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All morning long he’d been thinking about her. Through a tedious meeting with the stadium committee, a photo opportunity downtown at the Mayor’s office, putting in a bid on some venues in California, his thoughts had continuously returned to the sleeping girl he had left at dawn.
Several times he’d almost rung her cell, self-preservation muscling in each time. The minute he phoned her he would be opening up a channel of communication between his working life and the woman in his bed. He’d never done it before. He wasn’t starting now.
‘Serge, you’re not with us,’ Mick’s voice intervened, dragging him back into the present and his office in Upper Manhattan.
No, he wasn’t with them. Serge corralled his stampeding thoughts about a six-foot girl naked in his bed and looked at the stats Alex had handed him. Mick’s word was good enough, but Alex Khardovsky, president of the Marinov Corporation, always came up with cold hard numbers, and Serge knew at the end of the day you could trust figures. Unlike people, they never let you down.
‘So you’ll come down and have a look at the kid?’ Mick was saying.
Dinner with Clementine. He was going to have to postpone it.
‘I’ll meet you there at seven.’ He’d divert on his way across town and drop in at the hotel—enjoy a quickie with the beautiful girl he had left in his bed.
‘I want to go over these figures with you, Serge. Can we grab a bite and meet Mick at the gym?’
‘No, I need to drop in at the hotel. I’ll take these with me.’
Alex grinned. ‘A woman? I thought you seemed unusually upbeat.’
Usually Serge wouldn’t have hesitated to affirm or deny a question from Alex. He was his oldest friend. They had been in boot camp together. Apart from Mick he was the only other person he trusted. Happily married for three years, Alex joked that the only excitement he got these days was observing Serge’s revolving door policy on women.
But the memory of Clementine’s soft grey eyes as he cuddled her close struck him as he opened his mouth, and he closed it. Shook his head briefly.
‘We still need to talk about Kolcek,’ said Mick flatly. ‘You have to do more than a press conference, son. You need to put your face to the brand.’
Serge folded his arms. ‘And I’m the poster boy for good clean living?’
Alex snorted, but Mick shook his head. ‘Publicity’s everything in this game, and you both know it. Your image is hardly what the moms at home are applauding, and that’s what this political stunt over Kolcek is aimed at. The punters like to see you with a different airhead every day in the papers, but not the general public. You need to be seen with a decent woman at your side. Geez, I shouldn’t have to tell you boys this.’
‘I’m not playing the media game, Mick,’ stated Serge with finality. ‘The business is one thing, my private life another.’
‘The problem being there’s nothing private about it. What about that woman who spilled her guts about “my life with fight promoter Serge Marinov—the highs and lows of a jet-set playboy”?’ Mick threw the magazine he’d been carrying around onto the desk between them.
Serge ignored it. ‘I barely knew the woman—slept with her twice. Once too many.’
Alex picked up the magazine. ‘I’ll show this to Abbey. She’ll love it.’
Serge smiled, seeing the lighter side of it. Alex’s wife took him to task about his lifestyle every time their paths crossed.
It wasn’t until Mick and Alex were gone that he was given the opportunity to phone Clementine’s cell. She gave him that breathless ‘Serge’ he was beginning to look forward to, and promised to be at the hotel in half an hour.
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if she’d had a good day, but he knew the minute he did that he’d be feeding into a fantasy that she was in his life in any other way than his bed. His mind went back to the trashy magazine and the brunette he barely remembered. She’d sold her story for five figures, he’d heard. He couldn’t quite picture Clementine selling anything.
He’d been right not to mention her name to Alex.
‘See you then.’ Her voice was in his ear, and was he just feeling extremely restless or did he hear a note of longing? Grinning, he rang off.
The penthouse was quiet as Clementine let herself in, but all the lights were on. She was sticky from her long day sightseeing, and wanted to bathe and get changed, but her heart had started paddling like a kayak up a canyon the closer she’d got to the hotel, knowing Serge would be inside waiting for her. The intimacy they had built up, culminating in last night, felt a million miles away. Not being with him today, in the aftermath of their incredible night, had left her emotions close to the surface and she was feeling a little nervous—but also excited.
