Well, maybe she would have, although she probably would have asked him to screw her somewhere else, like Vice.
She couldn’t process this right now. There was no use visualizing Alex screwing her in any situation. If there was anything Dana was good at, it was compartmentalizing things. It was one of the keys to her success at work. She understood when to prioritize a project and when to shelve one.
Alex Markov was one project she definitely had to shelve.
Shehadshelved him, for all intents and purposes. His face may have insinuated itself into her dreams and fantasies, but she understood the attraction for what it was. She’d run into him at her most vulnerable moment. If he’d been any other man, the outcome would have been the same.
You’re kidding yourself.
There had been several men in the bar that night. Something had led her to Alex.
Rattled, she tried to push him out of her head. This week was supposed to be all about her sister.
Anise Davidson and her friends had arrived shortly after Dana’s encounter with Alex. After a long greeting full of hugs and a few tears, Dana had led them to the fifth floor to their penthouse suites.
She would have expected the penthouse level to be higher up, but as she discovered, the floorplan for Vice meandered. What the building lacked in height, it made up for in its mazelike structure. It seemed every corridor led to another set of corridors. Left to her own devices, Dana knew she would have lost her way in no time. However, because the penthouse floor had its own elevator, they were deposited close to their set of suites.
Anise’s gobsmacked reaction upon seeing the luxurious accommodations had made Dana’s earlier unpleasantness worthwhile. “A suite? Dana, the bed’s bigger than my house! And is that champagne? You spent too much money. What the hell have you done?”
“I didn’t do it,” Dana had said, grinning for the first time in a while. “The owner of the hotel did. They messed up our reservation so he bumped us.”
Anise had shaken her head. “Remind me to mess up more of my reservations.”
Now, as they caught up over cocktails in the lobby bar, seated next to a bronze statue of the goddess Artemis, they compared their rooms.
“Did you see what they put in the mini-fridge?” asked Anise. “Those gourmet ice cream bars, the ones that cost ten dollars in the store. I’m going to sneak them all home in my purse when I leave.”
“Don’t do that!” Her old friend Bea Allen piped up. “They’ll charge Dana’s credit card. Anyway, never mind the ice cream bars. Did you touch the bed linens? They’re so soft. When I die, I want my coffin lined with those sheets.”
“Oh, my God,” said Jessica Gonzalez, another friend of Anise’s from high school. “We’re in Vegas. Stop talking about coffins and drink your Manhattan. Did you guys see the bathrooms in the suites? Black granite everywhere. The shower stall is insane.”
“You can fit a football team in there,” said Anise.
“This is the Vegas Strip,” said Dana. “I guarantee you there have been entire football teams in there.”
“Ooh, girl,” said Bea. “That’s hot.”
Jessica started a discussion about the walk-in closets, marveling at their size and shelf configuration. She said she had half a mind to get her husband to install a similar walk-in closet once she got home. As for Bea, she mused aloud about getting her gorgeous young girlfriend into that humungous bed. Even though Bea was only thirty-six, she had just started dating a younger woman and liked to joke about how Sasha exhausted her on a regular basis with her “millennial drama.”
Dana tried to join in the conversation, she really did, but she was too busy scouting the lobby for signs of Alex. Would he have an office close by? Not likely. Being the head honcho, his office was probably tucked into some quiet corner away from the action. Still, she’d managed to run into him in the lobby already. She supposed it was possible they might bump into each other again.
A faint flush made her head swim.
What’s next? A full-on swoon?
Somewhere or other, she would run into Alex. She just knew it. What better way for the universe to torture her?
At the same time, thoughts of Tommy intruded. She hated that. It wasn’t fair the man could still claim her thoughts, even after he’d treated her like dirt.
In some ways, her situation with Tommy seemed unresolved. Even though she’d basically told him to go to hell, she still had more to say.
The worst part was every time Tommy popped into her head, her diagnosis did as well. She hadn’t arranged to meet up with the therapist Dr. Batra had recommended. Life had been too busy, although she knew her hesitation had less to do with life’s obligations and more to do with her own fear.
If she met with a therapist, she had to talk about her inability to conceive. Even though it made no sense, talking about it felt like regressing. She’d been trying hard to stay positive and focus on the future.
Talking about it meant opening herself up to pain.
She didn’t want this to be a painful transition. Dana wanted to embrace her womanhood, even though in the eyes of others, it might be flawed. She wanted to be a force of nature, brilliant and strong.
