Mick just stared at me with an unreadable expression on his face.
I’d meant to reassure him.
But instead of breathing easy, he abruptly set me forward and away from him. Then he climbed out of the tub in a cascade of water and flexing muscles.
Oh God, had I gone too far? Completely messed this up?
“Mick?” I asked, kicking myself.
He just snatched a towel from the warming rack without looking at me.
Suddenly, I missed his weirdly intense eyes. A cold chill ratcheted through me as I watched him dry off his Greek god body, and I miserably noted that he no longer sported even the hint of an erection.
“Best ya climb out of that bath now and get yerself dressed.” Mick threw the large towel down on top of the puddle we’d made. “I’ll meet you back in the main room. Got somethin’ I need to tell ya. And it’s best we have this conversation with our clothes on.”
CHAPTER11
Mick
Christ,what have I gone and done?
After slipping on a tracksuit over some sweat-wicking thermal base layers, I headed out to the main suite and began just pacing back and forth while I waited to break the news to Kayla about who I truly was.
In the beginning, it all felt like a bit of a game, dinnit? She was vibing on me, as the Americans say, and I was right into her, too. Baggage had to be nicked and quite a few things about meself omitted in order to make our one-nighter happen.
Misleading her about who I was had seemed like the obvious solution to get what we both wanted. At first.
But what she’d said in the bath…
All that stuff about liking the bloke I was pretending to be more than a flash footballer? It had me head in a proper spin, dinnit?
On one side, it swelled my heart to massive proportions to hear she’d choose the guy I was pretending to be over some hypothetical big-name football player.
On the other hand, I was, in fact, a big-name football player.
And she’d made it clear as day she didn’t want nothing to do with the real me.
Though, that was the actual problem, whadn’t?
I felt like the real me when I was with her. The one I’d been hiding since I moved out of North Manchester. With her, I was a regular bloke, not wound up over nothing all the time—almost easy-going.
She brought out the man I’d always wanted to be. A bloke worthy of the time and attention of a great woman like her.
But now I had to tell her....
I wasn’t an electrician in real life. Nope. I was one of them pro athletes she couldn’t stand.
How would a chat like that even go?
So yeah, I was pacing and muttering all sorts of cuss words when the phone I’d left charging face down on top of the wet bar started vibrating.
Then I cussed even louder when I picked it up and saw the time.
The Tourmaline was one of them hotels that made you think time didn’t matter when you were inside their luxury confines. There weren’t any obvious clocks anywhere. Not even on the nightstand.
So, when I picked up the phone, I discovered it wasn’t “maybe around 8ish” like I’d thought when I decided to run Kayla and me that bath.
More like after 11 am. I was supposed to be at the Paris Triomphe closed practice over an hour ago!
