“I think I’ve been insulted,” I muttered instead.
“Yeah, you’re right. Doe doesn’t capture it. It’s more of a frosty aura.” He took a swig of his beer. “Anyway, I get the message. When a guy has a horrible day and a beautiful girl runs by him in a towel and gets locked out of the room next door…sure, he might think things were looking up. But when he gets the brush-off, he realizes it’s part of the universe’s plan to torture him.”
I finally laughed, unable to help myself. My mouth, wide enough as it was in idling mode, stretched from ear to ear. My mom had always tried to get me to perfect a more subtle smile, as she called it, more ladylike, more mysterious. Fuck that. After the day I had, it felt wonderful to grin for real and not just to drive the knife in when I was making a killer point for my client.
It really was a ridiculous situation—the towel, the hot guy, my not having been laid in longer than I can remember, and his looking like he could get a woman any time he crooked his little finger but acting like he was crushed by my “brush-off.”
“I’ll give in to your charm and hang out here until I’m forced to go downstairs and get the key myself.”
I shook my head no at his wordless offer of the other beer and risked perching on one of the barstools, relieved to see that all my appropriate parts were still covered by fluffy white.
He took the seat next to me. “I’m flattered. How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.” I was never going to be one of those women who lied about her age. At least until I was thirty.
“No hookups with strange guys in the hotel room next to you? Which you have to know,” he added quickly, “was what I or any other dumb jerk would be hoping for in this situation.”
“No comment.”
He nodded at the beer. “And no drinking either, huh? You’re way too serious for twenty-seven.”
“So they tell me. And I do drink, but not beer. Why? How old are you?”
“Older.”
“What was so bad about your day?”
“You keep giving me the brush-off.”
I laughed again and he shook his head. “No. It was nothing. Business. Whatever.”
He seemed about to say something else, taking another sip of beer instead, and I prompted, “You don’t seem like the kind of guy who would let business get you that down.”
He shrugged, running a thumb along the condensation on the can. “Just a kid I know. Not doing too well.”
“Sick?”
“Kind of.”
Which was my cue to stop prying.
He passed a hand over his face, as if wiping whatever was bothering him away, and I thought we could probably both do with some relaxation. Some fun.
The fantasy was more dangerous than when we’d exchanged a word or two in the corridor. I could feel the towel slipping. Not for real. In my mind. I could imagine his hand sliding under it, cool and sure on my inner thigh.
Parting my legs…
“What about you?” he asked. “How was your day?”
I jerked myself back to the moment and thought of the stuffy conference room and all those high-priced obnoxious lawyers. “Worse than yours, I bet.”
He paused. “It could get better for both of us.”
His eyes were a deep blue, darker than his tailored suit. It was hard to look away from them.
“So I’ve been dying to ask you.” His voice had a little hitch in it but he kept his hands to himself. “Were you about to take a shower or something when you went for the ice?”
I put a hand self-consciously up to my half-undone ponytail. “Yes. I’m a mess.”
He scanned me from head to toe, and I felt it along every inch. “If this is how you look when you’re a mess, I’d love to see you when you’re all cleaned up.”
A shiver ran through me.
“On the other hand,” he added, in a low chuckle, “sometimes I like it dirty.”
That proposition went right to my tender bits. I swallowed hard, and he set his beer down on the counter, edging a little closer.
Right as I heard a grumble in the hallway outside. “What lady? I don’t see no lady.”
I scrambled off the stool. “Hey!”
Gray-haired and with a complexion that spoke of something harder than beer, a handyman stood at my door, adjusting his tool belt. Doing a double take at my towel, he was gentleman enough not to make some crass remark. “Your door’s stuck, miss?”
“Stuck? No, the key didn’t work.”
“They said it was stuck.”
“You’re not going to have to go back downstairs to get my key, are you?”
He glanced over at Gorgeous Guy leaning against his doorjamb. “Not unless you want me to.”