Authors: Noelle Adams
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Women's Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Contemporary Fiction
Nathan woke up terrified in the dark
of the hotel room.
He’d been asleep—far more deeply than he ever slept under
normal circumstances, although he had remembered to set the alarm so he
wouldn’t be late for his breakfast with Victoria.
He jerked awake a few hours later, a few minutes before the
alarm was set to go off. His heart was pounding, and his skin had broken out in
a cold sweat.
He was absolutely terrified.
Nathan had woken up like that more times than he could count
for the last two years, his unconscious mind working itself into a panic over
Elizabeth while he should have been sleeping.
But he wasn’t thinking about Elizabeth right now. He wasn’t
afraid for her.
It was Lynn.
And how he was starting to feel about her.
She was sprawled halfway on top of him at the moment,
completely naked and still asleep. Her cheek was resting on his chest, her soft
breasts pressed tightly against his belly, her messy hair spilling over his
skin, and one of her arms wrapped around his middle.
Her weight, her heat, her presence imprisoned him. All his
life, he’d hated feeling trapped.
But he didn’t dislike this as much as he should.
His nights with Lynn were his release, his escape. No one had
ever made him feel as good as she did.
But he'd drawn his boundary lines clearly. The release she
offered him was physical, and that was all he could take from her.
He couldn’t open up emotionally to her. He shouldn’t have
talked to her about his girls last night. Even though he’d wanted to, needed
to. Even though Lynn had asked him to.
His life simply didn’t have room for an intimate
relationship. As soon as things became deeper and complicated between them, he
would have to cut her out of his life for good.
Nathan just wasn’t ready for that yet.
Which was why he’d woken up feeling like his world was
spinning out of control.
He had to get out of bed, out from under her soft, clinging
body. Part of him didn’t want to, wanted to take comfort and pleasure in her
for as long as he could.
But his heart pounded almost painfully, and he was having to
fight to control his breathing. So he shifted beneath her, trying to edge
toward the side of the bed.
Lynn mumbled something wordless and clung to him, her arm
tightening around his middle when he tried to slide out from under her.
Despite the rounds of intense sex they’d had that night, Nathan’s
body still reacted to the press of her against him. He ignored the physical
response and tried again to extricate himself.
The motion must have woken Lynn enough for her to recognize
what he was trying to do.
“Don’t get up yet,” she mumbled groggily, her eyes still
closed and her face half-covered by her hair. The hand wrapped around his waist
squeezed his side.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured softly, wincing as his
half-erection rubbed against Lynn’s weight as he tried to pull out from under
her. “I’ve got to get home.”
“Too early,” she objected, obviously not fully conscious
yet. She pressed a vague kiss on his chest. “Stay with me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, resisting both her clinging and
the deep urge of his own body. Not just his body. Another part of him wanted to
crawl back into bed with her too, stay wrapped up in her arms.
But he didn't. He couldn't.
The room felt cool away from the heat of her body, but he
didn’t feel trapped anymore.
He sat on the side of the bed and stared at the clock until
he remembered to turn off the alarm before it went off.
“It’s too early,” Lynn slurred, rolling over onto her back
and blinking in his direction.
“Stay here and sleep some more,” he said, something
softening in his tone as he looked down at her in the messy bed. She smelled
like sex, like Lynn.
“See you next month.” She smiled even though her eyes were
barely open.
He didn’t answer for a moment, still staring down at her.
Then finally he said, “Yeah,” and he leaned down to kiss her softly on the
mouth.
She kissed him back in a sleepy, unfocused way, but her hand
moved up to briefly stroke his face.
When Nathan’s heart began to pound again, he got up, dressed
quickly, and left Lynn alone in the room.
***
He made it home in time to take a
shower. He turned the water as hot as he could tolerate and stood beneath the
jets, letting the spray pound down on his exhausted body for a long time.
He tried to focus on what was important, tried to clear his
mind of Lynn, tried to get himself back under control.
It took longer than it should have before he felt himself
again, but eventually he turned the shower off and got dressed, telling himself
that momentary weakness was inevitable but nothing about him or his life had
changed.
Victoria would be waiting to have breakfast with him. That
was what was important.
She wasn’t in the living room or in the kitchen getting
coffee when he emerged, fully dressed in a business suit. Frowning, since it
was already later than normal, he walked back to her bedroom.
The door was open, and she wasn’t there.
The bedroom was perfectly neat—the bed made, the desk clear,
and Victoria’s satchel and smartphone not in their normal places.
Elizabeth’s room had looked similar on the day she’d
disappeared.
Nathan panicked.
Washed with a wave of cold fear, he yanked out his phone and
hit the number to Victoria’s lead bodyguard.
When the man answered, Nathan snapped, “Where is she?”
“She hasn’t left the apartment, sir,” the bodyguard replied,
urgency immediately sharpening in his tone.
Nathan ended the call as he strode quickly down the hall to
the rooms at the back. He heard the guards entering through the main entrance
to search.
He barely processed the sounds, his mind and vision a blur
as he checked his office, his bedroom, the exercise room, and then finally the
media room.
Victoria was there, curled up in a leather chair and talking
on her phone.
She blinked in surprise when she saw him and quickly
disconnected the call. Then she stared in bewilderment as two bodyguards
entered behind him, alert and ready for action.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice quavering at what must
seem an emergency.
Nathan had frozen as soon as he’d seen her, the tension
inside him breaking so quickly he couldn’t quite process it. “I thought—” he
began, vaguely embarrassed by his overreaction but too relieved to care.
“Nothing. Everything’s fine.”
He nodded to the guards, who left the room without a word.
Victoria’s big eyes were wide and worried. “Has something
happened?”
“No. I just didn’t know where you were. I thought—” He broke
off the words, not wanting her to get angry. He couldn’t always predict what
would upset her, but this kind of thing could easily do so.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, Dad,
please
.”
Her tone was familiar—half impatient and half resigned—and
she was wearing her school uniform with her satchel dumped on the floor next to
the chair. He didn’t know who she’d been talking to on the phone or why she
would have been doing so here in the media room at such an odd time in the
morning, but that hardly mattered at the moment.
She must have read something in his face because her
expression changed. “I’m not going to run away, Dad. I promise.”
Nathan sucked in a sharp breath, pressure clamping down
almost unbearably on his chest. Then he reached out to pull his daughter into a
brief, hard hug.
“Please don’t,” he murmured, almost inaudibly, wondering if
he'd ever feel in control of his world again. “Baby, please don’t.”
Lynn removed her clip and shook out
the messy waves that fell over her shoulders. Then she ran her fingers through
her hair and massaged her scalp.
She felt tired and stressed. She’d been fighting off a
headache all day.
Plus, she really wanted to see Nathan.
It was after eight in the evening, and she’d spent most of
the day arguing with Matt about some changes to the
Cooler
.
Lynn didn’t often fight with Matt. Even when they’d been
married, they hadn’t argued all that much, and the intensity of their conflict
over this was upsetting and unsettling.
She really needed to talk it over with someone. She really
wanted someone to hold her, to comfort her.
And she really wanted it to be Nathan.
She shook her head hard as she got her stuff together to
leave. She was a grown woman—not a silly little girl—and she wasn’t going to be
foolish.
Nathan would never be that man for her.
It was still another week until their next evening together,
and she was going to have to either get a grip on her feelings or else not show
up at their hotel room next week.
Lynn was not going to let herself fall for a man who was
never going to fall for her.
It didn’t matter how much she was starting to miss him on
all the evenings between their monthly meetings.
She locked her office and glanced over at Matt’s closed
door. He was still in there, but he obviously didn’t want to talk to her.
She would have liked to resolve things so they could return
to their normal friendly interaction, but she didn't have the energy to talk to
him any more tonight. So she walked down the hall without stopping at his door.
As she was leaving, she saw Beth was still busy at her desk.
“Come on,” she said. “You shouldn’t be working this late. Let’s get some
coffee.”
Beth smiled up at her. “Thanks! I was just about finished
anyway.”
Lynn waited while the girl turned off the computer and
packed her bag. She’d had lunch or coffee with Beth several times in the last
few weeks. She liked her, and—in some inexplicable way—it felt like Beth might
need her.
Beth was very young, and she appeared to be mostly alone.
While their personalities weren’t really all that much alike, Lynn still felt a
kinship with her. Lynn remembered very well what it was like in college, trying
to support herself and working as hard as she could to ensure that she achieved
the future she wanted.
They walked over to the coffee shop down the block and
talked for about an hour about Beth’s classes, about work, and about books they
both had read. Lynn had a good time, and she felt more relaxed than she had all
day when she finished her second cup of coffee and leaned back in the cushy
chair.
Beth wasn’t a naturally outgoing young woman, but she'd
opened up to Lynn. She seemed to trust her now, and it felt like a small
victory.
“Any progress with your dad?” Lynn asked, after a moment of
silence as their previous topic concluded.
Beth’s shoulders stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“Sorry. I don’t mean to pry. But I know things aren’t good
with him, and I was just wondering if there had been any improvements.”
Beth released a little sigh and glanced away, pushing her
glasses up her nose more securely. “No. Not really.”
“So you haven’t tried to talk to him?”
“I don’t think I can. It’s…it’s complicated.”
Lynn felt a sudden tightening in her chest, confused and
worried by the conflicted expression on the girl’s face. “He didn’t hurt you or
anything, did he?”
Beth’s eyes flew back over to Lynn’s. “
No,
” she
exclaimed, obviously speaking the truth. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. He’s just
a…an important man in our hometown, and it was really hard to be his daughter.”
“I can understand that.” Lynn had grown to care about Beth,
and she hated to see how much the girl's broken relationship with her father
was eating her up, but she couldn’t think of a thing she could do to help
except listen. “Did you fight a lot?”
“All the time,” Beth admitted with a sigh. “
All the time
.
It was awful.”
“I bet he misses you, though.”
Beth shrugged. “I…I hope so. Sometimes I wonder if I should
never have…” She didn’t complete the thought. “Sometimes I miss him.”
***
Lynn took a long bath before she
went to bed that night. She felt physically frustrated so she had a little
session with her vibrator afterwards, thinking about Nathan and how much she
wanted him to hold her, to touch her.
More relaxed afterwards, she was just starting to drift to
sleep when the phone rang.
“Hello?” she said, not recognizing the number.
“Hi,” Nathan said, his voice immediately recognizable
despite the fact that he’d never called her before. “Did I wake you up?”
“No,” she replied, sitting up straight in bed, shocked and
confused. Her heart started to pound almost painfully. “Is everything all
right?”
“Yes. Sorry to call you. I know we…we don’t do that.”
“It’s fine. I mean, I don’t mind at all. Is something wrong?”
“No, not really.” His voice sounded strange, almost
stretched. “Do you think…”
When he trailed off, she prompted breathlessly, “What is
it?”
There was a long pause before he admitted, “I’m at the
hotel.”
Lynn glanced at the clock on her bedside table. Just after
midnight. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“What the hell are you talking
about?” Lynn demanded, pulling away from where she’d been pressed up against
Nathan in bed.
He blinked, unable to process the shift in mood. When Lynn
had arrived in the hotel a little while ago, they’d had sex in intense, needy
silence, and then he’d pulled her into his arms afterwards. Eventually they’d
started to chat.
All he’d done was make a dry, offhand comment about a story
the
Cooler
had run on one his clients, and he couldn’t understand her
inexplicable reaction to it. “What do you mean?”
“We weren’t slamming Joe Wilson unfairly in that story. We
reported what was true and what was news.”
“I never said you were doing anything wrong. It’s hardly
necessary to get so defensive.”
Nathan had been having a very bad day, which was why he’d
surrendered to the need to call Lynn, which was something he definitely
shouldn’t have done. He’d just been starting to feel better, but now his bad day
pressed down on him again, making his voice snider than it normally would have
been.
“Don’t use that condescending tone with me. I’m not being
irrational. You implied that we’d done something wrong in our story on Wilson,
and I resent the implication.”
“You’re reading into my random comment motivations that
simply aren’t there. I didn’t imply any such thing.”
“Just because we’re fucking doesn’t mean you and your
clients are off-limits.” She sat up as she spoke, evidently prompted by her
resentment.
In his growing exasperation, Nathan didn’t appreciate the
way she used the word “fucking,” even though it was what they’d always used to
describe their relationship. It trivialized them in a way he didn’t like, and
his feelings were audible in his response. “Have I even once demanded that the
Cooler
not cover me or my clients?”
She ignored the question. “If I change the way I do my job
because we’re sleeping together, then I become compromised as a journalist.
Just as compromised as everyone would assume if our arrangement became public
knowledge.”
“I never asked you to change the way you do your job,” he
said, after he sat up too with a burst of wordless impatience. “You’ve
concocted some kind of paranoid fantasy that’s based on absolutely nothing.”
“It’s not based on nothing.” She kept pulling up the sheet
to cover her bare breasts, which Nathan was grateful for, since otherwise they
would have distracted him. “At least five times you’ve made snide comments
about the way the
Cooler
covers you or your clients.”
He gaped at her. “Five times? Are you delusional? I said
exactly one thing, and it wasn’t—”
“I didn’t just mean tonight. I mean, since we started
fucking there have been at least five comments.”
“You actually keep count? For God’s sake, Lynn, where is
this irrationality coming from?” He was so frustrated he wanted to shake her.
To think he’d always believed her to be one of the most reasonable women he
knew.
“Right, I’m irrational because I take my job seriously when
evidently I should throw it all away because you can provide me with really
good orgasms.”
For some reason, the words—which she’d practically spit out
at him—struck him strangely. He broke off his immediate, angry response and
wondered whether she was right.
Was he really—without even realizing it—some arrogant,
anachronistic asshole who simply assumed a woman’s career should be sacrificed
to his?
Then, with a new surge of annoyance, he concluded that it
just wasn’t true about him. He valued Lynn’s career. He was impressed with what
she’d accomplished. He’d be proud if his own daughters achieved half as much as
she had.
And this ridiculous fight was based on absolutely nothing.
“That is not true about me,” he said, in a different tone
than the snide one he’d been using before, the one he’d known would set her
off.
She released a gust of air, her shoulders slumping suddenly.
The sheet slipped down before she pulled it up again. “I know it’s not,” she
admitted. “Sorry. But I still don’t appreciate those comments. Whether you
realize it or not, they’re a way of trying to covertly control me.”
It didn’t make him happy, and he wasn’t ready to admit it,
but she might be right about that.
With another sigh, Lynn heaved herself out of bed. “I’m
going to take a shower, if that’s all right. We’re not getting anywhere with
this argument anyway.”
Nathan didn’t object, glad for some distance. He tried to
distract himself by checking messages on his smart phone.
This thing with Lynn was getting out of hand. His time with
her was supposed to be an escape and an enjoyment. While he still enjoyed her
more than ever, she was making him feel far more than was comfortable or wise.
He wouldn’t be surprised if, while she was in the shower,
she came to the conclusion that the emotional turmoil wasn’t worth it. She could
very well leave the hotel room with the understanding that their evenings
together were over.
She wasn’t a petty woman. She wouldn’t end a relationship
because of a fight. But their nights together had always been based on a
certain premise that seemed to have been lost somewhere along the way.
Nathan didn’t know what she would do. And he didn’t know
what he
wanted
her to do.
When she came out of the bathroom, her hair was wet, and she
was wearing one of the complimentary robes provided by the hotel. She didn’t
start to pick up her clothes littering the floor, scattered in their urgency
earlier. She didn’t start to get dressed.
Instead, she sank onto the bed beside him.
He put the phone down and turned to watch her face.
“Just so we’re clear—you can’t interfere with my work, Nathan.
The
Cooler
is not going to do any reporting on you or your clients that
is unethical or irresponsible, just like we wouldn’t on anyone else. That’s not
what we do. That’s not what
I
do.”
“I know that,” he acknowledged, his frustration fading at
the softer note in her voice. “I really didn’t mean to imply you would.”
If he’d simply answered her that way earlier, they never
would have gotten into the argument to begin with. He wondered if he’d somehow
wanted the conflict. Then he wondered why.
Lynn nodded and let out a long, slow sigh. Her brown eyes
were uncharacteristically sober. Almost quiet. “I’m sorry if I overreacted. I
was overly sensitive.”
“Completely understandable. I should take your job more
seriously.”
She smiled at him, almost diffidently. He found himself
smiling back. He couldn’t remember the last time an argument he’d been involved
in had resolved so simply and maturely.
After a minute, Lynn flopped back against the pillows. “What
are we doing, Nathan?” she asked, her eyes observant on his face.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you
want
this to be?”
He felt a flare of panic at being put on the spot that way,
but he made himself let it go. It was a perfectly reasonable question—given
that he was the one who had changed terms on her.
It just would help if he had an answer for her.
“I’m not sure I know,” he admitted, glancing over. Her body
and wet hair were lush and feminine, but her eyes and the curve of her mouth
were knowing, sharply intelligent. The combination enticed him more than he’d
thought was possible. “Once a month doesn’t seem to be enough, but we can't
just start to date or get into a serious relationship. It would be…”
His voice trailed off, since he didn’t really know what it
would be, but he studied her expression closely. If she’d looked hurt or
disappointed, if she’d been nursing romantic daydreams, he would know things
were too dangerous to let continue.
Instead she looked matter-of-fact. Maybe a little relieved.
“Yeah. Of course not.” She paused, slanting him a look. “We could get together
more often—same as before, just more often.”
After thinking about it a moment, he nodded, realizing it
was exactly what he wanted. “It can’t be the same night every week. I’m not
stalked by the paparazzi or anything, but someone would notice a consistent
routine like that.”
“So we can play it by ear. Get together on various nights
that are convenient to both of us.”
He almost smiled. “Good. So we’re still fine with no
strings?”
“No strings,” she agreed. He saw her swallow hard before she
added, “Although this will only work for me if we’re exclusive.”
His shoulders stiffened at the thought of her having sex
with someone other than him. “I assumed we would be. I told you I hadn’t—”
“I know,” she interrupted hurriedly, evidently recognizing
his shift in mood. “That’s good. So that will continue? For however long this
lasts, we’ll be exclusive?”
“Yes.” He couldn’t, at this point, imagine wanting another
woman. Lynn was almost more than he could handle, on top of everything else
going on in his life.
“Good,” she said, grinning fully for the first time that
night. “Then we can finally ditch the condoms.”