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Mercy groaned and rubbed her eyes, but the exhaustion didn’t ebb. A tiny lapse in memory on her part, and now it was barely nine in the morning, and she was sitting on a hotel couch, trying to wake up. How had she forgotten Liz was a morning person?
“I already showered, so you can get in there right away.” Liz chattered away, as if it were normal for someone to be chipper and alert before the sun was awake. She didn’t even have the decency to have a hangover. “Check in at the other place isn’t until noon, but I thought we’d get breakfast first, and I wanted to give you time to change your flight if you need to.”
At least Liz sounded happier than last night. It had Mercy a little worried. There should be more grief and mourning. That would come later, she supposed. “Wait. Flight changes?”
Liz poked her head back into the living room. “We’re going on a honeymoon, remember? Ten days of debauchery?” Liz’s chin quivered for the briefest of seconds, and then a plastic smile slid back in.
“You were serious about that?” Mercy extracted herself from the blankets twisted around her. As consciousness swept in, so did the night before. Her ruined sweater. The conversation. After. Holy shit, what came after. It was only a one-time thing, she had no desire for more, but damn, that was one hell of a memory.
“Come on, sleepyhead. Clock’s ticking.” Liz handed her a cup of coffee.
It came from the in-room maker, and it was basic, but Mercy was pretty sure it was still an elixir of the gods. She took a couple sips, not caring it scalded her tongue, then gathered her clothes and headed into the bathroom. She emerged sometime later, feeling much more prepared to face the day. She ran a list of to-dos through her head. What she could accomplish from her phone, on the drive to the hotel, and what would wait until after. She grabbed the phone next to the couch and called the front desk, to let them know she was checking out early.
They read back the last four numbers of the billing card on file, and her brain stalled. “I’m sorry. Say that again?” she asked.
“The card is for Thompson Advertising. It was changed out last night.”
Ian. Warmth snaked through her. He did that for her?
“You all right?” Liz’s question broke Mercy’s rambling thoughts. “You look like someone punched you in the gut.”
He did it because his sister was staying here. Disappointment and embarrassment pushed everything else aside, and pride joined it. “I didn’t authorize that.” Mercy could almost hear her credit card weeping, as she spoke. “Change it back to the original card please.”
“We can do that for the room, but your assistant was emphatic that the ancillary charges be taken care of right now. Those have already gone on the new card.”
The room service. “I see. Thank you.”
“Mercy?” Liz snapped her fingers. “You all right?”
“Just shaking off some side effects.” Of the pack Alpha taking care of his sister cub. Something twinged in Mercy’s chest. If she gave it any attention, she’d say it was a whisper, wondering what it would be like to have someone watching her back that way and her returning the favor. Fortunately, she wasn’t giving it any attention.
Liz studied her. “You’re not hung over, are you? You barely drank anything.”
“I’m great.” Mercy almost believed her own smile. If she kept it on long enough, it would become truth. “And ready to go if you are.”
A few minutes later, Liz’s car was packed, Mercy’s was returned to the rental place, and they were headed toward the mountains.
Liz plugged her phone into the aux jack, and an upbeat dance remix pumped from the speakers. If Mercy shoved aside the train-wreck of the last twenty-four hours and the amazingly explosive conclusion, this felt like old times. She and Liz filling the gas tank, pointing one of their cars in a direction, and seeing what nifty little hidden spots they hadn’t discovered yet in Utah.
“What did you two get up to last night, after I fell asleep?” Liz’s question caught Mercy off-guard.
The images that teased her all morning flooded in, unrestrained. Being pressed against the car. Ian traveling his mouth along her neck. The things he did with his fingers. She mentally shook herself. “Us two, who? What makes you think I got up to anything?”
“Defensive much?” Liz’s laugh was strained. “I woke up in the middle of the night, had to pee, saw your note...”
Mercy looked up, to see Liz watching her. “And?” Mercy asked, when Liz didn’t continue.
“Oh, God. You slept with him, didn’t you?”
“No. There was absolutely no sleeping involved. And both of us stayed fully clothed.” Who knew that would come in handy for denial, later on? “Speaking of, did you return his calls? He said something about a lawyer and your stuff.”
“I’ll call him later. When I said we should spend the next week indulging in debauchery, I meant once we arrived there. And not with Ian. He’s my brother, for Christ’s sake.”
Mercy tried to ignore Liz’s implication, but it dug under her skin. Liz had never judged her before. Mercy had to be reading her words wrong. “So I’ll spare you the details, and you can be grateful you didn’t walk in on us.”
“But... You can’t hook up with him.”
“Why not?” An edge crept into Mercy’s question. “And why won’t you call him back?”
“Because you don’t take things like relationships seriously.”
The words hurt more than Mercy expected. They were true, but she didn’t like the way they sounded coming from Liz. “I don’t know if you realize this, but neither does he.” Lines like the ones he used last night; the smooth glide from conversation to seduction; the outright suggestion they take attachments off the table—Ian had done this before.
“Exactly,” Liz said.
“What?”
“You’re my two favorite people in the entire universe, and I want to see you both happy. If you’re screwing each other, you’re not available to find that one person who will show you love isn’t a joke.”
Like true love has done you so much good. The moment the words slammed into Mercy’s head, her gut twisted with guilt. How cruel was she? Liz was being sweet, like Liz always was, and Mercy wouldn’t throw that back in her face. “You’re right. And it doesn’t matter. It’s not like it’s going to happen again.”
“Which is another reason not to call him. He doesn’t need to know what we’re up to. Let’s go find us way cuter guys as distractions.”
*
AS SOON AS HE WAS OUT of sight of the café entrance, Ian crumpled the waitress’s number, along with the scribbled note—Call me—and tossed it in a nearby trashcan. Even though he put in the time to flirt with the curvy brunette, he wasn’t in the mood for the effort it would take to follow through. Maybe it was getting up early enough for a 6 AM conference call, or the two hours of yammering before he had his coffee. She won’t be as much fun as Mercy was.
So what? Mercy was probably on her way back to Georgia by now.
Seeing her last night was a trip to the past, but not in a bad way. When Ian was sixteen and his family picked up and moved halfway across the country, Liz threw a fit. She was supposed to be starting high school in the fall. Moving here meant another year of Jr. High, and leaving all her friends behind. Then she met Mercy—the daughter of one of the agency’s clients—and the two were instant best friends. Trauma forgotten.
For Ian, moving back then was the best thing that had happened to him up to that point. In Chicago, he was the nerdy kid, built well enough to go out for sports, but not interested in physical competition. He liked a mental challenge. He was on the chess team and in the computer club, and the only reason he didn’t get beaten up more often was he fought back.
In Park City, he was the bad boy. The new kid the girls swooned over, who didn’t go to church like everyone else and had the nerve to say why not. He and Mercy formed a bond too, but it wasn’t the same as what she shared with Liz.
Ian fell into step with the light morning crowd, and headed toward the parking garages of downtown Park City.
“Two minutes. I need to call my art guy,” Mercy’s voice mingled with his meandering into the past and flung him back to the present.
He whirled to scan the sidewalk at the sound of her voice, then slapped himself mentally when he realized what he was doing. Great. Now he was hallucinating her. That was fucked up. His phone rang, and he grabbed for it, grateful for the distraction. “Yeah.”
“How was the wedding? And the earlier-than-God-gets-up call?” It was his assistant, Jake. “I know you’ll probably be in the office soon, but you’ll want to hear this now.”
“You don’t want to know. And hear what?”
“KaleidoMation called while you were on with Boston. They’ve narrowed their choices down to two companies, and we’re one of them.”
This was the kind of news Ian needed. The account would be a step into a new market for them, pushing past the legacy media his mother and grandfather built the company on, and into modern technology. They’d done a bit of work here and there, but nothing as intensive as KaleidoMation wanted. “Fantastic news. You’ve got everyone working on next steps?”
“Yes.” Jake sounded insulted by the question. “Two catches, though. They’re concerned about our lack of experience with social media, and they’ll be in town Thursday and Friday, to talk in person about how we’re going to handle things. Your schedule’s been set, and I’ve made travel arrangements for them.”
Normally, Sales handled new accounts, but this client was significant enough, Ian was involved in negotiations from day one. It was too bad he couldn’t bring Mercy in, to consult. The kind of experience she had—
How many times was he going to have to squash thoughts of her? This wasn’t about last night, though. From what he’d seen and heard, the woman knew her stuff. And the reaction she had to him suggesting they work together meant she was keeping that knowledge to herself. “Thanks for the heads-up, and for being on this.” Ian clicked off the locks on his SUV. “I’ll be in the office in ten minutes. We’ll talk details then.”
He’d throw himself back into work, shake whatever funk had Mercy’s face, body, and intoxicating moans haunting his thoughts, and land his company a huge success. Exactly the way it should be.