“I could go for a glass of wine,” I said.
Ten minutes later I was wandering his suite at the Ritz-Carlton, the aforementioned glass of wine in my hand, Jeremy walking towards me with a hungry look in his gray-green eyes.
I found myself studying him as he stood inches from me, sipping from his glass and running the back of his fingers over the silk blouse covering my breast.
I sucked in a breath. He’d always been so good at drawing out sex until I was practically begging for it. Unfortunately, the sex itself had never been that great. It was good. Sufficient. He got the job done. But there was always something lacking, and the recollection of that now threatened to put a damper on a need that I didn’t want to admit, even to myself, was due to a certain other man who had jilted me this morning.
In an effort to get Graham out of my head, I set my glass down and reached for Jeremy’s belt. I didn’t have time for foreplay today. I needed to forget. Now.
“What’s the hurry?” Jeremy asked as I undid his jeans.
“It’s been a minute,” I said, sliding my hand into his briefs. Thankfully he was already hard and ready so I wouldn’t have to put in much work.
I turned around and pulled up my dress, leaning forward and placing my hands on the table beside us. But rather than take the hint, he got on his knees and slowly ran his fingers up my legs, kissing the backs of my knees and gently running his hand over my thong that wasn’t even remotely wet. Because I was not turned on. Because Graham Freaking Forrester’s stupid face would not stay out of my head like I’d told it to.
“Jeremy,” I said.
“Mmhmm…” he responded, his hands squeezing my thighs.
“I can’t.”
He paused as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard me correctly.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m sorry.” I straightened and pulled the hem of my dress down. “I can’t. We’re just… this isn’t us anymore.”
“Are you sure?” He motioned to his dick, which was out of his pants and red with readiness.
But it did nothing for me. In fact, I felt a bit repelled by the sight if it staring at me. Well, staring just left of me. And I suddenly wanted to cry.
“Yeah. Positive,” I said.
In all future interviews, when asked about my relationship with Jeremy Lane, I would always say I’d love him forever, but we just couldn’t get our timing right.
The following morning several media sites posted images of me hugging Jeremy outside the Ritz-Carlton. I ignored the texts that came in after, inquiring about what was going on, aside from Addie, whom I never ignored.
“Payback?” she texted, referring to the article about Graham and Nadia.
“Yes and no,” I said. “FYI, nothing happened.”
“You say that like I don’t know you.”
I sent her a heart emoji, turned off my phone, and tossed it onto my bedside table. I’d never heard from Graham the day before. Not one “sorry I stood you up”. No text professing his bad friend behavior and promises to make it up to me. And I knew now, with the images of me and Jeremy out in the world, I wouldn’t. Which wouldn’t have been an issue if we didn’t have a shoot for Vogue to do in a few days. Something I’d completely forgotten about in the past twenty-four hours.
“Shit!” I shouted at the ceiling, and then turned over and buried myself in my duvet.
Chapter 21
Graham
The Vogue offices were some of the nicest I’d ever seen, and I was more than a little intimidated as I followed a woman named Cass as she navigated the labyrinth of hallways with ease, finally delivering me to a large studio with dozens of people milling about, lighting being checked, and racks of clothing rolling here and there.
Lior was nowhere to be seen. But it was inevitable she would arrive at some point as we were due to do this photo shoot together. Unless… had she somehow gotten out of it as I’d so badly wanted to do after stewing for the past few days?
“You must be Graham.”
I turned at the sound of my name and smiled at an intimidatingly put-together woman with laser-like, almost-sheer-black eyes.
