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This was what her sister had tried to warn her about. But there was no way that she could have heeded that advice. There was something seductive about Nate. It wasn’t just the sex, though, that had been earth-shattering. It was more the man behind the image.
If he’d just been the charming playboy then she’d have expected this, but he’d seemed to be more than that. Now she was going to have to deal with the fact that he’d moved on. That was what he did.
She took another sip of her coffee. She couldn’t hide away here or even quit and try to find another job. There weren’t that many high-level clubs that needed Latin dancers. She just wasn’t going to find another job like this and she didn’t want to leave her home again.
She’d had a lot of time to think yesterday while she’d been watching Riley and it had occurred to her that not getting back on the dance circuit had been a good thing. It was time for her to start settling down and thinking about family.
Forget that at the time she’d spun silly fantasies in her head of Nate giving up his playboy lifestyle and settling down with her. The truth that she’d discovered yesterday still remained. She was ready to start looking for a home. To start making a life for herself.
And she didn’t want to have to start again somewhere where she had no roots, no family and no friends. She refused to let Nate Stern drive her away from the job and the community that she’d started making her own. She’d just stay away from him and he’d never know how much that one night of fun had cost her.
Nate had reached for his phone to call Jen but stopped himself. If he’d come to any conclusions after meeting with his brothers, it was that he needed to break things off with her. And he had in the only way he knew. He’d moved on.
Countess Anika de Cuaron y Bautista de la Cruz was the sister of one of Nate’s oldest friends, the Spanish Count Guillermo. Gui and some friends owned a string of European nightclubs called Seconds. So taking his sister out for the night was the least that Nate could do. They were like family.
And last night that had been the best that Nate could do. Somehow none of the other women he’d been dating casually had seemed right. There was only one woman he wanted to spend the night with and it was Jen.
But he wasn’t the right kind of man for her. She deserved someone who could give her more than he could.
So here he was at a meeting where he didn’t want to be trying to figure out why she wasn’t looking at him. They were seated in the executive boardroom at the club’s downtown Miami offices. Justin sat at one end of the table with his assistant, head chef Antonio Caruso sat next to him and head of security Billy Pallson was next to him.
Jen had taken a seat two down from Billy on the opposite side of the table from Nate. Nate had enough “relationship” skills to know that she was pissed off at him. Though that was what he’d anticipated when he’d gone out with Anika and made sure that their photo had hit all the papers—local, national and international—he still didn’t like it.
“Let’s get this meeting started,” Cam said as he entered the room. His executive assistant, Tess, followed him along with another woman who Nate didn’t know.
“This is Emma Nelson, the event planner I’ve hired to help us organize the party,” Cam said. He then introduced everyone at the table before giving Emma the floor.
She handed out action item lists for each venue and it wasn’t long before Nate realized that he wasn’t paying attention to anything except Jen. He watched as she took notes, watched as she took a sip of her water and then looked away when she glared over at him.
He didn’t understand it but it seemed that he wasn’t ready to be done with Jen. Hell, he’d known that last night when he’d gone out with Anika but that didn’t mean he could change it.
But Jen deserved a chance to have her dreams and he wasn’t the kind of guy who could give them to her. He’d seen that at her home when she’d danced with her nephew, and in the park when she’d played baseball with him. He’d noticed the way her gaze lingered on him as he’d played with Riley. He’d have had to be a fool not to have been aware of the sexual tension there just beneath the surface when he’d taught her to throw.
Hell, right now he wanted her. If he had his way he’d tell everyone to leave and make love to her on this boardroom table. Jen wasn’t the kind of woman who elicited a soft reaction from him. She called to him. Called to the passion inside of him and he wanted to answer that call but he knew that it would mean taking a chance on caring for her.
