“I, um, can’t. I have…I have some nightly routines. Aaaand morning ones. Trust me, you don’t want to be in a room with me.”
God, that was lame. His forehead wrinkles, and his eyes take on a confused, unfocused look. He glances up and down my body. Probably trying to picture what the hell my stupid routines could be. Heck if I know either, bud.
I could cap it off with a reminder of my ugly feet, but there’s only so much I can do in the name of scaring him off.
He leans back against the wall, his movements relaxed, though I still detect tension in his broad shoulders. His duffel drops to the floor. “Yeah, don’t be troubling yourself. Probably for the best and all.”
Probably for the best? What does that mean?
Claire
Thirty minutes later, I tap my keycard against the box above the door handle. The green light blinks on my third try. God, I’m exhausted. The guilt riding shotgun with me on the short Lyft drive here doesn’t help either. Conor’s probably tossing and turning on the cold floor of Concourse C right now because my pansy ass couldn’t handle sharing a room with him. Ugh.
I shove my bag inside and ease into the room, plopping my purse onto…a kitchen counter?
I look around the room. High five. I scored an executive suite, complete with a galley kitchen and dining room table that doubles as a computer desk, with USB and Ethernet plugs handy.
To the left, I step into a huge-ass bathroom. Seriously. The bathroom alone would be a studio apartment in New York. Beyond the kitchen is just a couch and flat screen TV. Huh? I wander farther in, and that’s when I see another room to my left, which has a king bed and another flat screen TV. Somehow I got upgraded.
In the living room, I switch on the TV and head to the couch. A suspicion forms, and I almost don’t confirm it, because then I know what I’ll feel compelled to do.
But apparently, I don’t know…curiosity? A suppressed desire to torture myself by having him over? Whatever it is, I step over to the sofa and lift the cushions.
Shit.
Yep. Sofa bed.
Conor’s face as I walked away flashes across my mind, part lost, part resigned, and a whole lot tired.
Jesus. He just wants a place to rest comfortably so he’ll be fresh for some big meeting. I’m being ridiculous. And selfish. I’m not weak-willed. Not anymore.
Conor
Fuck me. I punch my rucksack for the third time and switch to my other side, hip bone jarring against a floor that’s gone harder than a stone’s heart. I could be sharing a room right now with Claire. Rooms usually have some kind of chair, and that’s gotta be better than this poxy floor.
Because I’d definitely take the chair. Not the bed with her in it. Not with her next to me. Laid out. Both of us comfortable. And it’d be one of those small doubles, and we’d accidentally bump into each other and murmur awkward apologies.
Heat curls through me, and my mind’s conjuring Claire stretched out on her side, her arm resting over her hip, with one finger crooking and urging me closer. To her.
I give a start and shut that shite down fast.
She’s not interested, eejit. Claire is direct and not afraid of saying what she wants.
At first, when I heard she had a room, all I could think about was the presentation and how badly I needed to do well so I can be helping my sister with the family farm. But then as her excuses piled up, it was a slap in the face, yeah—a reminder of every one of our prickly encounters. Gets me frustrated, it does, and then I’m saying stupid shite like, Probably for the best. Probably for the best doesn’t get a place for my head to be resting, now does it?
My mobile beeps a text alert. I fish it out from the back pocket of my jeans. It’s from Claire: Room 151
Triumph’s surging through myself, especially when the mobile dings again, this time with the address of her hotel.
Effin’ fantastic.
I jump up and grab my rucksack. Now I’ll be having some decent sleep at last. We’ll both be so knackered, there’ll be no energy for our uneasy dancing.
It doesn’t take but twenty minutes, and I’m knocking on Room 151. A minute passes, then the door opens and Claire appears. She’s draped in an oversized T-shirt and baggy men’s boxers.
Well, that’s absolutely fantastic—such form-disguising clothes shouldn’t be a turn-on, but fuck if the lad in my trousers doesn’t twitch. Down, boyo.
I’m knackered. That’s all it is. And seeing her in sleepwear is melding with my earlier fantasy of us sharing the same bed.
“Hey. Well, thanks for letting me crash here.” I look past her, my gaze searching out my goal—my spot to sleep.
“No problem. Come in.” She pads into the main part of the room and points. “Here’s the kitchen.”
Who feckin’ cares? But I dutifully nod.
A weird tautness permeates the air. With her standing there, vulnerable in her baggy clothes, I feel every bit of my six-foot-two, two-hundred-pound size. As if it’s pushing into her personal space. And that personal space is this whole room.
Jaysus, I’m being a tool. If I hadn’t acted whiney as a two-year-old in wet nappies, she wouldn’t be bailing me out of a tight spot.
She’s uncomfortable, that much is clear, pointing out each spot in the room when I just want to know—where am I going to be laying my head?
Her increasing nervousness makes me study her for the first time in a while—she’s acting so not like her normal tough persona, and it’s making me curious. I’ve never worried about my size around her, while I do feel like some huge mong around other women. Especially shorter ones. But Claire’s never seemed to me to be all that intimidated.
It was that strength in her that caught my eye the first time she walked up to me, saying she’d heard about the men’s hurling team and was wanting to start a women’s equivalent in Sarasota—camogie.
Of course, me being a lad, I also noticed her fantastic tits—the right size for her tall frame, that athletic body of hers, and all those grippable curves. When she proved level-headed, I was caught enough to watch her closely, to see if she was giving the slightest clue that she was interested in me.
Which she didn’t.
This behavior, however? This is different.
Chapter 3
Claire
Jesus. I’m channeling some flighty chick from a romcom, because here I am pointing to different spots around the suite as if it’s my own damn apartment and I’m giving him the grand tour and am nervous about having a hot guy over for a date.
Except he is a hot guy, and I am nervous.
But it’s definitely not a date.
I keep going with the mouth diarrhea and hand flailing as if I have no control over this dorky woman who’s invaded my body, because I’m pointing again. “There’s the sofa bed. I checked. There are sheets and a pillow in the closet.” Aaand I point to the closet. “As well as an extra blanket. If you need it. You know, if you get cold.”
The TV gets the finger treatment next. Then I start for the bedroom and pause.