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 phone 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
