I thought about a woman who wasn’t my wife. A woman who hadn’t been my childhood sweetheart.
A woman who had curves my hands itched to touch, whose hair would look amazing spread out across my pillow, whose lips I wanted to hear say my name.
I’d spent the day trying not to stare at her, to avoid looking at how her shirt didn’t hide the swell of her tits or wonder how it would feel to run my hand up her leg, under the short skirt she wore.
Not. Very. Professional.
Plus she was talented. She concentrated on every word said, took it in, understood it and worked it so it suited her argument. She was feisty and passionate and didn’t seem afraid of anything.
There was no way she’d be interested in me. I had baggage and a history that had to be the biggest woman deterrent ever, even enough to put some socialites off my inheritance.
But there’d been a conversation at lunch time that I’d overheard between Marie and Dessy about Marie’s date. It didn’t seem like she was interested in anything more than a night to blow off the cobwebs, or at least that was how she’d phrased it.
So I was taking a chance. I was only here for a couple of weeks. Marie was based in New York. There was no way anything serious could happen, so it wouldn’t matter to her that Max didn’t have a school and I was one nanny short of a simple life, or that I was a crap father.
That last was going to be resolved as soon as I got home.
But right now, I was in New York City. I was still young and definitely single and I needed to move on and find something to make me smile.
I showered and shaved, finding a shirt and pants that didn’t scream lawyer and sprayed on some aftershave I’d picked up at duty free and then headed over to the bar I knew Marie would be at.
Unless they’d moved on.
Unless she’d taken him back to her apartment already.
I was going to walk in there and look like a complete fool.
She was at a table with a man who seemed to have stepped out of a knitting catalogue, his blazer thrown over one shoulder, a pale blue polo shirt fitted to his torso. I doubted his hair would move in a hurricane, but it might be set alight if he came within whispering distance of a naked flame, such was the level of hairspray.
The bar was typically American in its size and layout, vastly different to the pubs in London. I wasn’t a huge drinker, apart from whisky at the end of a long day on occasion, and a reallydecent bottle of red wine with a meal, but I ordered a beer, knowing the exact moment when Marie realised I was there.
I turned around and saw her looking at me straight away, her eyes narrowed, her date still talking as if he didn’t realise her attention was no longer on him.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” She mouthed the words at me.
Her date asked her something, probably the first thing he’d asked her all night or maybe I was being really fucking mean about him. She pecked a kiss on his cheek and headed over to me, every man and some of the women taking a good look at her.
She was stunning, her skirt tight, showing off her arse, and her top skimming over her tits, teasing enough so that the semi I was concealing felt uncomfortable.
“Why are you here?” She tapped the bar with her fingernails as she looked me up and down. “You look less lawyer-like.”
“I’m not just a lawyer.”
Her eyes glimmered and I saw a smile start to spread. “You finally realised that, did you?”
I took the hit. “Yeah, just about. How’s your date?”
She glanced around to where Mr Cardboard Cut Out was still sitting, checking his reflection in a mirror he was holding.
I frowned at her. “Seriously, how’s your date?”
Marie’s eyes darkened, her expression irritated. “I think he’d prefer to be out with a blow-up doll that’s modelled on himself. Shall we go?”
“Go where exactly?” I was happy to follow her anywhere because she looked like the best decision I’d made in a long time. “I need details.”
“Somewhere the whisky tastes of peat.” She tugged at my shirt. “But there’s a condition.”
“What’s that?”
