“It’s my ride-share,” I told him, taking in the make and model that matched what the app had supplied. Then, softening a bit, I asked, “Do you want a ride?”
His lips tipped up, not quite a smile, and he reached for the back passenger side to open it for me.
When I opened my mouth to say something to the driver, who was looking at Harrison like he was the one to bloody my lip, Harrison offered an address that wasn’t to my hotel as he passed cash to him.
“Don’t worry,” I said as the driver took the cash but kept casting worried glances at me in the rearview, “he wasn’t the one to ugly up my face. That was some assholes who saw me waiting for a ride.”
It was a short ride to Harrison’s hotel, which, no surprise, was much nicer than my own.
“What?” I asked when he turned to shoot me a look.
“Will you just come with me so I can clean you up?”
Those warning alarms?
Yeah, they were going off again.
But the other part of me that was aching for a little comfort after a bad night moved out onto the sidewalk with him.
“Okay, but I still want an annulment,” I said.
His smile was soft, almost as soft as the look in his eye as his hand went to my lower back.
“Yeah, sweetheart, I know you do.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Harrison led me through the lobby, pausing only to request the concierge find and send up a first aid kit, then using his body to block the other passengers in the elevator from gawking at me.
He reached down during the short ride, gently grabbing my wrist to lift and turn my arm so he could inspect my palms.
I’d felt that telltale burning sensation that said I’d scraped them when trying to break my fall, but I hadn’t looked at them myself until that moment.
They looked pretty gnarly: a dozen or so scratches of varying depth, all jagged like pavement cuts always were, with bits of grit and dirt filling the cuts.
Harrison’s thumb gently moved side to side across my wrist before giving it a reassuring squeeze when we reached our floor.
“What? No presidential suite?” I teased as we stepped off onto a relatively normal hotel hallway, albeit with fewer rooms.
“This hotel doesn’t have one,” he admitted. “We will have to make do with a king suite with city views.”
We.
There was no rational reason my heart flip-flopped at that word.
Thankfully, if any tell was on my face, Harrison was too distracted by his keycard to notice.
The inside of the suite was nothing like the one in Vegas, but was pretty in its own way.
The carpet was dark blue, and the windows were abundant.
We stepped right into a lounge. No kitchenette or office area, just a few nice chairs to sit in, a TV, and a good view.
Harrison led me through the bedroom with its king bed and gray sheets, then the bathroom that featured tiles made to look like gray hardwood, a soaking tub, and a glass shower niche.
He led me over to the sink, running the tap, washing the blood off his knuckles, then pressing my hands under the running water.
“One second,” he said when there was a knock on the door.
