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She ripped the envelope, excitement making her heart hammer her ribs. Her brows launched up her forehead as a bunch of twenty-pound notes fluttered to the floor. How odd. Had he left her money for the room? It looked like hundreds. She unfolded the starchy paper, her gaze flicking over the two sentences scrawled across it.
Tally, I figure Sam already covered your expenses, but I hope to hell this covers all the extras. Thanks for an amazing night. You were worth every penny. B
Horror slammed into her first as realisation dawned. Quickly followed by disgust and a slow-burning feminist fury. But underneath it all was the crippling, sickening, overwhelming wave of hurt.
She’d liked him. She’d genuinely liked him. She’d enjoyed his sardonic humour, his quick wit and the care and attention he’d shown her even when they’d been shagging each other senseless. But worse, she’d thought he liked her. She’d thought he admired her sharp wit and forthright attitude. She’d thought that when he held her that last time, and eased inside her, there had been an acceptance, an understanding between them that went beyond the sex.
When all the time he’d been thinking she was a bloody working girl.
She grabbed her phone, brushing the angry tears off her cheeks, and scrolled down to the photo she’d taken of Brent in the bar. Clicking through to Twitter, she stabbed out the tweet on her keypad, fury making her fingers shake and going some way to deflecting her attention from the agonising knot twisting under her breastbone.
As the post zipped off into the ether, she hoped the bloody thing got retweeted a billion times. Because as far as she was concerned, Brent O’Neill could go fuck himself.
He might be great in bed, every woman’s one-night-stand dream come true, but he was also as much of a stone-cold heartless bastard and user of women as Henry...and her dear old dad.
Which just went to prove her alpha-hole radar was still as crap as it had ever been.
Chapter Seven
#NewRule: Some dates should come w/ a public health warning: meet the #EpicHotLover AKA the #UltimateAlphaHole: pic.twitter.com/ghj78sjU
‘Hey, man, I got your voicemail. Sorry it didn’t work out with Tally. The way you were checking her out, I figured you would make a night of it.’
Brent’s temper exploded at Sam’s casual tone. ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’
He cupped his hand round the phone even though his office door was closed and his PA, Jenna, appeared to be well-occupied giving the poor guy who’d come to fix the printer the third degree.
‘The joke’s over, man. I saw her business cards.’ His insides clenched with the sour mix of regret and futile anger that had been festering in the pit of his stomach ever since he’d run out of the hotel suite two hours ago. ‘The problem isn’t that we didn’t hit it off, it’s that I spent all night banging her before I figured it out.’
Shame thickened his throat and made his head hurt. Had Sam set this up deliberately, to teach him a damn lesson? As if he needed any more of those after Della had crucified him.
‘You shou
ld have given me a goddamn heads up. I don’t know what the hell Della told you, but I don’t pay women for sex. You totally crossed a line.’
‘Whoa! Hold up a goddamn minute. Tally’s not a prostitute. What the hell?’
‘You think?’ Brent barrelled on, his fury gathering pace. ‘Have you checked out her business cards?’
‘No way. She’s a friend of Zack’s girlfriend, Melody. She works at MyPad, that hipster interior design magazine.’ Sam’s pained reply sounded sincere. ‘Jesus, man, I know Della kicked you in the nuts over the divorce, but you’ve gotta stop being so damn paranoid. Tally’s sharp and funny and my take is she’s also kind of fucked-up about guys. Which made you two the perfect match for a no-strings hook-up. But she’s not that fucked-up.’
Brent’s temper faltered. So Sam hadn’t known Tally had a side-line? He guessed the fact that he hadn’t been sold out by one of his best buds in London was some compensation. But it didn’t alter the facts. ‘She moonlights as a call-girl, you dumbass.’ In a lot of ways, Sam’s innocence only made the sickening roll of regret more pronounced. Because now he had no excuses. He’d crossed that damn line last night without any help from Sam.
‘Hold up. I don’t believe it. She can’t be a hooker, because if she is, she’s no good at it.’
‘How the hell would you know that?’ Brent shouted.
Jenna’s head swung round and he lifted his hand in a quelling motion. Dropping his voice back to a hiss, he gave Sam both barrels. ‘You’re not the one who slept with her.’ And she wasn’t good. She was awesome. But thinking about how awesome only made the heat flood back into his crotch. He shifted on his chair, ashamed all over again by the instant reaction.
‘I’m not talking about her bedroom skills,’ Sam said as if he were a harassed parent scolding a two-year-old. ‘I’m talking about her business skills. If she was looking to pick you up for money, she had a weird way of going about it, because she never mentioned a fee to me. Not once. Did she mention one to you?’
‘Not in so many words, but...’ Brent hesitated. He slipped her business card out of his wallet, thumbed the corner as he read it again, the way he’d been doing most of the morning, and the tiny flicker of hope drowned. ‘Her card says she is.’
The events of their night together came spooling back and the knowledge she hadn’t mentioned a price made him feel more depressed than encouraged. What if she simply hadn’t had the opportunity? He hated the thought that someone as smart and funny and sexy as Tally had to sell herself for a living, but what he hated more was his behaviour. He’d jumped her, and carried on jumping her, without asking her a damn thing about herself. He’d used her to make himself feel good, while shunning any kind of emotional connection because that had been the easy way out. She’d pretty much blown his mind. But what was he to her? Another guy who got his rocks off at her expense? How did he even know her orgasms had been for real? What if she’d been faking them? It wasn’t as though he had a radar on his cock, and in her profession she was probably an Oscar-winning faker.
He thrust his hand through his hair. To think he figured he’d reached rock-bottom a couple of months ago when he’d woken up unable to remember his date’s name. This was worse, way worse. Because he knew Tally’s name, knew how good she could make him feel, how much he loved her bad behaviour, and how captivated he was by her smart-ass attitude, but he’d still screwed her without bothering to find out a single thing about her.
‘What exactly does the card say?’ Sam’s wry comment interrupted. Brent flicked the card over and read out the words, front and back, as the pain in his chest began to strangle him.
