Indigo Nights (Nights #3)(15)

“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 * 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 f*cking 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 f*cked 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 f*cking 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.