“Well, go convince them that you’ve recovered from your completely unbelievable illness and I’m going to meet Sara.”
“Fine,” I said, standing to pull up my pants. I watched as she leaned forward, smoothing out her hair in the mirror. “Where is Sara?”
“She’s meeting up with a friend who lives here. A dancer, I think? Some sort of cabaret or stripper thing at Planet Hollywood.”
“Now that sounds interesting,” I said.
She met my reflection with raised brows before continuing. “Anyway, I had a feeling I was being stalked and told her to go on without me.”
“A feeling?”
She shrugged, applying her lipstick. “A hope.”
Snapping the cap back on her makeup, she closed it up in her purse and I followed her to the door, lifting a hand to her face. “I love you anyway,” I said.
“I love you anyway, too,” she said, leaning in to kiss me before slapping my ass, hard.
I could still hear her laughter long after she disappeared through the door.
Four
Max Stella
I watched out the rear window as Bennett’s long, purposeful strides carried him down the sidewalk. He looked back over his shoulder and hailed a taxi as soon as he thought we were out of sight.
Bloody hell. For someone known for being so absolutely unflappable, he was a mess. He hadn’t even kept up that flimsy charade of an illness long enough to see us down the end of the street and ’round the corner.
I turned back in my seat, watching as the lights and tourists roaming the sidewalks passed by in a blur, and let my thoughts move to Sara. She’d said she felt hollow with how much she wanted me, and Christ, just the memory of those words was enough to wreck me all over again. She was so rarely demanding, and even during our busiest weeks when we hardly saw each other, she was the patient one out of the two of us, always insisting we’d make up for lost time on the weekend, or on a Wednesday. For her to tell me she needed more tonight made it almost impossible to deny her. But I could see, in her eyes, the way she’d immediately regretted it, as if by telling me that she knew I’d be torn.
With her eerie sense of timing, my phone buzzed with a text from her: I’m fine, honestly. I’m sorry I distracted you.
I smiled as I typed my reply: Alas, you’re my favorite distraction.
Have fun with the boys tonight, she wrote back.
A loud pop drew my attention and I blinked over to where Henry and Will had uncorked a bottle of champagne. “Show of hands for those of us who think Bennett just needed to rub one out in the bathroom,” Will said, offering me a glass of champagne. I waved it off, waiting instead for a real drink at the restaurant.
“We did just leave a strip club,” Henry said, protective-brother mode in full force. “Cut the man some slack.”
I worked to keep my expression neutral. Will and Henry didn’t know the girls were here, but they were eerily close to the mark.
“Henry’s right,” I cut in, surprised to find myself defending Bennett for deserting us to go shag his fiancée during the first night of his stag weekend. “Maybe he just needed a moment. The man is notoriously ruled by his dick.”
“Ha!” Will barked. “I love the implication that you’re any different.”
It didn’t matter that he was right, and since meeting Sara I’d thought of practically nothing else beyond what she was doing, what she was wearing, and of course, where I could fuck her. The side of me that loved to argue with Will couldn’t resist responding. “I’ll admit that Sara takes up a great deal of my thoughts—” I began.
“Understandable,” Will interrupted, giving me a knowing glance.
“But,” I continued, ignoring him, “I’m perfectly capable of keeping my head in the game when necessary.”
Unfazed, he hummed and topped off his drink, settling back into the supple leather seat. “Yes. Clearheaded businessman like yourself, never dream of shirking responsibility or, let’s say . . . friendship, for a woman.”
I nodded warily, sensing a trap.
“And when you missed picking me up after my flight back from China because you had an ‘emergency,’” he said, using air quotes, “which of course means getting sucked off by Sara in the back of your car in the airport parking lot, that was keeping your head in the game.”
I felt the weight of Henry’s congratulatory slap across my back. “You sly son of a bitch,” he said.
I winked at Henry, knowing Will was far from done.
“And when you ditched me with three of the most boring clients on the planet for two hours because you were fucking Sara in the library at James’s house—that also was keeping your head in the game. Yeah, Ryan could really take a lesson and stop thinking with his cock.”
“I think you’ve got it about squared,” I said, laughing.
“Just making sure,” he said with a charming smile, lifting his champagne flute to his forehead in salute.