ABOUT LAST NIGHT

by Stephanie Bond

  He stared at his friend’s bride-to-be and realized this was about the most awkward predicament he’d ever landed himself in. And, he thought wryly, par for the course of his life lately—in a hotel room with a gorgeous half-naked woman, and she was totally, utterly and indubitably off limits. Derek’s dry laugh was meant to express his frustration at the accumulation of injustices of the past few months, but the woman was clearly offended.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He pursed his mouth. “Well, now … Janine … this is a bit awkward.” Picking up her coat, he slowly walked toward her, using the gesture of courtesy to help shield his appallingly determined arousal. “I’m Derek Stillman. Your best man.”

  *

  3

  « ^ »

  Janine froze, although her insides heaved upward. “My b-best man?” Oh, please dear God, take me now—no wait, let me change clothes first. The stranger’s smug expression mortified her, but at least he’d carried her coat to her, which she snatched and held over herself.

  “Technically speaking,” he said, curling his fingers around one wrist and holding his hands low over his crotch, “I guess I’m Steve’s best man.”

  She snapped her gaze back to his and squinted at him in the low lighting. She was certain she’d never met him before, although granted, people looked different with their clothes off. He was a big man—even in her preposterous shoes, he towered over her. His dark hair was cropped close at the sides and back, with the top just long enough to stick up after sleeping. His face was broad and pleasing, with a strong jaw, distinct cheekbones and an athletically altered nose which now appeared red and irritated. On his mouth was the telltale stain of her pink lipstick and she cringed, recalling the way she’d kissed the perfect stranger. But on the list of kissing transgressions, surely kissing your fiancé‘s best man was worse than kissing a perfect stranger… Her brain was too fuzzy to work it all out—she’d have to ask Marie.

  But one realization did strike her with jarring clarity: she hadn’t even realized she wasn’t kissing Steve.

  With that sobering thought, Janine refused to look lower than Derek’s wide shoulders, although she vividly remembered the mat of hair she’d run her fingers through while straddling the man. She wasn’t even sure Steve had hair on his chest. A wave of dizziness hit her and she realized the bustier was probably limiting her oxygen supply. “You…” Are the most physically appealing man I’ve ever laid eyes on. “You must be Jack’s brother.”

  The man’s mouth tightened almost imperceptibly. “Yes.”

  “You went to college with Steve?”

  He nodded, and she noticed his eyes were the deepest brown—quite intense with his dark coloring.

  “Um…” She glanced around, spying Steve’s suitcase sitting next to a writing desk. “Where is Steve?”

  “At his bachelor party.”

  Not a man of many words, this one. “Why aren’t you with him?”

  “I wasn’t—that is, I’m not—feeling well.”

  She peered closer, taking in his drooping eyes. “Do you have a cold?”

  “I suppose.”

  “What are you taking for it?”

  His eyebrows knitted in question.

  “I’m a physician’s assistant.”

  He looked thoroughly unimpressed. “I’m taking some stuff I picked up in the gift shop.”

  He reached for a handkerchief on the nightstand next to the bed, then sneezed twice, each time causing his flat abdominal muscles to contract above the waistband of his pale blue boxers—strictly a medical observation of his general fitness level, she noted, which was important when prescribing treatment. “Bless you. You really should get some rest.”

  He turned watery eyes her way and smirked. “I was trying.”

  Her cheeks flamed. As if the mix-up were her mistake, as if she’d planned this fiasco. Flustered, she flung out her arm to indicate the dark walls of the room, but somehow ended up pointing to the bed where the covers lay as contorted as her thoughts. “What … when…” She jerked back her offending hand. “Why did Steve give you his room?”

  “My flight was late, and I didn’t have a room when I arrived. Steve said he wouldn’t need—” He broke off and averted his gaze.

  “Wouldn’t need what, Mr. Stillman?”

  Glancing back, he massaged the bridge of his nose and winced. “Don’t you think we can drop the formalities since we’re both in our underwear?”

  At his sarcastic tone, anger drove out any vestiges of fear that lingered, since she didn’t appear to be in imminent danger of anything other than dying of humiliation. Still, she forced herself to speak in a calm tone to Steve’s best man. “Okay. Derek, Steve wouldn’t need what?”

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then frowned at the streak of pink lipstick. Janine squirmed when he looked to her. “He said he wouldn’t be needing the room—I suppose the guys were going to party all night.” His gaze fell to her shoes and one corner of his mouth drew back. “I take it he wasn’t expecting you.”

  She summoned the dredges of her pride and lifted her chin. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

  “Trust me, it was,” he said, then retrieved a pair of wrinkled jeans from the arm of a chair.

  Distracted by the fluid motion of his body performing the simple act of getting dressed, she almost lost her own opportunity to don her coat in relative privacy. But she quickly recovered, and by the time he’d pulled on the jeans and a gray University of Kentucky sweatshirt, she had buttoned the coat up to her chin and knotted the belt twice. With his back to her, he used the palm of his hand and pushed his chin first right, then left, to the tune of two loud pops of his neck bones.

  “You really shouldn’t do that,” she admonished. “It could … be … danger…ous…” She trailed off when he looked up, his lips pursed, his expression perturbed. Janine swallowed. “M-maybe I should call Steve on his cell phone.”

  He nodded curtly and walked past her into the bathroom without making eye contact. A few seconds later the muffled sound of the sink water splashing on floated out from behind the closed door.

  With her heart in her throat, Janine trotted to the nightstand, then followed the phone cord to the handset that lay under the bed. Now she knew why the line had been busy, and with shock realized that smoky voice on the other end when she’d called from home had been none other than Derek Stillman’s. She bit the inside of her cheek. What a fine mess she’d gotten herself into. Steve’s surprise was ruined, and she’d never live down this scene. She sat on the floor, her finger hovering over the buttons. Maybe she should just call a cab and vamoose, after swearing Derek to secrecy. Assuming she could trust the man. He seemed pretty surly for someone who was supposed to be a friend of Steve’s.

  Her fingers shook as she punched in the number of her sister’s boyfriend’s place, but no one answered and Greg didn’t believe in answering machines. She called twice more, allowing the phone to ring several times, to no avail. Next she called her and her sister’s apartment, but Marie was either in transit, or still at Greg’s—probably indulging in something wonderfully wicked. When the machine picked up, she left a quick message for Marie to stay put until she called again.

  Janine hung up and glanced over her shoulder at the closed bathroom door, still tingling over the accidental encounter with the unsettling stranger. Talk about crawling into the wrong bed—Goldilocks had officially been unseated. To top it off, Derek had shrugged off the sexualized situation with a laugh, while she’d been shaken to her spleen, not just by her unbelievable gaff, but by her base response to the man’s physique.

  To curtail her line of thinking, she punched in Steve’s cell-phone number, willing words to her mouth to explain the awkward situation in the best possible light. Steve might get a big kick out of the mix-up and return to the hotel right away. She brightened, thinking the night had a chance to be salvaged, if they could shuffle the best man to another room, that is. After Steve’s phon
e rang three times, he answered over a buzz of background noise. “Hello?”

  “Hi, this is Janine,” she said, fighting a twinge of jealousy that Steve was probably out ogling naked women. The fact that she’d been ogling his friend didn’t count because she hadn’t gone looking for it, and besides, Derek hadn’t been naked. Completely. And she hadn’t tipped him.

  The background noise cleared suddenly, then he said, “Janine, look over your shoulder.”

  Perplexed, she did, and scowled when she saw Derek standing in the room, talking into a cellular phone.

  “Steve left his phone in the bathroom,” he said, his voice sounding in her ear. His mouth was pulled back in a sham of a smile.

  She replaced the handset with a bang. “That’s not funny.”

  He pressed a button on the phone and pushed down the antenna. “No. Not as funny as the fact that you can’t recognize the voice of the man you’re going to marry.”

  Annoyed, she flailed to her feet and was rewarded with a head rush, plus a stabbing pain in her heel that indicated she had burst the blister there. “You sound like him,” she insisted. Only to tell the truth, Derek’s voice was deeper and his speech slower, more relaxed.

  Derek’s jaw tightened, but when he spoke, his voice was casual. “I’m nothing like Steve.”

  An odd thing to say for someone who was supposed to be Steve’s friend, but he was right. Steve was gregarious, carefree. Derek carried himself as if the weight of the world yoked those wide shoulders, and she wondered fleetingly if he had a wife, children, pets.

  He held up a pager. “This was in the bathroom too.”

  Her shoulders fell in defeat. It was obvious Steve hadn’t wanted to be bothered tonight. “Do you know where he went?”

  He shook his head and shoved his feet into tan-colored loafers. “Sorry.”

  She frowned as he strapped on his watch, then stuffed a wallet into the pocket of his jeans. When he picked up a small suitcase and a computer bag, then headed toward the door, her stomach lurched. “Where are you going?”

  He nodded toward the door with nonchalance. “To get another room.”

  Humiliated or not, she couldn’t help feeling panicky at the thought of Derek leaving. What must he think of her? What would he tell Steve? “But I … I thought you said the hotel was out of rooms.”

  Derek shrugged. “There has to be an empty bed somewhere in this place, and no offense, but I feel lousy and I need to get some sleep.”

  “I’ll leave,” she said quickly, walking toward the door. “I’ll call my ride from the lobby.”

  He held out a hand like a stop sign and laughed without mirth. “Oh, no. Steve would never forgive me. The place is all yours.” He put his hand on the doorknob and turned it.

  “But—”

  “It was, um—” he swept her figure head to toe, and for the first time, genuine amusement lit his dark eyes “—interesting meeting you.” Then he opened the door and strode out.

  *

  4

  « ^ »

  Derek marveled at the turn of events as he stumbled toward the elevator. Whew! Steve had one kinky nut of a fiancée on his hands, that much was certain. His buddy’s and his brother’s escapades with women never ceased to amaze him, and every time he felt the least bit jealous of their ability to attract the most outrageous litter of sex kittens, he reminded himself that their lives were roller coasters and his life was a…a…

  He frowned and rubbed his temple to focus his train of thought. Searching for a metaphor to symbolize his solid, responsible position in the amusement park of life, the best he could come up with was … a chaperone. God, he felt older than his thirty-five years.

  Thankfully the elevator arrived, rousing him from his unsettling contemplation. On the ride to the lobby he snorted at the memory of Janine Murphy straddling him, thinking he was Steve. Tomorrow when he felt better, he was sure he’d have a belly laugh over the case of mistaken identity, but for now he knew he desperately needed sleep. He glanced at his watch and groaned. Almost two in the morning, which meant he’d been awake for nearly forty-eight hours, thanks to Donald Phillips. And Steve Larsen. Oh, and Pinky Tuscadero.

  Back in Lexington, Donald Phillips was one of the largest producers of honey in the Southeast. Dissatisfied with his product sales, Phillips had decided to shop around for a new advertising firm, and Stillman & Sons, which at the moment consisted solely of himself, was being given the opportunity to swipe the account from a larger competitor. But Derek was having one little problem: inventing a campaign designed to entice consumers to buy more honey. Honey, for crissake—a sweet condiment best known in the South for spreading on toast and biscuits; consequently, market growth was not projected to be explosive.

  Computers and wireless phones and home stereo systems were flying off the shelves. Branded sportswear and gourmet appliances and exercise-equipment sales were booming. Large vehicles and exotic vacations and swimming pools were experiencing a huge resurgence. With all the sexy, progressive products in the world, he was chasing a darned honey account to save the family business.

  When the elevator dinged and the door slid open, his exhaustion nearly immobilized him, but he managed to drag himself and his bags across the red thick-piled carpet to the empty reservations counter. Just his luck that everyone was taking a break. He looked for a bell to ring, but he guessed the hotel was a little too classy for ringers. Live flower arrangements the size of a person graced the enormous mahogany counter shiny enough to reflect his image—in his opinion, just another overdone element of the posh resort whose decorating philosophy seemed to be “Size does matter.”

  He wondered briefly how much green the bride and groom were dropping for the wedding. Between the rehearsal dinner, the ceremony and the reception, all of which were supposed to take place at the resort, he suspected his buddy would have to perform an extra face-lift or two to foot the bill. Derek scoffed, shaking his head. Marriage—bah. He gave his pal and the Murphy woman six months, tops.

  “Hello?” he called, trying to tamp down his impatience. He was not above stretching out behind the counter to sleep if he had to.

  A door opened on the other side of the elevators, and his mood plunged when Pinky herself emerged from the stairwell, pale and limping, hair everywhere, coat flapping. “Oh, brother,” he muttered. The last thing he needed was to spend one more minute with the leggy siren.

  Stepping up next to him, she said, “Derek, I insist you take the room.”

  One look into her blue eyes gave him a glimpse of Steve’s future—the woman would be a handful, even for Steve. He might have felt sorry for his pal, but, he reasoned perversely, the man who had led such a charmed life to date probably deserved a little grief. “Janine, go back upstairs.”

  She frowned and planted her hands on her hips. “I thought people from the country were supposed to be polite.”

  His ire climbed, then he drawled, “I get testy when I run out of hayseed to chaw on.”

  Her eyebrows came together and she crossed her arms, sending a waft of her citrusy perfume to tickle his nose. “What’s that smart remark supposed to mean?”

  He did not need this, this, this … aggravation, not when his body hummed of fatigue, stress and lingering lust. Derek felt his patience snap like a dry twig. He leaned forward and spoke quietly through clenched teeth. “I’ll tell you what it means, Pinky. It means I left my firm in the middle of a very important project to fly here and stand in for my runaway brother in a ceremony I don’t even believe in, only to catch some kind of plague and have my reservation canceled and have my sleep interrupted by a stranger crawling into my bed!”

  She blinked. “Do you have blood pressure problems?”

  Heat suffused his face and he felt precariously close to blowing a gasket. She and Steve deserved each other, and they’d never miss him. So after one calming breath, he saluted her. “I’m going home. Please give Steve my regrets.” He turned, then added over his shoulder, “And my condol
ences.”

  He picked up his suitcase, then headed toward the main lobby, not a bit surprised to hear her trotting two steps behind him. “Wait, you can’t go!”

  “Watch me,” he growled.

  “I’m sorry—you can have the room.”

  Derek lengthened his stride.

  “After all, you made the trip down here…”

  As he approached the lobby area, a buzz of voices rose above the saxophone Muzak, reminding him of bees. But then again, he did have honey on the brain. Good grief, he needed sleep.

  “And you’re not feeling well,” she rattled on. “Blah, blah, blah…”

  The buzz increased as he rounded the corner. He stopped abruptly at the sight before him, and she slammed into him from behind, jarring his aching head.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I didn’t realize—”

  “Can you be quiet?” He pulled her by the arm to stand alongside him, too distracted by the scene to worry about her tender feelings.

  The step-down lobby of the hotel was swarming with people, some in their pajamas sitting in chairs or lying on couches, others in lab coats, tending to the guests, others in security uniforms, hovering.

  “What the hell?” he murmured.

  “They’re medics,” Janine said. “Something’s wrong.” She walked over and knelt in front of a young man in a hotel uniform sitting in a chair looking feverish and limp. While her lips moved, Janine put a hand on the youth’s forehead and took his pulse. The coat she wore fell open below the last button, revealing splendid legs encased in those black hose, and bringing to mind other vivid details about what lay hidden beneath the coat. She tossed the mane of blond hair he’d come to suspect was real over one shoulder, evoking memories of its silkiness sliding over his chest and face.