AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘If you’re worried about being in the same room as me, I’ll shower in the hotel’s gym downstairs and you can have my bathroom. I wouldn’t even enter the suite until you’re happy, okay? I’ll even get them to find you some dry clothes.’
He told himself he was being gentlemanly and ignored the growing suspicion that he simply didn’t trust himself around this woman. Still, another moment passed before Bridget replied.
‘No need. I have a change of clothes in my rucksack. They’re in a dry bag so they should be fine.’
‘Good.’ He exhaled slightly. ‘So if you’re all objectioned out, maybe we could get going before you start making yourself ill?’
With a terse nod Bridget began moving. A little stiffly at first, but soon her legs seemed to loosen up and they were jogging across the wet grass. By the time they’d ducked around the railings and crossed the far road to his hotel, she seemed to have calmed down slightly, and he even heard her call out a cheerful greeting to a couple of elderly guests, who looked startled at her sodden appearance, suppressing her gurgle of laughter until they were in the lift.
And then she sobered again as they reached the door to his suite and he swiped the key card into the reader.
‘I thought you weren’t coming in?’ she commented tensely, as he followed her inside.
Hayden held his hands up.
‘Just getting a change of clothes then I’ll be out of your way.’ He efficiently opened the wardrobe and drawers to select fresh gear, before heading straight back to the door. ‘Okay, I’m out of your hair. Take as long as you need.’
Closing the door behind him, he stood in the corridor and wondered what it was exactly that he thought he was doing.
Because far from clearing things up, as he told himself he had intended, it seemed to Hayden that all he’d succeeded in doing was making an awkward situation all the more complicated.
CHAPTER FIVE
BRIDGET WATCHED THE hotel-room door close behind Hayden and then stood staring at the white panelling for an inordinately long time, trying to work out what it was that wallowed clumsily within her chest.
Why there was a part of her that seemed to be silently willing him to come back into the room. The bedroom. And revisit with her everything they’d started in that nightclub.
Before he’d done the one thing that any true playboy surely shouldn’t do...and listened to his conscience.
Which, if she was honest, didn’t do much to reanimate her already moribund ego. It only fed into the fears that already lurked in her mind that she wasn’t the kind of woman who was pretty enough, hot enough, sexy enough to appeal to a man like Hayden.
In short, she wasn’t good enough.
Much as she’d stopped being good enough the night her father had been arrested. Overnight she’d gone from being a popular kid, an it kid, to being a pariah. No one had wanted to be seen even talking to her, let alone the girls wanting to hang out with her. And boys wouldn’t have been caught dead dating her—although many of them had suggested quick sex in the back of a car, or an abandoned barn, or anywhere else they wouldn’t be seen with her.
And she was proud that she’d never been so desperate that she’d allowed herself to fall for it.
Instead, she’d become an outcast, spending her teenage years living in the shadow of her father’s disgrace and taking care of her ever more fragile mother, and her self-worth had never quite recovered. Holding onto her virginity had become less of a matter of pride and more a matter of embarrassment. How to explain to a potential lover that she was still a virgin in her twenties when everyone she knew had long since—willingly—lost that title.
Was that why she’d found herself so attracted to the idea of finally losing that burden with Hayden? A halfway playboy who would know what he was doing. A man who’d had enough partners that he wouldn’t remember her and her inexperience.
Or was the truth that she hadn’t been thinking at all when he’d kissed her the other night in the nightclub? Making her feel giddy and light-headed. All her senses spinning so hard that she hadn’t even been able to remember her own name, let alone the fact that she was letting him touch her so intimately in a dark corner of an otherwise public place.
As if he, too, had been carried away at that moment. Right up until the point where he had rejected her.
Oh, get over yourself! A sharp little voice sliced through her head. So he doesn’t want you.
He was only here because he’d promised Mattie he would look after her. The best thing to do now was to shower and get ready, release him from this unnecessary duty as soon as he returned, and then get out of here.
Oh, Lord. Then again, weren’t they supposed to be going for something to eat to discuss what had happened in that nightclub? To clear the air before the joint charity/army mission to Jukrem?
Forcing herself to start moving, Bridget made her way to the chair—deftly avoiding even looking at Hayden’s bed—and let her rucksack drop from her shoulderbefore reaching for her change of clothes.
* * *
The shower was hot, and powerful. Better than the shower she had in her own apartment, and certainly better than the solar showers she’d be having over the next few months. Five minutes stretched into ten, and Bridget took her time washing her hair, and her body. Cleaning away not just the dirty rainwater from that grimy puddle but also the hateful memories, and her sense of i
nadequacy that Hayden Brigham had inadvertently unearthed. She scrubbed at it all until it was gone, leaving her feeling shiny, and fresh, and whole once more.
