a twelve-year-old Sam’s handwritten wishes.”

He nodded and sipped his beer.

“Wouldn’t you like to find those?” I asked.

“They’re probably not all that interesting. At that age, they were mostly wishes to play pro baseball and find a Playboy magazine somewhere.”

I put the beer bottle up to my lips. “Typical. I’ll bet that pretty much sums up the thoughts of most preadolescent boys.”

“Guilty as charged. Your turn. Tell me a deep, dark secret from the mind of Blair.”

My darkest secret, at least as Sam was concerned, was my relationship with Trevor. But there was no way I was going there.

I thought about it for a minute, then said, “I don’t have any.”

“There’s nothing from your past that you’ve never told anyone?”

“Nothing as good as yours,” I said.

“How do you know? I might think it’s great.”

I could have sat there trying to think of something else to share, but it would have been obvious that I was hiding the story I knew I really should tell. He’d get it out of me, I was sure. So I just blurted it out.

“My longest relationship lasted four years.”

He looked at me for a few seconds. “And?”

“His name was Cade.”

Sam sipped his beer, his eyes fixed on mine, waiting for the rest.

“And he, uh…” I looked around to make sure no one could hear me. “He wasn’t real.”

Sam sat still, the only part of his body that moved was his left eyebrow, rising slightly upward.

“It’s true,” I said. “I had an imaginary boyfriend.”

“For four years.”

“Yeah.”

“And this started when you were twenty-what?” He grinned.

“Very funny. I was nine.”

“Was he someone you knew and you pretended he was your boyfriend?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Totally made up.”

“That’s a long time, four years.”

“Here’s how I look at it. Every single girl I knew was in love with some actor or singer, especially the ones from the boy bands. They had posters on their walls, wrote fan love letters, talked about them all the time, including openly fantasizing about marrying whoever their favorite famous guy was. And none of that was real. I mean, those were real people, but do you know how many of my childhood girlfriends grew up and married their favorite star?”

“Maybe two at the most?” he said jokingly.

“The answer is none. Those were all imaginary relationships they concocted in their heads, which was the same thing I did. I just happened to invent my own.”

“Interesting.”

“Stop.”

“No, I’m serious,” he said. “I wonder what that says about you.”

I sometimes wondered, too, though I’d never been able to figure it out. Not that I spent too much time analyzing it. In fact, I hadn’t thought of Cade in years. Now I realized that he was a lot like my “book boyfriends,” but I wasn’t about to tell Sam that.

“Did you go on dates with him? I mean, imaginary dates? Or…don’t tell me you went places and pretended he was there.”

I just looked at him.

“You did,” he said, smiling.

“Don’t make fun of me.”

He laughed. “I’m not making fun. I’m fascinated.”

“Sometimes I think I’d be better off with imaginary boyfriends.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You know, they’re a lot less trouble than real ones. And they do everything you want them to, when you want them to do it.”

“Can’t beat that.”

“Tell me about it. Oh, and when you’re done with them, they go away. No messy breakups, no pleading phone calls, no psycho ex, basically no bullshit. And when you stop seeing them you don’t have to worry about running into them when you go out.”

He turned more toward me, a look of surprise on his face. “And you can’t get pregnant.”

I didn’t say anything. I just gave him a deadpan look, followed by an exaggerated frown and a look of sadness.

“Please don’t tell me you had Cade’s imaginary baby,” he said.

I gave him a wink. “Just kidding.”



. . . . .



We ended up staying another hour or so, drinking more than we should have. When it was time to leave, Sam suggested we walk back.

“Like this?” I said, exaggerating how much I was swaying, but almost paying for it when I started to slip for real. Luckily, Sam caught me before I fell down the ramp that led from the outdoor dining area to the sidewalk.

“Here.” He held out his arm. “Hold on to me. There are only two steps left, and no revolving doors, so we should be good.”

On the walk back to my hotel, he said, “Take tomorrow off.”

“What?”

“You don’t really have to be there, do you?”

I stopped on the sidewalk and turned to face him. We were just a few doors down from my hotel. People made their way around us.

“It’s work. Of course I have to be there.”

He looked at me almost pleadingly. “Fine. Then take a half day. I want to show you some things in San Francisco, and we’re not going to get a chance to do that if you’re working all day.”

He was serious. He wanted me to skip work. I couldn’t do that. Or could I?

I thought about it for a moment. Of course I could. I made the decisions about where I was going. Beth had empowered all of us to go out “into the field” as she called it. That didn’t mean being in our stores all the time. Several previous trips involved daylong ventures to check out all the competitors in the area. I’d even checked out some of the sights of various cities. Granted, it wasn’t the same as spending time with a guy I was seeing, but still.

I’d already started to take more risks—however calculated they were—and do things I wanted. This one wasn’t such a huge deal.

“Okay,” I said.

Sam looked surprised by my sudden change of mind. “So you’re in.”

“I’m definitely in.”



. . . . .



Trevor would never go for sex in the bathtub. I had tried to seduce him in one once, but he said it was too complicated. His explanation even included the word “logistically.” Talk about sexy. I later realized that the real reason he wouldn’t do it was because the best position is the woman sitting on the man’s lap. Logistically speaking, of course. And Trevor’s need for control was in direct conflict with that.

Sam, on the other hand, seemed to revel in it.

We had started at the door, the way we had the last two times, but this time I was in the mood for something different.

So I led Sam into the bathroom—walking backwards, pulling him in by his belt buckle—where I undressed him. He was nude. I was still fully clothed. I hadn’t planned on it going that way. It was just something that occurred to me at the last minute. Maybe part of my taking control and testing how far Sam would let me go.

Turns out, pretty far.

I ran the bath and had him get in the tub, where he sat in the rising water and watched me strip for him.

The comparisons between Sam and Trevor stopped there for the night, and I was able to push my ex out of my thoughts and focus on Sam.

“Do my back?” he said.

“Maybe later.” I stepped into the tub. “I’d rather do your front.”

I turned off the faucet and sat down with my legs over his. I slid forward, almost right up against him, ran my hands down his chest and stomach, farther down, breaking the surface of the water.

When I had him in both hands he said, “Doing the front was a much better idea.” He leaned forward to kiss me, gently at first, lightly biting my lower lip. I licked his lips and he sucked my tongue into his mouth as his hands slipped between my legs.

We sat in the warm water, our upper bodies glistening from the steam and the heat of the moment. It was quite possibly the most erotic foreplay I’d ever experienced. There was an unhurried passion between us, and we sustained it as long as we could both hold out.

I had anticipated the entire thing to move flawlessly into mind-blowing sex, but…

Sam tried to put on the condom while sitting in the tub.

“Water. I got water in it,” he said.

I looked down and saw the tip of the condom, and burst into laughter at the sight.

Sam moved his hands away from it. He looked at me. “You don’t by any chance have a water balloon fetish, do you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“If you could develop one real fast, that would be great.”

We both watched for a few seconds as it bobbed and swayed in the water. I reached for it, removing the condom and tossing it from the bathtub.

“Can you reach my jeans?” he asked.

I stood and stepped out of the tub with one foot, reaching for his jeans. I felt my other foot slip on the tub and Sam grabbed my ankle just in time, saving me from performing an involuntary and catastrophic split.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,” he said.

I got the condom from his jeans, gingerly stepped back into the tub, held the condom packet out to him, and said, “We’re doing this.”

And we did.

The second attempt went better than the first. How could it not? The condom was on, and I straddled his lap. Sam cupped by breasts, running his thumbs over my nipples, the sensation driving me faster to the finish than I wanted.

That, combined with all the foreplay, and the fact that I was riding and bucking on him so hard that water was sloshing out of the tub is why it went so fast.

Fast, but so, so good.

Even though it got off to a rough start. Logistically speaking.

“I would ask if you’d like to grab breakfast before work,” he said as he was getting dressed, preparing to leave, “but I have an important call in the morning that I can’t miss.”

“That’s okay. I would have gone, definitely.”

He kissed me.

“Business call?” I asked.

“Sort of. I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with the news on this, but the FBI arrested this investment banker who turned out to be running a scam on all of his investors. I was one of them.”

This was probably the closest I’d ever come to fainting in my entire life. But I was holding tightly to Sam, and he had an arm wrapped around my waist. When I squeezed him a little harder, he probably thought I was trying to comfort him.

“It was stupid,” he said. “Too good to be true, and I should have known it from the start. I’m just glad they’ve got his ass locked up. I hope they throw away the key.”

“Sam, I’m so sorry.”

He kissed me, but I barely kissed back, still in shock.

“Just something I have to deal with,” he said. “I won’t bore you with the details. Plus, if I told you I’d be breaking the rules.”

I shook my head. “No, no, you’re not boring me.” But I did want him to stop talking about it right then. I feared that if I heard any more about how much Trevor had stolen from him, I’d probably throw up.

He released his hold on me and started for the door. We stood in the doorway and Sam leaned down to kiss me. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Another quick peck on the lips and he was gone.

Or maybe you won’t, I thought.