“I doubt that.” It would take a lot more booze than one could fit in a hotel room to forget Jesse Mayes.
“And I got a little worried when you didn’t answer your phone.”
“You were gonna wake me up?”
“You looked a little rough when you left the party. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
His gaze left me as he sipped his drink. I would’ve given pretty much anything to know what that smoldering, far-off look in his eyes meant. Then those eyes returned to me, and I felt the answering heat deep in my belly, an unstoppable visceral response to that look.
The man had a pull, like an incredibly sexy magnet, and I could feel myself getting drawn in. I had no way to know if he was turning it on intentionally, or if it was justhim. I tried to resist but all I wanted to do was give in. Toss my arms around his neck and crush my lips to his. Taste him again, that ever-present hint of cinnamon.
Stupid.
Reckless.
Not going to happen.
“Luckily, I saw you from the lobby.” His gaze slid down over my body, briefly. “That red dress is like a beacon.” He glanced at the suits at the end of the bar.
“Well, what good is an arm ornament if she doesn’t sparkle?” I finished my first drink and set the glass aside with a small bang. I sucked the cherries off my plastic sword and cringed at my own words; God, that sounded cynical.
Jesse just sipped his drink, studying me. “Wanna talk about it?”
“About what?”
“Whatever’s eating you. If you’re going to be my girlfriend, I should know what, or who, put that look on your face.”
I finished my cherries and started into my second drink. I didn’t want to talk about it, but the liquor was obliterating my better sense. “Just someone I wasn’t keen to run into. Ever again.”
“Let me guess. Blond guy with the chip on his shoulder and too much of daddy’s money to burn.”
“That would be him.”
We drank in silence a moment. Jesse finished his first drink and set the empty glass next to mine. “What happened between you two?”
“It wasn’t so much what happened as what he did.”
Jesse’s jaw flexed as he considered that. “What did he do?”
“He left me.” I flooded my nerves with another swallow of liquor. “At the altar.”
“Damn.”
“Like, literally at the altar. I was standing up there in a white dress I couldn’t afford with everyone looking at me, and he bailed. He waited until that exact moment.” I glanced away, afraid I’d do something ridiculous like start crying if I had to look into Jesse’s eyes any longer. “I mean, he couldn’t have just told me beforehand?”
“He could have. But then maybe you wouldn’t be sitting here right now feeling bad about it. And maybe that’s not what he wanted.”
“I’m not feeling bad about that. I’m feeling bad about all the time I wasted on him before that. So many years. You know how many?”
“I don’t.”
“Five.” I looked him in the eye again, feeling loose-lipped and reckless with liquor. “You know how many times we had sex in those five years?”
Jesse’s perfect mouth quirked in the hint of a smile. “You kept count, sugar?”
“No, but it was lots. Lots of times. Lots of times that he wasthisclose to me.” Jesse’s gorgeous face had filled my vision, and in the back of my mind I wondered where the rest of the world had gone. “Lots of times he told me he loved me,” I breathed, my gaze dropping to his lips, “and one time he even said ’Marry me, Katie.’ He never once said to me, ’Katie, I don’t love you. You are not the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.’”
Jesse’s gaze dropped to my lips, and I realized how close I was to him. Leaning on the bar, our shoulders literally rubbing, we were close enough to kiss.
