Bedroom Diplomacy(26)
Unless he flat-out asked about Dylan, she didn’t bring him up, and when he did ask, her answers were brief and very vague. As if her affair with Colin and her relationship with her son were two things that she wouldn’t mix. He wasn’t sure if she did it to keep a safe distance between Dylan and Colin, or Colin and herself.
Whatever the reason, he didn’t waste too much time worrying about it, especially now that they had just been handed a free pass for the entire weekend. Her father was flying to Washington in the morning for some critical senatorial vote, and, expecting a filibuster from the opposing side of the aisle, he wouldn’t be coming back until Tuesday evening.
Colin was hoping he could talk her into spending those evenings in her suite. Or his. The pool house served its purpose, but the hard floor, where they were currently lying side by side, naked and sated, was getting old fast.
“What am I going to tell Betty?” Rowena asked him. “She watches Dylan every night.”
“Tell her you have swimmer’s elbow and you need a few days off.”
She looked over at him and laughed. “Swimmer’s elbow?”
“Or here’s a thought. You could come to my suite for an hour and a half. Then when Betty leaves, I’ll come to you. As long as I’m gone before the staff is up, we should be good, right?”
“Are you saying that you want to sleep over?”
“Who said anything about sleeping?”
He thought women liked having men sleep over. He’d certainly been asked to enough. Rowena looked as if she wasn’t sure what to think.
“What I don’t understand is why my father would be so adamant about you not pursuing me,” she said. “He’s always wanted me to marry an independently wealthy man with a good bloodline and political contacts. You’ve got it all, plus a royal title. You’re like his dream son-in-law.”
“I can think of one good reason. He thinks I’m a womanizer.”
“Are you?”
He made a pfft sound. “Certainly not.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.” The word had such a negative connotation. He was a gentleman. He treated women with respect.
“To be honest, I’m not even sure the exact definition.”
Since he wasn’t one, he had never experienced any burning need to know.
“Just for fun…” She held up her phone. “Let’s look it up.”
She tapped away at the screen for a minute, then said, “Here it is. According to my phone dictionary, a womanizer is ‘a man who engages in numerous casual sexual affairs with women.’” She looked over at him. “Do you do that?”
“That can’t be right,” he said.
She pointed to her phone. “It says it right here.”
He sat up and held out his hand. “Let me see that.”
He took it and read the definition on the screen. “I’ll be damned.”
She nodded sympathetically, holding her hand out for her phone. “The truth hurts, huh?”
“I would hardly say that I’m sexually promiscuous. I love women. I respect them.”
She shrugged. “Just lots of different ones.”
He glared at her. “I have never slept with a woman without first making it clear that it will never be anything but casual.”
“And you think that makes it okay?”
“I’m a gentleman. I pamper women.”
“You mean you buy them.”
She was twisting his words. “That isn’t what I said.”
“What makes you think you’re so special?”
Now she was putting words in his mouth. “I don’t recall saying I was special.”
“Let’s do this. Take the same situation, but take out the man and put a woman in instead. She dates often, sleeps with different men, pampers them and only wants to keep it casual. What does that make her?”
“The perfect woman?”
It was her turn to glare at him. “It makes her a slut, Colin. So why should the exact behavior be perfectly acceptable for a man?”
He hated to admit it, but she was right. So, by definition, he was a womanizer. “I suppose that I am in fact a slut.”
“Welcome to the club. We’ve got jackets.”
He shook his head and laughed.
“Hey, I have a great idea,” she said. “If we do get caught, we can just tell my father that it’s my fault. I came on to you, and though you tried to resist, I wouldn’t leave you alone, so you finally gave in and let me have my way with you.”
“You do have some dominance issues.” Not that he was complaining. It definitely kept things interesting. He was sure that any day now she was going to whip out the handcuffs or silk scarves.