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They touched foreheads. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me,” she said.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for me either.”
“We should be smart about this. Quit before one of us does something embarrassing.” The way her eyes were burning there was no debate which one of them that would be, but she’d managed to keep her voice steady.
“Because you’re thinking the worst decision you ever made was letting a colossally overrated ham talk you in to spending the weekend with him.”
She lifted her head. “Do you think you’re overrated?”
“I absolutely am. Phenomenally lucky to be born a good-looking white man and be given multiple opportunities to fail and to learn. Don’t change the subject.”
“It wasn’t anywhere close to my worst decision.” That was the only subject she was confident returning to. She put her hand to his face. He hadn’t shaved, and he had a sexy stubble, darkening his jaw. “That was the time I let Evie borrow my apartment for a photo shoot. I’m still finding glitter.”
He gave her a wry smile, lips lopsided, one brow raised. “I had a plan to get some detachment around you today.” He put his hands to her waist and dragged her closer. “Figured it would be best. Fucked that up when I came back to the suite and climbed into bed beside you. You’re easy to be with, Teela, and that’s not something that happens to me often.”
“That’s me, easy,” she said, aiming for light and breezy. It came out sounding like she’d gotten stung by a blue ring octopus and knew she was dying.
“Let me see your eyes,” he said softly.
She sniffed and shook her head. Tears were already running down her cheeks and under her sunglasses. She had no need to be feeling this way. This was all supposed to be consequence-free fun. “Then I’ll be the one doing something embarrassing.” Knew it, knew it, knew it.
“No,” he said, kissing her wobbling lips. “Nothing you could do would be embarrassing. Stay. Please stay. At least till I get back. But I want you to stay for dinner, stay in my bed tonight and I am begging.”
Despite the fact his version of begging was simply inserting the word into his sentence, woeful for an award-winning actor, she gave up trying to be stoic. Trying to be an independent, modern, slayer of dirty weekends where you had a great time but you didn’t fall for the man you were destined never to see again, and you certainly didn’t get cut up and teary.
She burrowed into his arms, thrilled at how they closed around her, how the sense of him, salty, warm and strong engulfed her.
“I’ll stay, but not for the night.” It would wreck her to wake beside him and know she had to go about her ordinary day without a chance to process all this.
He kissed her then like he’d had a big victory, and she took off her glasses and let herself be swept along with his passion, making out while they motored across the harbor in a private paradise of tangled limbs, sighs and smiles and giggles.
Back in the suite she lounged about while he showered, shaved and dressed. “Watch a movie. One I’m not in,” he said, as he was leaving. “I’ll be back before you’re done.”
His suit was charcoal gray, worn with a crisp, arctic white shirt, without the tie. He looked like he’d walked out of a high-gloss magazine spread. She wore damp denim shorts and a baggy white T-shirt over her swimmers. She was sticky with sun cream. He smelled divine. She felt like the luckiest person in the world when he kissed her goodbye and called her beautiful.
Before she could choose a movie, the room service he must’ve ordered arrived. A perfect afternoon tea. A pot of coffee with scones and three kinds of jam and thick clotted cream. That he’d sent it almost made her sob again.
There were thousands of movies to choose from. Most of them did not star Haydn Delany. Quite a few quality ones did. He’d also done some fun pop culture stuff and a few terrible, forgettable if not for him, comedies. She hadn’t seen his latest. She raised the remote to the TV, shifted the selector to the title and screwed her eyes tight shut. That thing where she could never watch him again. It could start immediately after she left his hotel suite.
Fifteen minutes into Moral Dilemma where he played a school teacher jailed for murdering his terminally ill father, she pulled herself together and stopped feeling overwhelmed. He was a Hollywood leading man. He was up for an award for this movie. He was world famous. Rich. Charismatic. By his own admission, lucky. He was trying to do good in the world and had a virtual PhD in clitoral orgasms. He was generous, funny, persuasive. He was appallingly handsome. Of course she was a little in love with him. No prize for guessing that leaving this weekend behind was going to send her all the way down the post-show blues track.
I’ll be so blue I’ll be the rings on that deadly octopus.
For a little while.
But she had a life to get on with and there was no way a movie star would fit, even if she wanted him to. It was full of challenges she couldn’t wait to get into: the new office, hiring more staff, running her first international conference and diversifying to protect her business from competition. Any serious relationship would slow her down, especially as she’d need to carve out time for it from things she’d rather be doing.
That moment of being overwrought on the boat passed. She was restored by scones and a little time alone and the secret joy of watching Haydn on screen and knowing exactly what he looked like under that prison uniform, the ill-fitting suit his character wore for his court appearances. Exactly how his skin smelled, and his kisses tasted; the gut deep groans of pleasure he made when she took him inside her.
That knowledge would never age. It would be an inner light she’d carry always.
Right at the end of the movie, where his now gray-haired character was released from prison after serving most of his sentence, and stood thankful in the sunshine, Haydn walked in the door, suit coat slung over his shoulder, a look of triumph in his smile.
He made straight for her, flinging his coat on a chair. She shut the TV off and stood to meet him, ready to throw herself in his arms as if they’d been apart weeks, as if she’d worried he’d never return.
As if he’d come back to her, instead of just to where his luggage was.
Teela Carpenter, you’re as disposable as a hotel room.
