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Umm…still thinking about that one.
“How do you know my name?” she asked, and he lifted one huge shoulder in a negligent shrug.
“I asked.”
“I don’t know yours.”
Amusement danced in his eyes, turning them to pure gold. Good Lord, she was in trouble. “Then do the same.”
“Fine.” She was, Louise realized, clutching her wineglass as if it were a life preserver. Any harder and it would shatter. She forced herself to relax. “What’s your name?”
“Jaiven. Jaiven Rodriguez.” He paused, his firelit gaze steady on her. “I’m an old friend of Alex’s.”
“All right, Jaiven.” His name sounded strange and yet weirdly right on her tongue. Familiar too, although she didn’t know why or how. “As appealing as your…proposition might be, I can’t leave this party. Chelsea is my sister, and I’m her maid of honor.”
He raised his eyebrows. “So?”
Already Louise could imagine what his skin would look like underneath his shirt: like burnished gold. Silky-smooth, his chest hair crisp and rough under her fingers—
Stop this right now. “So?” she repeated, her voice just a little too high. “So, that would be rude.”
“I’m sure Chelsea would understand.”
“Why? Because you’re such a stud?”
He laughed softly, a huff of sound that wound its way around her. “That too, but mainly because she’s in her own little world. She doesn’t need you right now.”
No, she didn’t. Sudden tears stung Louise’s eyes and she quickly glanced away. She was a little bit drunk and definitely overemotional, not a good combination. Definitely not a state in which she should be making any decisions about her love life. Or sex life, rather, since she was under no illusions about what Jaiven Rodriguez wanted. A good time in the sack, not a lifetime commitment, or even breakfast.
“I can’t,” she said after a moment, realizing how revealing that statement was. She couldn’t, not that she didn’t want to. But Jaiven had probably known she wanted to from the moment he’d walked into the room. He must have seen all her darting little looks, felt her interest and desire as if they were coming off her in waves of heat. Maybe they were.
How totally humiliating, not to mention stupid, because Jaiven Rodriguez was surely way out of her league.
And yet he wanted her.
That, Louise thought, had to be the most powerful aphrodisiac in the world. Simply stated desire.
“I have to stay here for Chelsea,” she told him, her tone resolute. Because I didn’t before. When Chelsea was only sixteen, she’d walked away from her, left her to make her way in a world that had been cruel and unforgiving to them both for far too long already. The memory of that last meeting was burned onto her brain, seared into her soul.
She’d had her own plans, a scholarship to the University of Alabama, a ticket out of the trailer park. Chelsea had two years left of high school and a serious boyfriend on the football team she didn’t want to leave.
Look, Louise, just go. I’ll be fine. I’ve got Rick.
And so Louise had ignored the hint of vulnerability in her sister’s eyes, had chosen only to see the defiant tilt of her chin. And she’d walked away, gone to live her own life at college. When she’d returned for her October break, Chelsea had disappeared. She hadn’t seen her sister again for fifteen years.
Fifteen years to think about what she should have done differently. To wonder, regret, and burn with both guilt and shame.
She and Chelsea had forgiven each other now, and Louise had moved on from the guilt, but she could still hear and feel its echo, especially in moments like this one, when Chelsea was so happy and she’d had too much to drink.
“Fair enough,” Jaiven said easily, bringing her back to the present with slamming force. She felt a ridiculous flicker of disappointment. He was going to give up that easily?
Of course he is, you idiot.
Jaiven hoisted his beer bottle in a mocking toast. “Never say you didn’t do your duty as a bridesmaid.”
He turned away, and she watched him go with a churning mixture of relief and regret.
Jaiven Rodriguez was definitely not the kind of man she should go home with. Go anywhere with. She needed safe. Unthreatening. Maybe even boring.
Jaiven was none of those.
But for a single night…a night to remember, to remind you you’re actually a woman and that you’re alive…
Jaiven seemed just about the perfect choice.
He was right, though, when he’d said Chelsea didn’t need her, Louise thought an hour later. She’d stuck to water and was coming down from her tipsy state so she felt only flat and tired. Chelsea had introduced her to a few media types, tried to include her, but Louise couldn’t make the effort.
It was only ten o’clock but she wanted nothing more than to go home to her one-bedroom apartment near Columbia and curl up in bed with the TV on mute and a pile of essays she had to mark. Just another typical Saturday night in the life of Louise Jensen.
Get over yourself, she thought crossly. You have a rewarding career, a lovely apartment, a small but close group of friends. There was absolutely no reason to feel sorry for herself.
Except she’d just turned down what she really wanted, and he was standing across the room. The only tempting offer of sex, of any kind of physical intimacy, she’d had in a decade.
Not that there hadn’t been other offers: a brief and unremarkable relationship with another grad student at Columbia; a blind date that had been excruciating in its awkwardness and, even more awkward, a pass made by Pete, the neighbor who had looked after her cat when she’d gone to San Diego to present a paper on women’s changing roles in the workplace.
Louise had thought he’d been inviting her in to retrieve Mallow’s litter box. He’d tried to pull her into a clumsy embrace while she’d been going for the box and the result hadn’t been pretty. Cat litter and kisses didn’t go so well together. Neither had she and Pete.
Sighing, she decided it was time to call it a night.
She caught Chelsea’s eye from across the room and waved a farewell; her sister made an apologetic face and waved back. She got it, Louise knew, and she wouldn’t try to cajole her into staying a little longer.
Louise handed her ticket to the young woman behind the coat check, slid her arms into the sleeves of her black wool trench coat. It was April, but there was still a nip in the night air.
In the lift down to the lobby she pulled out her phone and for curiosity’s sake—that ship had sailed, after all—she did an internet search for Jaiven Rodriguez. Half a million websites immediately came up, and she soon saw why: Jaiven Rodriguez was the founder and CEO of JR Shipping, one of the largest delivery services in the world. No wonder his name had sounded familiar.
And you could have had him in bed.
With a shake of her head she slipped her phone into her pocket and stepped outside the Plaza Hotel, breathed in the smell of New York: taxi fumes and litter and that inexplicable, muggy steam that rose from the subway grates, and over it all the damp freshness of a wet spring night. She dug her hands into her pockets and started across the Grand Army Plaza toward the park. She’d walk for a little bit, she decided, and clear her head.
She’d just crossed Fifty-Ninth Street and was turning left toward Sixth Avenue when she heard the sputter of a motorbike behind her. She tensed, because it was night in New York and she was a woman alone; instinctively she reached into her pocket for the small can of pepper spray she kept attached to her key chain.
The sputtering stopped, and a voice rumbled out her name. “Louise.”
Slowly she turned. Jaiven Rodriguez eased off his helmet as he smiled at her with such knowledge, such assurance. If Jaiven Rodgriguez at a party had been hard to resist, then the man on a motorbike was damn near impossible.
You don’t like bad boys, she reminded herself. You have had way too much experience with one in particular to make this remotely appealing.
Too bad her brain wasn’t listening. Although in actuality it wasn’t her brain that was responding to Jaiven. It was her body, and her body was saying yes.
Yes, take what he’s offering and go with it for a night. When was the last time she’d been so much as touched? Accepting a parcel from her postman did not count.
And at least a night with Jaiven Rodriguez would not engage her emotions. No chance of a relationship with this bad boy. No possibility of falling in love. No danger of getting hurt.
Just a basic and overwhelming need finally, wonderfully met.
“Party over?” Jaiven asked, and Louise heard that rich, velvety note of laughter in his voice. She was staring, she realized belatedly. Again.
“Not quite. But I was ready for bed.”
Her whole body tensed in mortification as Jaiven gave her one of his toe-curling smiles. “Good. So am I.”
She stared him down. Almost. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
He arched one dark eyebrow. “Didn’t you?”
Hell, maybe she had. Maybe her body was staging a coup over her brain. Resistance was futile.
Still her brain attempted one last feeble attack. “I told you that caveman thing was not attractive, right?”
“Do you see me dragging you onto this bike?”
No, the trouble was she’d get on it, just as she had once before. She’d take whatever a man dished out and ask for more.
Whoa. Jaiven was not Jack. And a one-night stand was not a marriage.
Still… Could she seriously be thinking about this? Getting on a bike with a stranger? God knows where he’d take her. He could strangle her in an alleyway and dump her body in the Hudson River.
The fact that he was a well-known, multimillionaire entrepreneur made that a little more unlikely, but only just.
And yet she was still thinking about it. Maybe it was the knowledge that Chelsea had found some happiness, so she wanted to grab a little for herself. Maybe it was just five years, or really a lifetime, of sexual starvation. Maybe it was this man, looking at her with both assurance and hunger.
She folded her arms, eyed him coolly. “If I get on that bike, you know where this is going, right?”
“A nice hotel on Forty-Sixth Street I know?”
She swallowed. A hotel. It sounded so sordid. But also safe. “And that’s it.”
“You’re talking my language.”
She laughed then, shook her head in disbelief. Was she actually warning Jaiven that she didn’t want a relationship? Talk about unnecessary.
“In any case, though,” Jaiven said in that slow, sexy rumble of a voice, “you can’t get on my bike. I only have one helmet.” She must have looked disbelieving because he chuckled softly. “I ride safe, and I mean that in all sorts of ways.”
“Nice.”
“Glad you think so.”
They stared at each other, the moment spinning out so Louise felt breathless. Her mind emptied of thoughts and her heart started to thud. She really was thinking about doing this. Hot sex with a stranger.
A little voice in her head, a voice that she’d been trying to silence for ten years, whispered that this was a bad idea. She didn’t trust men, not with her heart and not with her body. She wouldn’t be able to stand it if he ended up humiliating her, rejecting her. She could not bear to feel that way again, not for so much as five seconds.
She took a step backward.
“Looks like it’s not going to work out.”
“You give up awfully easy.”
She shrugged. “Some things aren’t meant to be.”
“And yet we left the party at the same time, met up out here. Seems like fate to me.”
A thrill ran through her. He was trying. He really did want her.
Maybe she could do this. Maybe this was actually what she needed.
“So what do you suggest?” she asked. “If you won’t let me on your bike? And that was not some double entrendre, by the way.”
“I’ll meet you at the hotel. You can take a cab. It’s The Black Book on Forty-Sixth and Seventh Avenue. The penthouse suite.”
“The penthouse suite? What, do you have a standing reservation?”
He gave her another slow smile. “Something like that.”
So he kept an expensive suite on permanent reservation for his one-night stands? Charming.
But then, this night wasn’t about charming. It was about sex. Hot, raw, primal sex.
“How long will you wait?” she asked, and he cocked his head, swept her in a thoroughly assessing gaze.
“Twenty minutes.”
Louise let out a choked laugh. Twenty minutes? That’s all of his time she was worth? “What if there’s traffic?”
He glanced down the near-empty Fifth Avenue. “There won’t be. Twenty minutes should be plenty of time to decide what you want, Louise. Because once you’re through the door, I have no time for regrets or cold feet.”
She felt a shiver run right through her; his tone was utterly implacable. “I consider myself warned.”
“Good.” He settled his helmet back on his head and revved his bike. “See you in twenty minutes,” he said, and sped off into the night.
Chapter Two
IT HAD BEEN seventeen minutes. And thirty seconds. Jaiven prowled through the penthouse suite of the Black Book with restless impatience. He’d been so sure she was going to come. She hadn’t said as much, but he’d seen the way she’d looked at him. Felt her want. It was a mere thirteen blocks from the Plaza to here, so where the hell was she?
Had she actually turned him down?
He went over to the bar that overlooked Bryant Park and poured himself a whisky. Maybe it was just as well, he decided. She’d obviously been a little nervous about negotiating a one-night stand. He’d thought she was ballsy but maybe this kind of thing was out of her element.
And he didn’t sleep with virgins, or even women with little experience. He liked his lovers to be as assured in bed as he was, to know what they wanted and be confident enough to take it. No regrets, no repeats.
