Perfect Catch(19)
“No, sir,” Alex replied quickly.
Alice added her own meek, “No.”
“You two are old enough to know better. I expect this from teenagers with nowhere else to go. You guys have options. What kind of idiocy drives grown adults to fornicate in the back of a car like hormonal high school seniors? Hmm?”
“Well, sir…neither of us was in any condition to drive.” Alex smiled faintly, and Alice could tell he was struggling not to sound cheeky.
A long silence followed, and Alice was convinced Alex’s attempt at humor might just get them both arrested. Instead the cop smiled back and handed them each their IDs. “Be that as it may, son, next time keep it in your pants until you can call a cab. Okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m going to let you two off with a warning this time. But don’t let me catch you humping like bunnies in public again. Understood?”
“That won’t be an issue,” Alice assured him. Since she was never going to have sex again as long as she lived—which didn’t promise to be long if one could actually die from embarrassment—getting caught in flagrante wouldn’t come up.
“All right. You kids need me to call up a cab?”
Alex shook his head. “No, thanks. We’ll head back inside and call one.”
“As long as you aren’t planning to drive.” He raised a stern brow to them both, and like guilty children, Alex and Alice shook their heads. “Okay. You lovebirds get home safe now.”
He turned and strode back towards his cruiser a few feet away, and Alice buried her face in her hands. “Oh my God, I can’t believe that happened.”
“I know, right? The sex was good, but who knew it was illegal?”
“Alex, this is serious. We almost got arrested. I can’t get arrested. I’m a mom.”
“First, we didn’t almost get arrested. Second, do you think going to jail goes well for a professional athlete?”
Alice hadn’t considered the implications of what might happen if Alex had been arrested. She’d been so focused on the horrible notion of having to call Kevin to come bail her out, she hadn’t thought of the bigger picture. Had Alex been arrested, it would be all over the news the next day. Tawdry newspaper headlines would be discussing the Alex Ross sex scandal arrest, and she would just be some cheap townie he’d been busted screwing in the back of a car.
No. Not this shit again. She wasn’t going to be the punch line in a story he told his buddies a few years down the road about the time he fucked some girl—whose name he likely wouldn’t remember—and how they’d been busted by the cops.
“This was a mistake,” she muttered.
“Yeah, the car might not have been our best call. Bet my hotel isn’t looking so bad right now. You know, we can still…” He waggled his brows and turned to face her, placing his hands on her waist.
Her first instinct was to melt into his embrace because being close to him felt so damned good. But, no. She had broken her only rule, and the universe had spoken loud and clear.
“No, you don’t get it, Alex.”
“What don’t I get?”
“This whole thing is a mistake. We can’t do this. Not ever again. I shouldn’t have been this stupid in the first place.”
“Alice, you’re making way too big a deal out of this. Nothing bad happened. What we did, that’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
“I don’t understand why you’re freaking out about this. Can’t we, I don’t know, laugh or something? I mean, it’s going to make a pretty funny story in hindsight.”
And there it was, the thing she feared most. Becoming some guy’s funny story.
“Well, go ahead and have a good chuckle about it, then. Because it’s never happening again.”
She must have seemed crazy, shouting at him in a parking lot without her bra on only minutes after he’d been inside her. What had she been thinking? She knew she could make some stupid decisions with the help of alcohol, but she had to have been out of her goddamn mind to think this had been a smart plan.
It didn’t matter how awesome the sex had been—and oh, it had been so freaking awesome—because this was it for them. End of story.
“I’m sorry.” She hugged her arms more tightly around herself and looked from him to the bar.
“This is nuts. We were having fun. I don’t—”
“It can’t just be fun, Alex. I don’t have the luxury of being somebody’s good time. I have too many responsibilities. Like I said, this was a mistake.”
“Are you seriously playing the kid card right now?”