remembered. She was supposed to be relaxing. Meeting new people. Men people. And there was no time like the present to get started, she supposed.
Nodding to herself, she smiled, swallowed her nervousness and said, “Hi, Chad. I’m Caitlyn. And I’d love a drink.”
Five
Caitlyn had about a half hour to shower and dress before meeting Chad for drinks in the main bar. She hurried down the long, tiled hallway to her own door, digging in her pocket for the key card as she ran. She shouldn’t have agreed to meet the guy for a drink. And if Janine hadn’t been on the phone with her at the time, she wouldn’t have.
She just wasn’t feeling very sociable at the moment. Not that she wasn’t interested in meeting new people—men people—it was just that she was too busy thinking about Jefferson to appreciate someone else. Even someone as gorgeous as Chad.
“Which is just sick and twisted and wrong,” she muttered, dropping her tote bag on the end of the bed. “Why you should be thinking about your former boss at all is a mystery. He’s gone. Out of your life. Kaput. Adios, amigo. Sayonara. Ciao. Arrivederci.”
“That’s two in Italian.”
“Yikes!” Caitlyn clutched at her throat, spun around on her heel, lost her balance and tumbled back across the bed. Eyes wide, heart racing, she stared at Jefferson as he walked casually out of her bathroom. A thick fog of misting steam rolled out the open door behind him, surrounding him in a haze that made him look almost otherworldly. Of course, the towel hooked around the waist of his naked body wasn’t helping the situation any.
His hair was wet and drops of water were still rolling across his tanned, much-more-muscled-than-she’d-dreamed chest. And his piercing blue eyes were locked on hers. His full, delicious-looking mouth quirked in a half smile as she pushed herself up to a sitting position.
“Surprise.”
“Surprise? What do you mean, surprise? What are you doing here?” She held up a hand as her heartbeat slowed from frantic down to way too fast. “Scratch that. Never mind what you’re doing here. What are you doing here? In my room here, I mean. How did you get in? Why would you—How could you—” She broke off, gulped some air and then settled for glaring at him.
Jefferson shrugged, and Caitlyn couldn’t help but watch the play of muscles that shifted with that minor action. But she steadfastly kept her gaze above that towel. Oh, boy, she could be in some serious trouble here. No, she wasn’t in love with her boss, but she was clearly quite deeply in lust with him.
And seeing him in that towel and a few drops of water was enough to make any woman start drooling.
“I came to bring you back home,” he said. “Back to Long Beach. Back to the company.”
Of course that’s why he was here. God, she was such an idiot. Taking a shower in her room only meant that he had needed a shower and helped himself. It didn’t mean that he was here for her. Naturally, the only thing on Jefferson’s mind was the usual. Himself.
“I quit, remember?”
He laughed, and the sound echoed off the walls of her large, elegant room. “You can’t quit, Caitlyn. Work is your life. How do you quit your life?”
“That was then. This is now. I’m making a new life, thanks.”
“One without me. Without Lyon Shipping.”
“That’s the plan.” The fact that she’d actually missed him in the last two days didn’t speak of great success for that plan, but that was neither here nor there.
“Hmm…I wonder.”
“Come on, Jefferson,” she said, wanting to get him off the subject of her entirely. “You didn’t come all the way here just to convince me to come back to a job I quit. Why are you really here?”
“After you left,” he said, walking across the room toward her, his footsteps silent on the thick, pale blue carpet, “I realized something.”
She scooted back on the bed, keeping her distance, but then thought about being on the bed with him so close and so conveniently naked. Which made her shoot off the mattress as though there was a spring under her behind. “What? You realized what?”
“I needed a vacation.”
“Right,” she said, shaking her head at the ridiculous story. “You’ve never taken a vacation, Jefferson. The closest you came to it was when you were flying around the globe ruining my vacations. Besides, shouldn’t you be back at the office, annoying some minion into finalizing your Portugal trip?”
“You’re exactly right. I have never taken a vacation, so I was more than due. As to ruining your vacations in the past, I’m not here to do that again. I’m only here to join in the fun.”
“Fun?”
“As to the Portugal trip,” he said, swiping one hand through his wet hair, “my rather exceptional admin has everything taken care of already.”
Exceptional.
He’d called her exceptional. Oh, he was up to something.
She only wished she knew what.
“And,” he admitted with another shrug—and he really did have some amazing pecs—“I missed you.”
Caitlyn snorted. Very inelegant, she knew, but she just couldn’t help herself. Oh, yes. Definitely up to something. “You missed me. Sure you did. You mean, you missed having me run interference between you and the company. It’s only been a couple of days, Jefferson.”
A couple of days during which she had missed him. But that wasn’t the point now, was it?
“This isn’t about work, Caitlyn,” he said, his gaze fixed on her so steadily she was pretty sure she could feel heat sizzling in the air between them. “This is about us.”
She just stared at him for a long minute. This was getting weirder and weirder. First, he’s naked in her hotel room. Next he’s missing her. Now he’s talking about an us?
“Okay, I must have somehow slipped into an alternate dimension,” she muttered, shaking her head and fiddling with the cloth belt of her cover-up. No way was she slipping it off to stand in front of him in her bathing suit. The more clothes she had on at the moment, the safer she’d be.
And where was all this sudden, desperate lust coming from? She’d worked for the man for three long years. Sure, she’d been attracted, but she’d never felt the kind of swamping, all-encompassing heat that was boiling in her system at the moment. Was it the fact that they were both away from the business setting?
Or maybe it was just that towel he was wearing.
Her eyes popped a little. Was that towel slipping?
“Alternate dimension,” she repeated numbly. She blinked, tore her gaze from the towel. “That has to be it. The only rational explanation. Well, that or I’m having a stroke. No, not a stroke. Must be the alternate-plane thing. The elevator.
