“I don’t care about your money, Chance.”
“I know you don’t. Unlike those women you saw me photographed with, you’re willing to walk away from this, and that tells me everything I need to know about your character. But it goes deeper than that. You and I both know that there’s the potential for more than just this, but you won’t admit it because you’re scared.”
“It’s not that I’m scared, Chance. It’s that I don’t see this working out.”
“Then let’s save that conversation for the morning. Because if this does end up being my last night with you, then I want to show you something else.”
I furrowed my brow at him. “Show me what?”
He slid down my body, kissing every part of me as he did. “What it really feels like to have a man make love to you.”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?”
“No. I just got done fucking you. I gave you what you wanted. Now I want to give you something else.”
“But the first time that we had sex together, when I asked you to make love to me as if you meant it—what was that?”
“A show. I didn’t know you then, but I tried my best to give you what you wanted.”
“You barely know me now.”
“That isn’t true. Now I know you a day later. Now I know you after dinner. Before things got heated beneath the table, we talked at length. We talked about our pasts and our hopes for the future. It’s obvious that we have more things in common than we realized before. But enough talk. Let me show you what I’m feeling. Let me show you the difference.”
When he made love to me, it was different from what I knew with him. It was sensual, tender, loving, intense, and filled with unexpected moments that cast me into the thrill of the unknown.
He caressed me so that there was no part of my body that he didn’t stroke or touch. When he entered me, he did so with such care, I knew that what I felt wasn’t just a physical connection of two bodies coming together. Instead, I could feel the emotion behind his thrusts. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I felt that this was a natural extension of us. The way we were meant to be.
But I didn’t want to overthink any of this now. So I just let myself go and I went with it, allowing him to take me to the ceiling, through the roof, and into the night air, where my body drifted above the city lights and saw the moon.
When we came, it was with such force, it was difficult to deny what had just happened. I held him close to me as he finished with a shudder. I kissed his neck and then his lips, and then he slid out of me and off of me. For a long moment, we just held each other before he turned me onto my side, came up close behind me, and enveloped me in his arms as he gradually began to drift off to sleep.
“Don’t leave,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“In the morning. Don’t leave me this time.”
I closed my eyes when he said that, and allowed the seconds to tick by. His breathing deepened. And then he said one last thing to me before sleep finally overcame him: “Give this a chance, Abby.”
And that was it for me—I couldn’t sleep. My mind was a hive of confusion, and it was in overdrive. His left hand was draped over my breasts, and I held it in my own while his breathing became heavier against my neck.
There was no question that having him near me like this made me feel safe and secure. Or that the evening itself had challenged any adventure I’d ever imagined for myself. Chance was capable of offering me both—and now he was asking me to give this a chance. But I had to wonder again how much longer we could last given his workload and that he didn’t live here. We’d only known each other for two days. This was still so fresh, it felt as if there was nothing we couldn’t achieve together. But I was no fool. What would this look like six months from now? A year from now?
There were too many questions I couldn’t answer. Too many things to think through before he woke. I lay with him for an hour before I saw dawn press against the closed blinds. I had to have time alone to think. So, as he continued to snore lightly, I slid as quietly as I could away from him, moved into the suite’s living area, and pulled up a chair so that it overlooked Fifth Avenue, which was just now coming to life beneath the lavender haze of light.
Elle was right, I thought. I never should have agreed to see him again. I’m falling for him. Hell, I’m crazy about him. I want to see more of him, but I can’t. It will only end badly—I know it will. So, what do I do now?
How do I end this without hurting both of us?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Although my impulse was to run, I chose not leave before Chance woke—instead, I respected him and his wishes, and stayed. I made myself a cup of coffee in the suite’s kitchen. I sipped it while I thought about what was best for each of us going forward and waited for him to wake and join me so we could talk.
Two hours passed before he did.
I looked at him over my shoulder when he emerged from the bedroom wearing a white terry cloth bathrobe tied loosely around his waist. I was still naked, but I didn’t care, even if he couldn’t see all of me because my back was turned to him. He’d seen my body. He’d seen my soul. Hell, what hadn’t he seen over these past two days? He seemed able to see through every part of me, so what was there to hide? Nothing. And besides, I didn’t want to hide anything from him, especially now. He deserved better than that.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning.”
“I’m glad that you’re still here.”
“Sometimes there’s a point when you can’t just cut and run, Chance. Sometimes, people in your life deserve better than that.”
He looked at me as if he didn’t understand what I was saying, but I sensed that was only because he was still groggy from sleep.
“The coffee is probably stale by now,” I said. “Would you like me to make you a fresh pot?”
“I can make it.”
“Why don’t you do that, and then we can talk?” I nodded toward the bedroom. “Is there another bathrobe in there?”
“In the adjoining bath. Let me grab it for you.”
I got out of my chair, and stood naked before him. I saw his lips part when he realized that I wasn’t wearing anything.
“I can get it,” I said as I walked toward him. As I did, I’d never felt so brazen, so vulnerable, or so free. But this clash of emotions was what I’d come to expect from Chance. I looked at him with affection as I neared him, and my brain and heart began to battle each other again. Each wanted to win. Each demanded to win. But only one could take the throne.
And I already knew which one that would be.
“Make some coffee,” I said. “I’ll be just a moment.”
* * *
In the bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face, found a brush to run through my hair, and then looked at myself in the mirror. I wondered who this person was, and how she’d gotten to where she was now. Everything had happened so fast, I decided I didn’t know. Too much of it had been a blur. For whatever reason, life had ambushed me over the past two days, but what was I to take away from it? What was I to learn from it? Not just the fact that I had the ability to let myself go sexually with someone, but from all of it?
Maybe I’d know tomorrow. Maybe I wouldn’t.
“Would you like more coffee?” he called from the other room.
“Another cup would be great.”
“How do you take it?”
“Black.”
I used the bathroom and then removed the extra bathrobe off the back of the closed door. The robe was huge on me, but it was nothing if not luxurious. I wrapped myself in it and held it close to my throat, and when I did, I sensed a trace of his cologne on it, which was too much.
My stomach hitched. I turned on the water in the basin to full blast, and then I vomited into the toilet. When I was finished, I was nearly spent. I flushed the toilet, rinsed out my mouth with cold water, and then opened one of the small bottles of Scope that was on the vani
ty. I took a long swig, swished it around in my mouth, and after a minute, spit it out. I hadn’t brought a toothbrush with me, so this would have to do. At some point, probably when he was getting ready last night, he must have worn this robe. I could smell him on it. It only heightened my anxiety about what was to come.
Just get through it.
When I rejoined him in the living area, he was sitting on one of the sofas with his robe parted in a way that revealed his chest to me. Two cups of coffee sat on the coffee table. They were next to each other, indicating that he wanted me to sit next to him.
But I couldn’t. Not now. Maybe not ever again.
I sat down on the other sofa and looked at the two cups. “Which one is mine?” I asked. “They’re both black.”
“What’s mine is yours,” he said. “Choose your poison.”
He was right-handed, so I chose the cup at his left, and sipped. “Did you sleep well?” I asked.
“I did until you left. Then I just laid there, drifting in and out. Would you like some breakfast? I can call room service.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said. “But please, if you are, call and get what you’d like. I don’t mind.”
He studied me for a moment and then said, “Why don’t we just talk, Abby? You’ve been up for hours turning this situation over in your head to the point that you’ve just made yourself sick. I heard you in the bathroom, and I hate that you’re feeling this way. So, why don’t you just talk to me? I have a feeling where this is going, and I can tell you right now that I don’t like where you’re driving it. But I need to be fair to you, and I need to respect your wishes. So, tell me—what are you thinking? And why do you look so sad right now?”
I didn’t realize that I did.
“Shouldn’t we share this conversation together?”
“Not if you’ve already made up your mind about us.”
For the most part, I had made up my mind, but I deflected the comment because there was one question I needed to ask him first. “Do you remember what you said to me last night?”
“I said a lot of things to you last night. Some of them were probably obscene.”
“Some of them were—not that I minded much. I’m talking about what you said to me just before you fell asleep. Do you remember what you said to me? Or was that just sleep calling, and you didn’t know what you were saying?”
He leaned forward and picked up his coffee. “Of course I remember what I said to you. I said it for a reason. I asked you not to leave. I asked you to give this a chance.”
That surprised me—last night, I thought he was too far gone to remember much of what he’d said. But I was wrong. He did remember, which meant that he must have meant it when he’d said it.
“You thought I didn’t remember?” he asked.
“I thought that you were half asleep.”
“I meant what I said. I want you to stay. I want more time with you. I want to see how this unfolds.”
“You’re going to L.A. today. Then to London. Then to Paris. You told me you don’t know when you’ll be back in Manhattan again. So, I have to ask you, Chance—what’s the point of taking this any further than we have?”
“The point is right here between us. The point is that we shouldn’t ignore this—whatever this is. That’s the point.”
“Last night, I was clear with you. I told you that I don’t do long-distance anything. That kind of lifestyle wouldn’t be fair to me, and it wouldn’t be fair to you. It’s a set-up for failure. It’s a set-up for being hurt.”
“What if I changed that?”
“How?”
“What if I moved here?”
“When?”
“I don’t know when, but what if I did?”
“All right. So you move here. But you’re still going to be on the road for much of the time, which means that you really won’t be here. You’ll be in L.A. Madrid. Istanbul. And God knows wherever else you travel to. You told me that you live in Chicago, but you said that you only consider it a base. How long have you lived there?”
“Seven years.”
“And still it’s not even a home to you? How do you expect Manhattan to become a home to you?”
“Because you’d be here.”
“And I’d be waiting weeks or months before you found time in your schedule to visit me. Don’t you see how difficult that would be on us? Or are you prepared to give up traveling? To run your business from Manhattan? To hire someone else to take over your duties so we can really explore this? Because if you aren’t, I’m telling you for each of our own good, there’s no need to go further. We’re only going to get hurt.”
He didn’t answer, and I knew why. He loved his job. He might have said that he was ready to see how this unfolded between us, but the fact that he just balked at my last question suggested that he wasn’t.
“It won’t work, Chance. I’ve had a wonderful time with you these past two days, but it’s already clear that not much will change with the exception of you possibly moving to Manhattan. These past two days were special. You’ve made me see that I really am ready to move on and date again. I wish it were with you, but I think you’re too wedded to your business to have time for anything else.”
“You don’t know that.”
“All right. Let’s say that I’m wrong. Let’s say that you did find time for us. What concerns me is that, at some point, you’d grow to resent me for it. For taking you away from you work. That’s something I can’t live with.”
He shook his head at me. “You sure make a lot of presumptions, Abby.”
“Then challenge them.”
“There are ways around this.”
“What ways?”
“You’ll need to give me some time to think about them.”
“So, even now you don’t have an answer.”
“Obviously, I’d need time to sort things out. There’s nothing unreasonable about that.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Why are you so willing to keep throwing up roadblocks?”
“Because I’m a realist.”
“Oh, that again.”
“Someone has to be. Look, I’m a woman trying to get through school, which won’t be for another year. You’re a man who’s already made it. You own an international corporation that demands your attention and your time. Tell me how that situation has a happy ending to it? I don’t think it does. So, it’s with affection that I say that I should just leave—it’s better for both of us.”
“You know what, Abby? The times when you throw up the most resistance are the times when you should drop all resistance. Your fear is telling you that this is something that you don’t want to face for a reason—but maybe you should.”
“What fear?”
“That I won’t follow through. That I won’t take this seriously.”
“And how long will moving to Manhattan take? A year? Two?”
“You know that I have a suite here.”
“A suite isn’t a home. Look, I was honest with you yesterday, Chance. I told you when you called me that last night was it for us, but you seem determined to complicate it.”
“That’s because I know this can work. I was hoping that you’d want the same. Can you really sit there and deny that there isn’t something tangible between us?”
“No. I can’t.”
“And how often has that happened to you, Abby?”
“Not this fast,” I admitted.
“So we should just ignore it?”
“In this case, maybe ignoring it is for the best.”
“God, you’re frustrating.”
“I don’t mean to be.”
“I think you’re just scared.”
“For all the reasons I’ve listed, why wouldn’t I be? Would I love to take a chance and go forward with you? Yes. But only if the circumstances were different. I will not be the woman who asked you to move to Manhattan and give up the real love of your life—your work. If I did, none of this would end well. I have a feeling that you
live more for your work than you would for any relationship.”
“You know, you keep saying that, and now it’s really starting to get under my skin. Tell me—how have you come up with that assumption when you have no idea what’s in my heart, or what I want for my own future? Whether it’s with you or with somebody else?”
“Because you’ve put years into your business. You’ve worked hard to get where you are. We’ve only had two days together. Am I being that unreasonable? Why would I think anything else?” I leaned toward him. “Let me ask you this, Chance—have you ever been in a serious relationship?”
His shifted on the couch, and I saw a flicker of something unwanted cross his face. “Once.”
“How long did it last?”
“Four years.”
“Why did it end?”
When he looked at me, he looked unsettled, rattled, and as if I’d just evoked a terrible memory. “It ended because she died of cancer,” he said.
And to that, all I could do was close my eyes. What have I just done to him? I felt sick to my stomach again. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. How could you have known? It’s not as if I told you about Beth. But here’s what I learned from her, Abby. When we first met, we were both twenty. It was magic, and the connection was instant.” He snapped his fingers. “Instant. More than once, I’ve told you that what’s happening between us is rare. Now you know why I’ve been saying that. And why I’ll keep saying it. I’ve only felt this once before in my life, and it was with Beth. She died seven years ago. Until two days ago, it’s never happened to me again. But here you are now, sitting across from me, and I can swear to you that it’s happened again. Even though I never thought it could.”
Chance (The One More Night Series) Page 12
