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“I have to go, even though I don’t want to.” He put on his discarded underwear and rumpled dress pants. “My team will be here to take me to HQ at seven.”
“I feel bad. You needed sleep last night, and you didn’t get it. Instead, we...”
“Fucked?”
“Yes, that.” I sat up in bed and pulled the white duvet around my chest. I was cold and didn’t know why. Confused too, now the night had faded into the morning. There were blurred lines all around us. Which ones had we irrevocably crossed? And was that a good thing, or a bad thing?
I hope good... but so much for objectivity...
“Don’t worry,” he said.
I stared at him.
“I don’t regret last night,” he added simply. “I want to make sure you understand that.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. It was the answer I wanted to hear.Thank God.“I don’t regret it either.”
“Good.” Landon pulled on his dress shirt and fasted two middle buttons, the cotton only enhancing his gorgeous body. “And if you’re thinking this might ruin the piece, it won’t.”
“That’s the farthest thing from my mind.”Not exactly true, but maybe if I say it enough, I’ll convince myself...
He padded over to my side of the bed and leaned within a hair’s breadth of me. “Excellent, because you can still be objective with it.”
I laughed. Sleeping with my interview subject was theexactopposite of that. He knew it as much as I did. “We’ll see. Things are certainly more complicated now, aren’t they?”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. At least...you cantryto be neutral.” He kissed me on the forehead. “Nobody needs to know about this. And this was...”
“Fun.”
“I was going to say incredible.” He ran a hand through my rumpled hair and I felt something electric and deep pass between us, a sliver of promise that indicated what had happened might have been more than a one-night stand. “I’ll see you in a few, okay?”
“Okay.”
He slipped on his shoes and left the pool house. I was alone again, but while everything looked the same, it was all different, and I knew it. In the span of a few hours, I’d thrown my entire plan overboard, and I didn’t know what to do next.
Would I be able to write anything at all about Landon? Would I be able to complete the piece? And would I even want to?
I considered those burning questions as I got ready for the morning festivities. I was tired and groggy, so I fixed some coffee in the small pool house kitchen and downed two cups. I swiped concealer under my eyes in a desperate bid to hide the dark circles that proved I’d had little by the way of sleep. Then I slipped into a tan shift dress and black sandals and tied a multicolored floral scarf around my neck. I completed the ensemble by pulling my hair into a low bun. I looked the part of a “serious reporter,” but I couldn’t have felt less like one.
I was a fraud.
A well-fucked fraud, but a fraud, nonetheless.
Just before eight, I texted Mauricio on his phone. The itinerary said he’d be ready to pick me up whenever I was ready to leave, and he replied he was already waiting in a car in the driveway. After one more check that I had what I needed in my tote bag, I rushed out of the pool house.
“Thanks for this,” I told Mauricio when I arrived at the car. I slipped into the backseat of the SUV and buckled my seatbelt.
“Happy to do my job.” Mauricio drove the vehicle onto the street. “Mr. Sparks texted me this morning stating you’re supposed to be part of the press corral for this event. That means we’ll go to the south entrance of the new headquarters.”
“Yes, that’s the information I got too.”
“He also asked to make sure you’re well taken care of today.”
My stomach somersaulted.Yes, I am certainly that in more ways than one...“He did?”
“Going to be a lot of press at this, mostly national media, and a few international outlets, but he said you’re the only one who is allowed to get whatever she needs. So, if you want to leave the official area for any reason, let me know.”
I thought about that morning, and what it had been like to wake up next to Landon. I still tasted his lips on mine, still felt the warmth of his body. I wanted more of both.Much more.Being with him was simply refreshing, and interesting, two things I hadn’t felt with anyone in a long time. Since moving back to Cincinnati, my dating life had been lackluster, a stream of dates that mostly went nowhere. Nobody I’d met compared to Landon, and not because of his money, but because of the man he was allowing me to see underneath his glamorous exterior. Thank God I’d stayed on the pill instead of quitting it after weeks of first date failures. It turned out I needed it.
