A minute or two later, there was another knock. “What did you forget to lecture me about?”
She opened the door.
“Hi,” Mason said.
“Hi.” She leaned against the doorjamb. “I suppose the desk clerk gave you my room number.”
“He gave me the room next door, too.” He nodded to it. “The one adjoining this one.”
“Lawsuit thing scared him, I see.”
“It did. The door’s locked.”
“So you really did have to knock.”
“Yes, but I chose to knock on the front door, not the adjoining one.”
“That was very wise of you. You aren’t as slow on the uptake as you seem.”
He smiled and a rush of unwise, extremely unwise, affection for him overtook her senses. “You’re teasing me again,” he said softly.
“That or insulting you. I haven’t decided which.”
“Will you come out and talk to me?”
Again, another surprisingly wise move on his part, instead of asking to come in or asking her to come to his room. The cluelessness probably was all an act, despite what she had earnestly assured Brandy. He had been very good at the actual sex part.
Remembering that fact was so not helping.
Chapter Eight
“No, come on in. We do have to talk, and we should do it privately.”
He was pretty tentative about it and didn’t sit on the couch, as Brandy had, choosing a nearby chair instead. Probably Marcia had coached him on everything.
At the thought, she said, “I know I seem like I’ve been a bitch since we got to the hotel, but the truth is, with my family around and everything, I’m realizing I didn’t feel like myself through that whole time with you. And I’m not sure I liked it.”
“Neither did I. But I liked it very much.”
She steeled herself. “I am going to quit. This doesn’t change that. In fact, do I really have to get on a plane and go to the UK? I’d rather not.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s fine.”
Immediately annoyed he was taking her definitive move to quit so easily, she taunted, “What? Did Marcia tell you I had to resign now, since I slept with you and everything?”
“We didn’t talk about that.”
“I bet. Getting good at lots of normal guy moves, aren’t you? If you ever weren’t, that is. Lying now. Great.” She defended him with her sister, but attacked him when they were alone? She was a bundle of contradictions with this guy.
Sort of like him. So sweet and sexy when they were alone or making love and so aloof and awkward a lot of the rest of the time.
“Marcia and I didn’t talk about you quitting. We talked about everything else.”
“You told her I cried when we were crashing!” Okay, she was really pissed now. A matter of personal pride nobody but possibly another Anderson sister might understand.
“What? No, of course not. Why would she care about that anyway? I almost cried myself.”
“You did not. You were Mr. CEO himself, all calm and cool. I was jealous at how you kept your head. Made me look like a total wimp in comparison.” She added quickly, because she wasn’t much of a liar herself, “But it was very comforting. Don’t get me wrong.”
“Marcia told me to tell you what I’d told her, but apparently, I got the timing wrong. It was supposed to be before you knew I wanted to share the Bridal Suite.” He looked around at the lavish sitting room, the picture window. “Which I can assure you is much nicer than the room next door.”
“What happened on the plane in the first place was a mistake.”
“Yes, clearly the weather information they premised the flight on was faulty. That storm was supposed to dissipate by the time it caught up to us. I assume we shouldn’t have taken off at all.”
“The sex! The sex with you was a mistake.”
He said nothing.
“What, didn’t Marcia feed you some lines here?”
She’d be pounding the pavement trying to explain this fiasco of a job on her resume, and he’d move on to some other blonde who was more accommodating to his biological urges.
“Christ, there are all these rules, and I don’t understand half of what you or Marcia is telling me. I just know—”
She waited for a long time for the end of that sentence as he got up and went over to the window with its view of early evening darkness, no moon even.
She should show him out now. She’d said everything she meant to say. She was quitting. She didn’t want to go to the UK. She wasn’t a baby who cried at the drop of a hat…or the drop of a plane for that matter. Normally.
Putting a palm to her stomach at the sick feeling engendered by the memory of the plane almost crashing, she wondered if he was thinking about that, too. About how they were lucky to be alive.