Chapter Thirty
James glanced at his watch as the lights lowered in preparation for the band’s return to the stage. Andrea had been gone at least ten minutes. Surely the ladies’ room wasn’t as crowded as that? He excused himself from the table and made his way back through the throng, scanning the room as he went. He peeked down the hallway where the restrooms lay, but there wasn’t a line outside the door. Frowning, he pushed down the packed corridor and out the front door.
Andrea stood by the entrance, arms wrapped around herself, staring into the dark.
“Andrea, what are you doing out here? What’s wrong?”
She started at his voice. “I just needed to escape the crowd.”
“I thought you were having a good time.”
“I was,” she said brightly. “But now I’d just like to go back to the hotel if that’s okay.”
“Of course.”
She thrust her hands in her coat pockets, a sure sign she didn’t want him to touch her, so he kept his distance as they walked back toward the car park. Just a few minutes ago she had been relaxing in his arms, enjoying the show, charming his friends. Then Bree came along with her camera, and Andrea panicked. He supposed he couldn’t blame her. After what she’d been through with Logan, exposing herself to scrutiny here was already a challenge.
“We should talk.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay, James. You don’t have to say anything.”
The use of his given name hit him like a punch in the gut. She was pulling back from him, distancing herself. “I don’t think you understand.”
She favored him with a small, chilly smile. “I understand just fine. Don’t worry. I’m a big girl. This was fun.”
“Fun? You think I was just passing the time?”
“Weren’t you? You didn’t want me here in the first place. You thought it would be amusing to seduce the consultant Ian foisted on you.”
He grabbed her arm and jerked her to a stop. “When have I ever given you any reason to believe my intentions were less than honorable? When have I ever treated you with anything but respect?”
She glared at him. “Let go of me.”
He released her arm, and she picked up her pace again, hurrying toward the car. She yanked the door handle, but James reached around her and held the door shut. “Andrea, I’m in love with you.”
Her eyes flew to his face, shocked. His heart rose into his throat. This was not how he’d imagined this happening. He’d wanted to tell her in some romantic way, not in the middle of a car park.
“That’s impossible. You can’t be. We’ve known each other for five days.”
“Possible or not, it’s how I feel.”
“I can’t do this. I can’t . . . I won’t.”
James had no choice but to press forward. “You won’t what? You won’t take a chance? You won’t let yourself feel something?”
“I won’t let you make me forget everything I’ve worked for. I’ve made a life for myself. I’ve sacrificed for it.”
“And exactly what did you have to sacrifice?”
Her eyes flashed. “What are you implying?”
“Not what you’re inferring, I’m sure. Tell me, what are you going to do when you get home tomorrow?”
She frowned. “Pack for my trip to Toronto. It’s been planned for weeks. What are you getting at?”
“It’s easy to sacrifice when there’s nothing to give up, when you live your life in one-week increments so you don’t have to get attached to anyone or anything. That’s not living, Andrea; that’s existing. There’s a difference.”
“You fly all over the UK to check on your restaurants and your business deals. How is that any different?”
“It’s different because I take chances. They may not work out, but at least I don’t live my life by the lowest common denominator. Take a risk, actually feel something for a change.”
Before she could react, he slid his hand behind her back and pulled her to him. In the past, he had kissed her playfully or seductively; now his mouth came down hard and insistent on hers, his body pressing her back against the car. She resisted for a moment and then softened against him, her arms going around his neck, her fingers sliding into his hair. He felt a flash of triumph as she pulled him more tightly against her, returning his kiss with a passion he hadn’t dared to imagine.
“Say cheese,” a saccharine voice called just before the flash of a camera cut through the dark.
Andrea jerked away from James, too stunned by the kiss to understand what had happened. Then she saw Bree holding up her phone, a brilliant, malicious smile on her face.
A wave of panic crashed over Andrea. There could be no denying the situation. She was still pinned between James and his car, every inch of their bodies touching, her hands in his hair. She struggled away from him, sparks bursting in her vision. She was only a breath away from passing out.
James swore. “I’ve thought you were a lot of things, Bree, but spiteful was never one of them.”
Bree smirked. “I’m not the one snogging his newest conquest in public. Good night, Jamie. Good night, Andrea. Enjoy your evening.”
Her poisonous tone only increased Andrea’s dread. “Let’s go before we draw any more attention to ourselves,” she pleaded in a low voice.
He opened the door for her, and she slid in, happy to be enveloped in the dark, away from Bree’s malicious gaze. The woman couldn’t possibly do anything with the photo, could she? Surely she was just trying to get a rise out of them.
She pressed her fingertips to her eyes. Somehow, Bree seemed like the least of her worries. James wasn’t playing fair. He knew the effect he had on her, and he was using it against her. She had been here before, though. She had refused to recognize lust masquerading as love when it had come to Logan. She had been seduced into a relationship that was completely wrong, and she’d paid the price. Never mind the fact James had gone to great lengths to be sure they wouldn’t be tempted into doing something they’d regret. It was not his motivations that worried her. It was hers. She could not deny the powerful attraction between them, how she lost the will to resist any time he touched her. But that was not love. Maybe she couldn’t feel love.
What could she offer him anyway? He might think she was enough right now, but she saw the way he loved his niece and nephew, how he doted on his aunt. He knew how to fill a home with warmth. He deserved a woman who could give him children of his own, who wouldn’t always regret how her past decisions had robbed them of their own family.
“Andrea.” James reached for her hand, but she shook it off. This had to end now. If she let him touch her again, her resolve would weaken. She would let him convince her that what she offered was enough, and then she would spend the rest of her life making him unhappy. That was something she couldn’t do to him.
The silence during the short ride back to the hotel lay thick with tension. After they parked, he opened her car door as he always did, but he didn’t try to touch her. They walked side by side up the front steps and across the foyer, but they may as well have been miles apart.
When they stopped in front of her room, James reached for her.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
He dropped his hands. “If you need time, I’ll give you time. Go home, take your trip to Toronto. I’ll clear my schedule. You can show me around New York.”
“We both know that can’t happen, James.” She recoiled at the look of anguish in his eyes, but she forced herself to kiss him softly on the cheek. “Good-bye.”
Then she put the key in the door and stepped inside, trying not to see the look of hurt on his face as she shut the door.
James stared at the brass number plate on Andrea’s door, unable to draw a breath beneath the iron band that constricted his chest. He could barely pull his thoughts together enough to turn away and return to his own room down the hall.
He had lost her.
He only had himself to blame. She wasn’t ready to be truthful about her feelings for him, let alone accept that he loved her. He’d thought their mutual attraction was the way to break through her defenses, to get her to open up to the possibility of more, but maybe it went no further than that.
He let himself into his room with numb efficiency. How could he have messed this up so badly? Just today they had been planning his trip to New York, thinking about the future, and now she wouldn’t speak to him.
He pulled off his jacket and tossed it on the bed. Then he sank down onto the edge and put his head in his hands.
I don’t understand, Lord. Was I wrong about her? Was I wrong about this?
He’d loved Cassandra, but his trust had been misplaced. She had never been content to just be with him and enjoy his company. It had all been about leveraging their combined celebrity to further their careers. Their relationship had just been a sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors. He’d even begun to doubt his judgment, his own heart, when it came to women.
Yet everything in him told him Andrea and the feelings she stirred were real.
James exhaled heavily and fell back on the bed. Maybe once she slept on the matter, he could get through to her. He couldn’t let her go with things standing like this between them.
Andrea marked the passing of the night by the change of the glowing red numbers on the hotel room’s clock. Every time she shut her eyes, she could see the shock and hurt on James’s face as she’d closed the door. He had meant it when he said he was in love with her.
He hadn’t actually said, “I love you.” That was different, wasn’t it? She would leave, and he would move on, and it would be like she had never come.
That was splitting hairs, and she knew it.
She lifted the receiver of the hotel phone, then glanced at the clock. 4:00 a.m. She put it back in the cradle. She wouldn’t wake him yet.
When 6:00 a.m. rolled by without a single minute of sleep, she wandered into the bathroom and splashed water on her face. When she came back out, she picked up her cell phone from habit and saw she had an e-mail waiting. What could be coming through at this time on a Saturday morning?
Andrea opened her e-mail app. It was an Internet alert. What scandal had one of her clients gotten himself involved in this time? Rich men seemed to spend as much time in the tabloids and gossip columns for their escapades with women, controlled substances, and law enforcement as for their business deals. She tapped the screen to follow the link to a popular UK gossip site.
The browser opened to a photo, and the air whooshed out of her lungs. Front and center was a photo of her and James kissing in the parking lot, their arms wrapped around each other. She sank to the bed on unsteady legs. It had been a private moment never meant for public consumption, and now it was posted on the Internet for all to see.
Her face burned with humiliation and fury as she read the headline: “Who Is Jamie’s Tasty New Dish?” She couldn’t even read the short blurb below it—her hands trembled too hard to steady the screen.
She wrapped her arms around herself, swallowing bile. This can’t be happening. Thousands of people will see that. Hundreds of thousands. My sister. My colleagues. Michael.
She dropped the phone and fled to the bathroom in time to empty her stomach into the toilet. She wiped her mouth with the back of a shaky hand and gripped the porcelain until the nausea subsided and she was sure she could stand under her own power.
She brushed her teeth numbly and forced herself to push down the part of her that wanted to curl into a ball and sob. Damage control. She needed to get in front of this. Her name wasn’t listed. She could call Michael first, and things would be fine.
It was just after 1:00 a.m. in New York, but she would be unlikely to catch Michael at home on a Friday night. She dialed his cell number instead. He picked up on the fifth ring.
“Andrea?” Noise in the background suggested a club or a bar.
“Yeah, Michael, it’s me. I didn’t mean to interrupt your evening.”
He laughed. “I’d ask you how yours was, but I have a feeling I already know.”
Her cheeks burned with shame, but she managed to keep her voice steady. “You saw the picture, I take it.”
“I saw it. Did you get it?”
“What?”
“Did you get the contract?”
This wasn’t how Andrea had expected the conversation to go. “Uh, not yet.”
“Get on it, then. Hate for all your hard work to be for nothing.”
“So . . . you’re not upset?”
“I was a bit surprised after what happened in London, but I guess I should have known you’d come through in the end.”
A new wave of nausea roiled in her stomach. He couldn’t be saying what it sounded like. “I don’t sleep with clients.”
“Of course not,” Michael said. “At least not the unattractive ones.”
The room spun around her, and the whoosh of blood in her ears made her miss Michael’s next comment. “What did you say?”
“I said, your new business cards are already on order, and the nameplate is screwed on the office door. I’d suggest you do whatever it takes to close this deal.”
He had said the same thing many times before, but now it took on a new meaning. She wanted to vomit again. “Right,” she heard herself say from a distance. “I’ll see you soon.”
She hung up and stared dully at the phone. She had worked her tail off, hustling accounts, staying on the road twice as much as everyone else, just to prove she was more than a pretty face. All the times Michael had assured her they valued her capabilities and told her to ignore the office gossip, he had been making the same vile assumptions about her as his employees were.
She should be happy. She had feared for her job should this—whatever it was—come to light, but Michael didn’t seem to care. She should be happy. All she had to do was call James and ask him to sign the contract. She had no doubt that he would, and VP of Sales would be hers.
She wandered into the bathroom, enveloped in a bubble of shock. Finally she stripped off her pajamas and climbed into the shower. The hot water beat down on her, soaking her hair, running down her face in rivulets and mingling with her tears.
What was she going to do? She leaned her forehead against the tile wall, feeling the life she had built for herself crumbling around her.
The room phone was ringing when she finally climbed out of the shower. She wrapped a towel around herself and rushed to pick it up.
“Andrea.”
Her heart leaped into her throat at the sound of James’s voice. “We don’t have anything to talk about. I’m sorry.” She hung up on him.
In a daze, Andrea dried her hair, put on her makeup, and dressed in her gray suit. She was just beginning to pack when someone rapped at her door.
She peeked through the peephole and saw James standing there, again dressed in jeans and his leather jacket, his hair wet from the shower. She leaned her forehead against the door and sucked in a deep breath for strength.
“Open up, Andrea. I know you’re still there.”
She blanked her expression and yanked open the door. “What do you want?”
“I’m sorry. I should’ve thought of how you’d feel. I didn’t know this was going to happen.”
So he’d seen the picture too. She sighed and leaned against the doorframe. “It’s not your fault. I just . . . I can’t do this. I’ve been here before, and I thought I could handle it, but I won’t ever be able to get used to this kind of life. I’m sorry.”
“So that’s it? It’s over? You’re giving up on us?”
“James,” she said softly, “there never was an us.”
She shut the door and leaned against it, biting her lip to keep the tears from coming again. It was for the best. Even if she were inspired to try to make whatever this was work, she couldn’t live wondering when her face would show up on a website or in the newspaper. And she wouldn’t ask him to change his life for her.
Andrea folded her clothes into her suitcase with shaking hands. She’d just managed to convince herself she could simulate some level of calm when the room phone rang.
She stared at the red light flashing with each ring, her heart in her throat, until the phone went silent again. She couldn’t move for a full minute. Then her cell phone trilled.
She turned away, not wanting to see James’s name on the screen. A beep indicated the call had been sent to voice mail. It didn’t ring again.
Pushing down unreasonable disappointment, she lifted the room phone’s receiver and dialed the front desk. “Could you please call me a taxi to the airport?”
“Mr. MacDonald already requested a car to take you,” the clerk said. “Shall I notify you when it arrives?”
“Please do,” she managed to choke out. She hung up the phone. Andrea made one last sweep of the hotel room, checking for forgotten items. When the bellman rapped lightly on the door, she was perched on the edge of the bed, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
The young man’s name tag said Liam. She started at it blankly until he held out a large white envelope. “This was outside your door.”
She knew what was inside before she slid open the flap and withdrew the contract. Her breath caught at the sight of James’s neat signature on the last page, above Ian’s. Of course, he wouldn’t let her leave without wrapping up this last detail. Too bad she didn’t know if she’d gotten the contract because of her professional expertise or his personal feelings for her.
And Michael would always think she’d closed the deal because she slept with James.
She tore the contract in half before she knew she was going to do it, then tore those pieces in half again for good measure. She shoved the ripped papers back into their envelope, ignoring Liam’s puzzled look, and strode down the hallway with a purposefulness she didn’t feel.
Liam took her single bag and followed her down the hall to the sweeping staircase. They’d barely set foot on the bottom step when a dark-haired clerk skirted the reception desk and approached. “Ms. Sullivan!”
Andrea faltered, cursing the overly efficient staff member for remembering her. She couldn’t very well ignore her, though. She paused and waited until the woman joined her and held out an envelope, her scarlet-painted nails a stark contrast to the creamy hotel stationery. “For you, Ms. Sullivan.”
Andrea didn’t need to look at her name scrawled across the front to know it was from James. She shoved it in her purse and handed the contract envelope to the clerk. “Could you leave this for Mr. MacDonald, please?”
The woman took it. “Of course. Thank you for staying with us.”
Andrea nodded numbly and walked through the front doors where a sedan waited for her at the bottom of the steps.
She barely saw her surroundings through the car’s dark-tinted windows, too focused on keeping her breath moving steadily in and out of her lungs. This was just another business trip. She wouldn’t think about what it might have become.
Only years of travel helped her maintain her composure through the security lines and the long wait at the gate. She managed an impressive semblance of control while she marched up the stairs into the plane, shoved her bag into the overhead compartment, and flopped into her window seat.
Then she reached into her pocket to switch off her phone for takeoff and touched something warm and buttery soft instead.
The scarf. She rubbed the patterned lamb’s wool between her fingers and draped it around her neck. Then she leaned her head against the window and poured out her pain in great gulping sobs.