Indigo Nights: A Sexy, Contemporary Romance (7 page)

Why was I focusing on Dylan when I should be thinking about my family?

“Daddy, what have you been up to?” I forced a smile as I made my way into his room.

“I told her I didn’t need to come to the hospital, but she wouldn’t listen.” His mood was normal at least. “When am I getting out of here, Marissa?”

Marissa glanced at me as if to say
See what I have to put up with
? But I knew she loved my dad and I was grateful for that. He deserved it. My mom had been killed in a revenge attack because my dad was a cop. I was sixteen and my brother was eighteen. If it were possible to die of guilt, my dad would have been taken from us a long time ago. Marissa had been good for him.

The day of my mother’s funeral was the day I had my first drink, and I’d quickly learned that alcohol took the edges off reality. I wasn’t sure I grieved my mother’s death before I got sober. I just buried all my feelings at the bottom of an ocean of alcohol. The hurt wasn’t as sharp when my head was dizzy with champagne, or wine, or vodka, or gin, or rum, or . . . I could slip into a different world where I didn’t have to think about my mother’s death. When I finally got sober, all the pain had still been there, perfectly preserved. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get over it, but I was learning to live with it, sober.

I kissed my dad on the forehead and took his hand.

“I thought you were flying back to London, Beth?” Every now and then, I glimpsed my father and saw an old man instead of the invincible cop I’d grown up with. Now was one of those times as he lay in bed, machinery attached to his chest. I hated to see him vulnerable. It was as if our roles had been reversed, but I didn’t have his strength.

“My flight got cancelled. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.” I squeezed his hand. Tears began to well but I didn’t want him to see me cry. He was fine; my tears were of relief. That he was okay. That I was sober. Still.

It had been a lesson. I needed to keep control. There were enough curveballs to cope with in life without adding more to the mix. No more one-night stands.

“Marissa shouldn’t have called you. I’m fine.” My heart rate began to return to normal as I realized he really was going to be okay.

“Stop being a grouch. She did the right thing bringing you here, and you know it. So be nice.” I turned to Marissa. “Does Jake know everything is okay?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I spoke to him.”

“What time’s your flight? The weather is better today. I don’t want you here fussing over me. You have your own life to get back to.” My dad looked stern.

Yeah, he was absolutely fine. I grinned and kissed him on the cheek.

“And then what?” my sister-in-law asked, looking between her best friend and me. Haven and Ash were perched on barstools in my kitchen, watching me bake while feeding and cooing at their babies. They’d become good girlfriends to me since my brother had started dating Haven, and my world, that had been just my brother for a long time, had opened up a little.

I was giving them the lowdown on Dylan. “And then we, you
know
.” I felt like a teenager, confessing to her girlfriends about the night before. Apparently, this kind of sharing was par for the course with Haven and Ash.

“No we don’t!” they screamed.

“We need details,” Ash said, moving her daughter, Maggie, to her shoulder to burp her. “We’re forced to live vicariously now. We don’t get to have one-night stands. We need you to be
very
specific.”

I laughed. “It was good. I mean, the best I’ve ever had.” Since I’d been back in London, my mind had wandered to Dylan and our night together more often than it should have. He was a one-night stand, yet thoughts of him had stayed with me. Yesterday, I’d been shopping for cake tins and thought I’d seen him walk past the shop. My heart had started to thunder and my knees fizzed.

I kept waiting for thoughts of him to fade. I felt like a schoolgirl with a crush. No doubt I’d been long forgotten by him.

“Do you think it was because you’re sober?”

“I have no idea, but I swear to God, if sex is that much better sober for everyone, then no one would ever drink.” Dylan had warned me that it was going to be world changing. He’d been right. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be the same again. It was as if he’d released something in me.

“Whatever it is, I think it’s showing in your baking. This cake is orgasmic.” Haven was making
ohhing
and
ahhing
noises.

I grinned. In a way, she was right. Dylan had inspired me, as if he’d been something of a muse to me. Apparently, great sex led to great cake.

“How did your meeting go with the TV people?” Ash asked.

I shifted my weight onto one hip. “Good, I think. They want me to do like a trial or screen-test for a slot on the Saturday morning show,
A Chicago Saturday
. I have to fly back next week and they’ll set me up in the studio—”

“Are you serious?” Haven asked, her mouth still full.

I shrugged. “It might turn into nothing, but it’s a bit of fun and perhaps I’ll attract a few more viewers to my YouTube channel.” Deep down I was excited. But I didn’t want to let those feelings bubble to the surface in case things fell through, and I hadn’t quite worked through the consequences of what a TV spot in Chicago meant. It was a long way away.

“That’s amazing. Holy crap, you’re going to be the Oprah of cooking.” Ash’s eyes were wide and sparkling. She truly was happy for me and that felt good. We were family, and I wasn’t ready to move to Chicago and give that up, so as much as a TV spot sounded exciting, there was a serious downside.

Baking had started off as therapy, and I suppose it still was. Cakes were my favorite to create. Not occasion cakes—but cupcakes, carrot cake, chocolate cake, gateaux. And of course I loved a vanilla slice and fruit tarts, and I’d just mastered profiteroles—I liked to bake anything sweet or dessert-like.

“So, you’re going to fly over to Chicago, bang a hot guy, record a TV show, then fly back to be vomited over by your nieces?” Haven had a way of getting to the heart of a situation; no doubt it was the journalist in her. “Before we know it, we’ll have lost you permanently to the Windy City.”

“Actually, it’s something I’ll need to discuss with WCIL. I’m not moving back to Chicago. I don’t believe in going backward. I don’t mind flying over regularly, but every week is crazy.” I shook my head. “Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. They’ve not offered me anything yet.”

“They will, though. They’d be crazy not to. Your breasts alone deserve to be on television,” Ash said, as if she’d just told me she liked my haircut. I shook my head at her, smiling. “They should call your slot
The Baking Bombshell
.”

“You’re crazy.” I threw a tea towel at her.

“She’s right.” Haven pushed Sophia in her bouncy chair, trying to get her to settle. “You are going to make guys come in their breakfast cereal. You’ll be the thinking man’s crush. Brains and beauty combined.”

“Maybe Mr. International Lover will see you on television, swoop in and you’ll live happily ever after,” Ash said, waving her hands excitedly.

“Mr. International Lover?” I asked.

“Yeah, or Mr. I-Can-Go-All-Night.” Ash looked at me as if I needed to keep up.

I giggled. Dylan. Would he see me on TV? And if he did, would he even remember me? My heart squeezed at the thought. I knew we’d had a no-strings-attached night together. Problem was, a few of my strings seemed to have become attached.

Ash sighed. “I can’t believe you didn’t get his number.”

I shrugged, trying to act as if I didn’t care, though it would have been nice if he’d asked. “That’s the point of a one-night stand. You don’t swap numbers.”

“If you’d have made it on the flight, you could have joined the mile-high club,” Ash said.

“Ewww. In some cramped bathroom that five hundred people have peed in? No thank you. Not even for his monster cock.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t particularly nice when Jake and I did it, and that was on a private plane.” Haven looked off into the middle distance. There were things I didn’t need to know about my brother. That he and his wife had sex at thirty-thousand feet was one of them.

“I bet he sees you on TV and gets in contact,” Ash said. “I’ve got a feeling about this.”

“I’ll be long forgotten. He won’t even remember my name.” Dylan had been perfect one-night stand material, and I was thankful there’d been no awkward aftermath. I was pretty sure that if I’d seen him on the plane, he would have seen my desire to have more of him, and I’d not had to endure the pity in his eyes. I just had to distract myself and move on, perhaps get Haven to set me up. Now that I was over the hurdle of my first sober sexual experience, perhaps I could really date—find someone suitable, compatible, a forever man.

Men like Dylan weren’t dating material.

Dylan

Beth Harrison.

Beth Harrison.

Beth Harrison.

I couldn’t get her out of my head.

Probably because I was in an airport lounge again, this time in London. My hankering for Beth was getting ridiculous. I’d asked my assistant to see if she could find the person sitting next to me on the plane on the pretense that I’d picked up the Mont Blanc pen she’d forgotten. Christ, I’d used a pen for an excuse. I was bordering on pathetic.

I kept telling myself that it was just about the sex, about her sweet, tight pussy and glorious tits. And yes, that was part of it, but there was something about Beth, about our night together, that meant I wanted to know more. I had an urge to find, protect and possess her. Perhaps it was because she’d disappeared into nowhere, denying me the opportunity to know more about her. I wasn’t the one in control. She’d taken that from me. I didn’t even know what she did for a living or what city she lived in.

All I knew was that she liked cake and had a body that would make any man weep. And that she was incapable of being anything but honest and open—qualities I’d valued in myself but in her they translated into something seductive and bewitching.

Why hadn’t I used some of our hours together to glean the most basic of information from her?

I slammed my laptop closed. I needed to find someone else. My week in London had been non-stop meetings, business dinners and even a charity gala. A lack of sex was probably making my Beth Harrison obsession worse than it would have been if I hadn’t had blue balls. Getting off in the shower just wasn’t the same as sliding your hands up a woman’s body, making her whimper before fucking her until she begged you for release. Masturbation might have given me release, but it didn’t go deep enough to quench the thirst Beth had created. Worse, I wasn’t sure another woman would help, but at least I could try.

I glanced around. The lounge was full of suits. I pulled out my cell. I’d line Mandy up—my regular, sure sex for a few years now—for when I landed. Low maintenance, she turned up at my apartment, we fucked and she left. We might swap a couple of pleasantries about the markets or the weather, but we both knew the score—it was all about the fucking for both of us. Every now and then I was tempted to ask whether or not she had a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a husband, and then I thought better of it, ripped off her panties and got on with it.

I stalked over to the self-service bar and poured myself a soda water as a shadow in the far corner captured my attention. It couldn’t be. It would be too much of a coincidence. I’d be claiming to see water in the middle of the desert soon. I turned my head toward what had caught my eye.

I squinted. It really looked like her. I wandered closer, scanning the low tables, pretending to look for a newspaper.

It
was
her.

I wasn’t imagining it. She looked as beautiful as I remembered.

Dressed in a tight red skirt and a black sheer blouse, she looked every inch the fifties movie star. The disappearing woman, Beth Harrison.

I was part thrilled, part infuriated and entirely consumed with a desire to have her naked beneath me.

I watched her concentrate on her notebook, oblivious to everything going on around her. At least nothing had happened to her. Irritation prickled at the back of my neck as I wondered if she’d deliberately missed the flight to avoid me. Jesus, she should have been grateful that I’d fucked her, and begged me to do it again, not given me the brush-off.