He wore an eager expression, at the ready to serve. Like every butler in every fancy hotel on the planet Earth.
But Kayla’s adorable face was full-on furious.
Before I could even say hi there, how’s it goin’, she demanded, “Tell me you didn’t steal my luggage and have it delivered here!”
CHAPTER5
Kayla
“Hey there,love. Dead chuffed you could make it.”
Instead of assuring me he didn’t steal my luggage, Mick gave François, the butler who escorted me up to his room, a hand signal that made the older man back away with a discreet nod and disappear down the hallway.
“How’s it goin’, then?” Mick leaned against the doorjamb and folded his arms over his zipped-up leather bomber jacket once François was gone.
Then he gave me a slow up-and-down look. His seductive gaze raised goose bumps on my skin, despite it being warm and toasty in the hallway outside his suite.
Good God, why did he have to be so stupidly hot? It really was just incredibly unfair. Especially under these circumstances.
“How’s it goin’, then?” I repeated, more than a little flustered. “Not great, actually! I waited for eons for my suitcase, only to find out it had already been claimed and brought to the Tourmaline! What the heck, Mick? Do you have it or not?”
“Yeah. Thought, since you said yes to meetin’ up with me, I’d have the airport guy grab your bag, too.”
Any expectation of an apology that I’d carried up in the private elevator with me died on his careless shrug. There wasn’t a hint of contrition on Mick’s face or a note of remorse in his voice.
“You wanna come in?” He hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s ’round here… somewhere.”
“Oh, wow, I can’t believe you!” To say I was furious would’ve been an understatement. I pushed past him into his hotel room. “You just took my luggage, and you didn’t even bother to tell—oh, whoa, what is this?”
I broke off ranting, and my mouth fell open when I got ahold of Mick’s penthouse suite. “Seriously?! This is the suite you won? It looks like something out of a magazine spread. Not real place where human beings are actually allowed to live!”
I rushed to the floor-to-ceiling windows, where the sun was setting over the Seine and the Eiffel Tower, like it was posing for a postcard. “I can barely believe it is real. I mean, look at this view!”
“Yeah, look at the view. It’s beautiful….”
I didn’t realize Mick had followed me over to stand in front of the landscape windows until I turned to find him…
Staring at me, as opposed to the sparkling view.
My heart stuttered. But then I remembered the reason I was standing in front of this picture-perfect view instead of settling into my own hotel room.
“Why did you do that?” I turned to face him with a shake of my head. “Why did you steal my luggage without telling me?”
“Didn’t have your number,” he answered. “Or I certainly would have dropped you an SMS. Hindsight being 20-20, reckon we should’ve thought of exchangin’ digits before we got off the plane.”
He shook his head woefully, as if all of this could have been avoided if either of us had thought to offer up our phone numbers.
I glared at him. “You expect me to believe this was just a simple miscommunication and not some evil plan to make sure I didn’t back out of our one-night stand?”
He raised both eyebrows in a way that would have made me look cartoonish. But, of course, the look came off as even more sinfully handsome on him. “Were you planning to back out of our one-nighter without telling me, then?”
“I… um… well… I…” His direct question put me on the unexpected defense. But in the end, I confessed, “Okay, not going to lie, I was having second thoughts.”
I winced. “The thing is, I’m a very practical person. I’ve had a regular eight-to-five job since graduating from community college. I live below my means and with my parents because it’s cheaper. I drive an economy sedan, and I always pay my bills on time. Seriously, I’ve only done three impractical things in my entire life.”
I ticked the items off on my fingers. “Number one was asking out a professional football player because I was tired of swiping left and I thought he truly was a nice Midwestern boy at heart. Two was taking this trip, and that was only because I won it in a raffle.”
I got that this explanation did not make me come off as sexy in any way, shape, or form. But that was kind of the point.
