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“Hey, wait a minute!I said I would call my parents.”
“I have a driver on standby. It’s easier.”
I stood with my hands on my hips and stared at him.
“What?”
“IsaidI would call my parents.”
“And IsaidI had a driver on standby. I don’t understand what the issue is, Emerson.”
I dropped my hands and clenched my fists. This was why a person should never accidentally run into their one-night stand. Just because two people had spent time together naked, didn’t mean they knew each other. “Theissueis that you continue to ignore everything I say.”
“You’re behaving childishly.”
I growled. Literally growled.“Childishly?In what way?” I hated the way he was looking at me.
“First, with your insistence that a self-applied liquid bandage would be a sufficient way to stop your laceration from bleeding. Then, your refusal to visit an emergency room. And now, with your unwillingness to accept that you cannot be alone when you have a concussion.”
“Mighthave a concussion.”
“Another example of childishness.”
When he reached out for my hand, I yanked it away.
“Emerson,”he growled back at me, sounding enough like my father that it freaked me out. “My driver has arrived. Let’s go.” He put his hand on my elbow.
“I’m not going anywhere with you and especially not inthatcar withthatdriver.”
“Why not?”
“Because riding with Mario Andretti made me nauseous before I had a maybe-concussion.”
The look on his face softened, and he gazed into my eyes. “I’ll advise him to drive more slowly. Now, please, let me take you home.”
He was absolutely, insanely, ridiculously handsome, and when he talked to me in his nice tone of voice, I couldn’t resist him, just like I hadn’t been able to the night I met him in that bar.
4
EMERSON
THREE YEARS AGO
While the rest of the people I knew attending the London conference had gone out for dinner, I was too jet-lagged to join them. What I really wanted was a glass of wine and something to eat. Then, I planned to take a long, hot soak in the claw-foot tub I saw earlier when I dropped my bags in the room. As tempting as it had been then, I had to hurry downstairs to check-in for the morning session that had begun an hour earlier.
“What can I get you?” asked the bartender, who sounded more Australian than British.
“A glass of Shiraz, please.”
He winked, opened a bottle, poured a little in a glass, and set it in front of me. “This is one of my favorites,” he said, waiting as I swirled and took a sip.
I nodded. “It’s very good.” He filled my glass with a bigger pour than I expected.
“Enjoy,” he said, winking a second time.
As I studied the menu the cute bartender handed me, I heard a man ask if the seat next to me was taken. I turned to respond and found myself staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed speechless. The man was movie-star, leading-man handsome. The lighting in the bar was dim, but I could see enough to turn my brain to mush.
“Will someone be joining you?” he asked with his hand on the seat back of the bar chair.
