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"Yes, how do you know that?"
"Because he’s my fucking brother," she exclaimed, rubbing a hand over her face and shaking her head. My eyes nearly bugged out of my head when she said that.
"Your brother?" I repeated, making sure I had heard her right.
"Yeah," she muttered, shaking her head. "I...I didn’t know the two of you were working together. Are you something to do with the new casino?"
"Yeah, I’m helping him get it set up," I replied, and she groaned.
"Holy shit, why didn’t you say something about it last night?” She asked me. "I never would have...I mean, I would have thought twice about it, at least..."
"You didn’t say anything about your family owning the hotel," I protested. "Why didn’t you tell me? That’s why those guys were coming after you, because they were trying to get to your brother..."
"Because I didn’t think it was relevant," she argued. "If I’d known you were working with Mark, I shouldn’t have..."
She trailed off, stopping herself before she could go any further.
"What’s the big deal?” I asked her. "It’s not like I’m sleeping with your brother..."
"The big deal is that he would fucking kill me if he found out I had hooked up with someone he worked with," She replied, shaking her head. "He hates getting business and...not business mixed up. Can’t say I blame him. But if he knew I was here, he would have lost it, trust me."
"And that’s why you were hiding behind the stairs?" I asked her. Her cheeks flushed a little.
"I just couldn’t let him see me, that’s all," she said. "I didn’t want to make this more complicated than it had to be."
"This?" I asked her. "And what exactly is this?"
She narrowed her eyes at me.
"I don’t know, but we can’t let it happen again," she told me firmly. "I’m not going to let this get in the way of whatever you’re doing with my brother. And I’m not going to spend my first few weeks back here getting distracted by someone like you."
"Like me?" I raised my eyebrows. I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by that, and, judging by the look on her face, she didn’t, either.
"It doesn’t matter," she replied, waving a hand as though she was dismissing everything we just talked about. "I just need to go. Get my things, and go. And, as far as you’re concerned, none of this happened, alright?"
"Sure thing," I replied, rolling my shoulders back and meeting her gaze steadily. There was something about her that suggested to me it might not be over as easily as she was hoping, but I wasn’t going to say that right now. If she wanted to walk out of that door and pretend none of this had ever happened, that was on her, and I wasn’t going to race to try and keep her here.
"Thank you," she sighed with relief. "I...I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my brother and the hotel sooner. If I’d thought it was going to matter, I wouldn’t have come here at all."
"No problem," I told her, keeping my voice calm. Really, I wanted her to stay, but I knew if I was going to find some way to tempt her back, I was going to have to rely on our chemistry to do it, not by pressuring her. If there was a single thing that put women off, it was feeling as though they were being pushed towards an inevitable conclusion, shoved in the direction of something they didn’t want to do.
And besides, after how we’d spent the night before, I was pretty certain she wasn’t going to stay away for long.
She headed back upstairs to get dressed, and I followed her with my gaze, checking out her long legs beneath my shirt. God, she was hot. And the sex we’d had last night...maybe it was just the intensity of the way we’d met, the potential danger, but it had been enough to burn itself into my memory. The feel of her around me, the sigh of her on her knees in front of me, so delicious and so sexy I couldn’t even imagine going without it now that I’d had a taste of it.
But hey, if she wasn’t comfortable with it—so be it. It wasn’t as though she was going to be rid of me just like that, given that I was working with her brother. The two of us would be seeing a whole lot of each other around the hotel, and maybe I would even go out of my way to make sure she couldn’t put too much distance between us. I knew what would be on my mind whenever we laid eyes on one another, and I just hoped the same could be said for her.
Once she was dressed, she headed downstairs. Her eyes were lowered to the ground like she was doing the walk of shame. I leaned in the doorway, and she had to brush by me as she went out the door, close enough that I could smell the scent of her lingering in the air. God, I wanted to kiss her again, but I would hold back for now. I was sure she would be back for more in her own time. There was no need to hurry it along.
"Thank you for...being so cool about this," she told me, as she lingered there on the doorstep. "I promise I’m not going to make this weird. Now that I know you’re working with my brother. It’s not—it won’t make it weird."
"Good to know," I replied, keeping my voice neutral. I didn’t want to give anything away. If she wanted to find out more about how I really felt, she was going to have to come to me to do it. Anything to get her back in my home again—back in my bed again.
She smiled at me one last time, then turned and headed for the elevator. Downstairs, she hailed a cab and climbed in quickly, and before I knew it, she had been whisked away, probably speeding off back to the hotel.
Back to her brother.
The man who had no idea that his little sister had been in the house with me when he had stopped by earlier. I couldn’t help but smirk in amusement. Yeah, I would make sure to keep that one to myself. I doubted he would have been too happy if he’d known what had really been going on behind closed doors last night.
