Page 69 of Old Flames

This time his laugh was throaty and lustful. “I hate how much I like you, too.”

He was a good and decent guy, and she had to set him straight. “Quit looking at me like I’m the girl of your dreams,” she said. “I’m no one’s dream. Ask anyone. I’m a nightmare.”

Leo freed his hand, and with his wet palm, cupped her face. “You forget I craft nightmares for a living, and I’m fucking good at it.”

Her ambivalence dissolved into the bathwater. She guessed at a hidden darkness under the veneer of the good and decent guy, and it excited her more than it reasonably should. Now she wanted to kiss him more than her next breath.

A sharp knock on the door to the suite marked the end of round one.

“Housekeeping!”

“Sit tight,” Leo said, and left to get the door.

Jules sank lower into the tub. Like always, she’d punted. There was so much more to say about their first encounter, so much she hadn’t even hinted at. Why couldn’t she get it out? If he really wanted to talk about that night, she’d tell him everything.

A moment later he returned with a stack of towels and a robe, which he hung on a hook. She sensed he was about to do the gentlemanly thing, retreat to give her some privacy. Before he could say a word, she launched the little speech she’d been rehearsing in her mind.

“My mother went to the emergency room that night. I was on the phone, trying to make sense of her texts when you showed up. I hate to admit it, but I was more annoyed than concerned. I thought she was overreacting. She had a simple cough, nothing major. And yes! I hated you . . . a little. I resented your success. All of you thirty-under-thirty bullshit artists! It’s petty, but you were celebrated in a field I was desperate to get into and losing hope every day. My master’s thesis was weak. My manuscript was falling apart. Loans were piling up. You seemed to have it all. That night I must’ve filled your wineglass three times while you chatted with top agents and editors, people who would never reply to my emails. And my mother kept texting from the ER, talking about a lung X-ray. It was only a cough! After a while, I stopped replying to her messages because I had to get back to work. Eventually, I made it to the hospital, thinking I’d get her home. They wanted to keep her overnight, run more tests. She never recovered. She never came home.”

“July, I’m sorry.”

Winded, Jules sunk deeper into the bath, though the water was cooling and she was ready to get out.

Leo sat on the edge of the tub again. “Could it have been the worst night of our lives?”

“Why?” Jules asked. “Please tell me your life was ruined, too.”

“It was,” he said. “I got into a fight with my parents. We haven’t spoken since, outside the rare email from my mother to keep me informed of major life events.”

That would mean he’d been estranged from his parents for a decade.

“I’ve been homeless ever since, not in the true meaning of the word but you get what I’m trying to say.”

“Leo,” Jules whispered. “I had no idea.”

That was the thing with Leo, you could never tell just by looking at him how deep those waters stirred.

“It’s alright. Hardly anyone knows.”

It was not alright. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, artfully deflecting. “The kitchen is closed. I could order food.”

“No, thanks.”

Jules had simple needs. If he met each one, she might never leave.

Bathed and feeling better, Jules thanked Leo for his hospitality. “See you around, I guess.”

“Guess so,” he replied with a smile that made her heart lurch.

She left him, wearing his robe, smelling of his complimentary toiletries, and ready to try her luck again in the garden. He wasn’t her priority. She was committed to connect with Ruby at least once more. If it took all week, so be it. If she roused Leo’s suspicions, she’d chalk it up to insomnia and pray he’d let it go.

Jules took the grand stairs to the lower floor, avoided the front desk, and discreetly made her way to the rear exit. She knew to sidestep the floorboards that creaked and how to ease open the iron door in such a way it hardly made any noise. She took a seat on the bench and started her vigil, a little drowsy from the wine, but determined to stay awake. She sat there for fifteen, thirty, forty-five minutes, seeing nothing, feeling nothing except the sting of mosquito bites. Her back ached. She returned to her room before the hour was out, knowing all along that he was watching.

26

The next day, Jules locked herself in her room in the grand tradition of The Aurora Inn: a woman trapped indoors, barred from seeking the male companionship she craved. Except in her case, no husband guarded the door. She’d done this to herself. And why? To resist Leo’s charm, his wit, his care, and everything else that made him who he was. It had been hard enough leaving him last night while her whole body yearned to stay. He had a hold on her, but she would not go gentle into that good night—or whatever.