Stripped Bare (Stripped #1)(58)

I cried all of my frustration out, and when I was done, I braided my hair, climbed into bed wet and naked, and buried myself under the covers.





I woke up with a renewed sense of determination.

My cry last night had been therapeutic. I managed to get out every negative emotion I felt, and somehow I’d managed to sleep for ten hours straight. Maybe it was because I’d had a damn good cry. Everyone knew that, when all other routes were sending you for a trip up shit creek without a paddle, sitting your ass down and crying was the only option.

I was headed up shit creek without the f*cking boat, and it stunk.

Thankfully, last night’s cry had given me a cruise ship for the trip.

As I dressed in a white blouse and my favorite red skirt, I reminded myself what I needed to do. Clearly, West and I couldn’t work together. There was an obvious...well, not conflict of interest. The problem was the interest was all too mutual. So there.

There was an obvious mutual interested that almost rendered our professional relationship untenable. Don’t get me wrong. I had no issue with going to work and getting hit on by him. I was female. I had an ego that needed stroking too, except mine came less in the form of a stroke and more in the form of a two-fingered nub-rub.

The problem was the feelings I’d developed for him. They were making it impossible, and something had to give. Since I unfortunately couldn’t just flick a switch and have the feelings f*ck off, I had to stop our physical relationship.

I also had to figure out how to grow the balls to tell him that we couldn’t sleep together any longer, but that was another issue. I would focus on it later.

Or, you know. Just avoid him.

Yeah... It seemed like the best idea, but it wouldn’t work.

Why, out of their businesses, did it have to be Rock Solid I was needed for? Why couldn’t it have been The Landing Strip, the female strip club next door? Why couldn’t their ladies need some marketing love, huh?

I sat on the end of my bed and blew out a long breath. I was getting frustrated again. I was a frustrated crier, so what I was feeling didn’t bode well for me. I needed to calm down or there was a chance I’d burst into big, ugly tears at a random point in the day. Like a volcano.

It’d happened before.

It wasn’t my finest moment. I was an uglier crier too. I had pictures Allie had snapped that would give Kim Kardashian GIFs a run for their money.

I fluffed my hair with my fingers and stood up. Starbucks. I needed a Starbucks refresher. That was the only way to calm myself, wasn’t it? Yes. It had to be true.

God, now, I was rambling to myself. I’d completely lost my train of thought when I’d started thinking about my ugly crying.

Unfortunately, the reminder was never far away that what I was doing was to tell an insanely hot man with hips Shakira would cry over that we could no longer sleep together.

My vagina wanted to cry. Seriously.

Crying was in the air.

The emotion I’d felt last night had been too real and too strong. It didn’t matter how hard my vagina begged me not to take him away, I had to do it. For my sanity, if anything else.

I couldn’t believe I’d given in in the first place. Nothing ever, ever, ever should have happened between us, because look where it’d gotten me.

Shit Creek Cruises was open for business, bitches.

At least, if this career didn’t work out for me, I had another option. There was also the option of writing a book: How Not to Date. That I was a pro at.

Which meant that, technically, what I was about to do should have been easy.

Technically.

It wouldn’t be. I never did anything easily.

It was going to be a long, long day.



By the time I’d crawled through the Starbucks drive-thru at a pace slower than a snail’s and gotten my refresher, I was contemplating going back to bed.

Not seriously.

Well, probably seriously. Mostly not seriously. Mostly, it was another avoidance technique I’d mastered. If you don’t wanna do something, go back to bed. Pretend to be sick or something. It’d worked for me so far.

My biggest issue was, I’d realized while waiting for the barista to get her shit together, that I had to see West. I probably should have thought of it earlier, because seeing him meant I had to explain my disappearing act last night, and I didn’t actually have an explanation for it. I was definitely more of a winging-it kinda girl, but the closer I got to Rock Solid, the more I thought I probably should have planned an excuse.

With any luck, it’d be another thing we wouldn’t discuss.

It was unlikely, but I could hope.

Hope was about all I had left. I hoped we wouldn’t talk about it. I hoped I could just break this off. I hoped I could go back to San Diego and forget all about him.

I pulled into the parking lot and killed the engine, turning to stare at the side of the building. Was it wrong that a part of me hated it? A part of me regretted having booked Allie’s party there. Maybe a quiet night at the movies at home like she’d originally wanted would have been best.

No, there was no maybe about it. It would have been for the best. I was such a stupid idiot for not listening.

Even if I’d ended up coming to Vegas in Michelle’s place for this job, I didn’t think the outcome would have been the same. I wouldn’t have known anything about West Rykman. I didn’t know a huge amount as it was, and I was glad. I wished I’d never asked questions.