Victoria Dahl - The Guy Next Door

“I take it the tea worked?”

“Well, I’m feeling darn good right now.” The sound of a loud smack echoed through the phone, followed by Cairo’s eardrum-piercing squeal. A male voice rumbled in the background.

“They’re still there?” Beth put a hand over her eyes in chagrin.

“Oh, I made sure they won’t be moving for a while. Seriously though, the tea had a subtle effect, but I do think it worked. I’m gonna try it again tomorrow when I’m by myself. I think if I don’t have so much visual stimulation it’ll be easier to gauge whether I really feel different.”

“Oh, right. Good idea. Thanks, Cairo.”

“Jeez, it was my pleasure. Hey, Harrison says hi.”

As Beth hung up the phone she spotted the tea shop owner, a plump older woman wearing Birkenstocks with her black knit dress. The woman probably didn’t carry samples with her, but Beth briefly considered asking, just in case.

Then again, she didn’t really need any help. She certainly hadn’t needed any last night. She’d come faster than she’d thought possible. Just the memory was enough to make her pulse quicken and her skin sparkle with sensitivity. That kind of chemistry shouldn’t be ignored, even if they weren’t right for each other in any other way. It was too rare a phenomenon, at least for Beth.

Screw it. She needed this whether she was ready or not.

But… She couldn’t approach him in front of his sister and Mr. Kendall, not if they wanted to keep this on the down-low. Beth slipped out the side door of the room and found herself in a dead-end hallway that led to two other banquet rooms. Excitement skittered through her body as she pulled up his number and called. This was who she’d always felt she should be. A sexy, daring woman.

“Hello?” he answered in a low voice.

“Hi. It’s Beth.”

There was a pause. She pictured him moving away from the group. “Are you still here?” he finally asked.

“I’m just outside the room, actually.” She drew a deep, quiet breath, and then she took the plunge. “I’ve been thinking about our conversation yesterday. Maybe we could…” While she tried to think of the exact right words, he stayed silent. She tried again. “I know you’re busy, but do you have a moment to talk?”

The line grew muffled for a moment before he cleared his throat. “Can you give me one minute? Maybe two?”

“Of course. I’ll meet you in the hallway next to the side door.”

Beth spotted a big mirror at the end of the corridor and walked over to check her makeup. The dress slid against her hips. The ties of the garter belt stretched across her thighs. Her nipples tightened beneath the warm silk of the bra. And when she met her own eyes in the mirror, she saw a sexual goddess on the prowl. Wow. Where had she come from?

Who the heck cared? She ran her hands through her hair and watched a slow smile stretch across her face. It didn’t matter where the sexual goddess had come from. It only mattered that she was finally here.

Thank God.

A door opened. The sound of the party swelled into the hall. Beth turned and walked toward him.

There was no missing the way his eyes devoured her body. He liked her hips. No question about it. She suppressed her grin in favor of a sexy smirk.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said.

“Thanks for sneaking away.” She stopped too close to him then leaned her back casually against the wall, as if she hadn’t invaded his personal space.

“So, you changed your mind about being seen with a guy like me?”

She glanced around. “Obviously not. I’m still worried you’ll ruin my rep.” She tempered her joke with a smile.

“I probably will. And you’d return the favor if anyone saw us.”

“We’d better be careful. I don’t want to damage your wholesome-brewery image.”

His smile faded. His pale eyes narrowed with intensity as he shifted, putting his hand to the wall next to her shoulder. “So what are we doing here?”

She took a deep breath and tilted her face toward his ear. “No one needs to know,” she murmured.

His pupils dilated as she felt a flush rise up her cheeks. She’d used his own words to lay it out as simply as she could. Let’s have a secret affair. No one will ever know.

“I’m in the middle of an important negotiation,” he said, his voice taking on a husky edge. “And my sister is here.”

“I know.” She left it at that. She would’ve held her breath if she hadn’t been so eager to draw in his scent. Afraid that panting aloud would be less than sexy, she inhaled slowly.

“Yet here I am,” he murmured. “With you.”

He eased a tiny bit closer. If he lowered his head, they’d kiss. Her pulse beat so hard she could hear it in her ears.

“This is not a good idea,” he said softly. “You said it yourself. So why are you willing to do this?”

Honesty, she told herself. A woman’s desires were nothing to be ashamed of. She raised her gaze from his mouth to his eyes. “Because I want you,” she admitted. “A lot. It’s that simple.”

One side of his mouth curved slowly up in a wicked smile. “I get the feeling you’re not a fan of complication.”

A montage of encounters played through her brain, as if her life were flashing before her eyes. The uncomfortable blind dates. The brief, failed relationships. The men she’d tried to love, and the men she’d wanted. Her constant, simmering sexual anxiety. “You’re right,” she murmured. “I’m a simple girl.”

A door opened farther down the hall. He glanced up, a brief moment of worry chasing over his face before he looked back to her. “Simple? I don’t believe that for a second.” His eyes lowered to her mouth.

“And I owe you,” she whispered. “Don’t I?”

“You don’t owe me anything. It was my pleasure.”

She licked her lips and watched his pupils tighten as she lifted her chin. He leaned closer, closer…

When the door behind them clicked open, he stepped smoothly away from her, shoving his hands into his pockets. By the time they realized it was only a banquet server, the moment was lost. Or she thought it was.

His jaw had gone tense, after all, as if he were angry. But apparently the determination in his eyes had nothing to do with saying no and everything to do with pursuing this madness. “Can you meet me in half an hour?”

“Where?” she whispered.

He met her gaze, his eyes darkening with emotion. “I’ll get a room.”

Beth blinked once. Shock hit her in the chest, but she tried not to let it show. As far as Jamie Donovan knew, she was good at this. Experienced. After all, she’d encouraged him to feel her up in a bar.

She didn’t have to fake her arousal, at least. That was charging hard through her veins, heating her skin. “Call me,” she heard herself say. “I’ll meet you there.” And then she headed straight downstairs to get a drink.

SHE WAS REALLY DOING this. Beth couldn’t believe it. She stared at the gold mirror of the elevator doors, watching the people in the lobby move behind her in wavy streaks. Could anybody tell what she was doing? She felt as if she was wearing a neon sign on her head advertising her unseemly intentions.

Her hand still tingled where the phone had vibrated against her palm when he’d called. “Room 421,” he’d said. That was it. No niceties or polite chitchat. Beth had said okay and hung up before hurrying toward the lobby. Unfortunately the elevator didn’t seem to be in as much of a hurry as she was.

When the Up arrow finally lit with a faint chime, she slumped in relief. Then she heard Roland Kendall call her name.

Her mouth made a comical O of alarm in the elevator door before it slid open. For a brief moment, she considered sprinting into the elevator and slamming her hand against the Door Close button, but that could possibly be seen as suspicious. So she pasted a numb smile onto her face and turned.

“Hello, Mr. Kendall. How’s Monica?” She spoke way too fast, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“She’s wonderful. I’m still waiting for her to get married and give me some grandchildren, but she can’t seem to settle down.”

Beth couldn’t imagine Monica as a mom. She’d always struck Beth as self-absorbed and manipulative, though she was also smart as hell. Still, if they hadn’t been suitemates in college, Beth would never have exchanged two words with the woman.

“So, Beth, are you still running that unfortunate store? You’re one of the savviest young ladies I’ve ever met and it’s a shame that you’re involved with that place.”

Oh, Jesus. Every time she’d seen Roland Kendall in the past few years he brought this up. She wished she could simply excuse herself, but what could she say? Sorry, I need to get upstairs to have sex with a man I hardly know. Nothing to do with my unfortunate store, though.

Kendall raised an eyebrow, waiting for an answer. “Well?” His tone suggested that she was answerable to him in some way.

“Um. Still there, yes. Say, I heard you were talking to Donovan Brothers about beer for High West.”

“Pardon me? How’d you hear that?”

Oops. In her panic to change the subject, she’d latched on to the one thing she didn’t want to talk about. “Oh, you know. Small-town talk. But I hear the Donovan family is great.” Don’t say any more, her brain frantically ordered. Zip it.

Kendall grunted. “I’m not convinced. I like their product, but the brewery’s been around for almost twenty-five years. I need a name that’s a little more fresh, I think.”

Beth looked at the negativity written so clearly on his face. Roland Kendall was a successful businessman, but he worked from the gut and had rigid ideas about his businesses. Clearly, he wasn’t interested in giving Jamie Donovan a chance.

It shouldn’t matter to her. She shouldn’t get involved. But Jamie was smart and good-hearted and she didn’t like to see him so easily dismissed. “I’ve met Jamie Donovan,” she blurted out, even as she tried to stop herself.

“Oh?”

“I was impressed. You should at least give them a chance. It’s a company run by young people, right? How stale could it be?”

“Well—”

“And it’s a beloved local company. That could be some great publicity.”

“Hmm.” He crossed his arms and glared down at the floor.

“Think about it, at least.”

“I will.”

“Well,” she prompted. “It was nice seeing you.”

Thankfully, he’d already lost interest in her, and he simply waved a hand and walked away. Beth counted to ten then punched the button with her finger. The doors slid open and she jumped inside.

She put Roland Kendall from her mind, but that left room for the anxiety she’d been feeling before. Oh, God, her brain repeated as the elevator rose. Oh, God, I’m really doing this. Was he waiting? Was he wondering where she was?

When she stepped out, her heels clicked too loudly against the tile floor outside the elevator before they were muffled by the carpet of the hallway. A sign pointed her in the direction of room 421, and Beth forced herself not to slow as she turned down the hallway and headed closer to Jamie Donovan.

What would happen when she got there? Would they just…start? My God, what if he was already undressed?

Her toe scraped the carpet and Beth stumbled to a halt before forcing herself to walk on. No, he was not going to be standing there in black socks and what the Lord gave him. And if he was, she’d simply turn around and run, no question.

But she had to assume everything would go well. If she didn’t go into this with a positive attitude, the night would turn out badly. She’d think too much. She’d worry that he wasn’t enjoying himself. Then she’d worry that she wasn’t enjoying herself, because she so desperately wanted to be the kind of woman who threw herself into sex and devoured every second of it. She wanted to be good in bed, for her own sake. She wanted to love it as much as she loved the idea of it.

And Jamie had certainly proved that they worked well together. She had every reason to think happy thoughts.

Beth forced herself to take a deep breath as she approached the next door: 421. The numbers were smaller than she’d expected. Innocuous. They didn’t loom or glow. They didn’t pulse with red menace.

“Okay,” she whispered. Before she could lose her nerve, Beth straightened her dress, smoothed down her hair and knocked.