He came to the staircase, and, nodding at Andre, the host he’d met earlier, Michael bounded up the stairs, removing the electronic fob from his pocket. He stopped outside his room, and held the key over the pad to unlock the door. Shifting Alana’s dry cleaning to his other arm, he entered his suite.
His bags were still packed, sitting by the door, the room still neat and unlived-in, but there was something out of place. A black patent leather purse was left on the small table. The bottle of tequila had been taken from its place in the wet bar and left out of place.
“It’s about time you got here,” someone called from the bathroom. He knew the feminine voice, even though it was tinged with a bit of humor, and not the anger he’d heard in it earlier. But he waited, shocked and silent by the door, still holding the plastic bags of clothing as he heard the click of stilettos on the tile floor as she got closer, and he could picture the red soles on the bottom of her shoes. He knew exactly who would turn the corner to enter the room, but nothing prepared him for the vision of Alana Carter—his new boss—standing before him in her bra and panties and expensive high heel shoes.
Her smile faltered when she saw him, and not the person she’d been expecting. They stood several feet apart, watching each other. She finally spoke, making no effort to cover herself. He was grateful for that. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Alana might have looked amazing in her suit earlier that day, but wearing nothing but her undergarments and high heels, she was something else. “This is my room,” Michael told her. “Gabe arranged it. I’m staying here until I can find a place of my own. What are you doing here?”
“This is my private suite,” she told him. As if she had just realized she was nearly naked in front of him, she whipped the top blanket from the bed and wrapped it around her perfect body. She shook her head. “You need to get out of here.”
Michael made no move to leave. “Where am I supposed to stay?” he challenged. “All of my things are here. And I have a key,” he said, dangling the fob from his fingers.
She shook her head. “There must have been some kind of mistake. A mix-up. This sort of thing shouldn’t happen here.”
For once, they were on the same page. A mistake like that could be dangerous, and costly for the club, and for more than one reason he was grateful that it had been him and Alana who’d been the unwitting victims of the blunder. “I don’t know what happened, maybe Gabe put me here so I wouldn’t be using a room for guests.” He let his eyes run up and down her partially covered body. His heart stuttered in his chest as it pumped all of his blood southward. “But we can deal with it later.”
There was a knock on the door. Michael inclined his head in the direction of the door. “You expecting someone else?”
“As a matter of fact, I was.”
Michael chuckled, enjoying seeing the unflappable Alana off her game again. He headed to the door and opened it. On the other side he saw a man, just as tall as he was, just as built. The anticipation in his smile dropped as did the corners of his lips when he saw Michael standing there.
“Who are you?” the other man asked.
“I’m Michael,” he explained. “You should probably leave, though, mate. I don’t know about you, but I’m not quite looking for a three-way tonight.”
The man looked over Michael’s shoulder to Alana. “Everything okay?”
Alana, still wrapped in the blanket, inserted herself between them. “Everything is fine, Eric. I’m sorry about this, but you should leave.”
Eric took one last look at Alana, still wrapped in her blanket. “All right. If you’re sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine. Thank you.”
Eric nodded, having lost the battle. Michael understood the disappointment the other man must have been feeling, to have such a promising night with this woman snatched away from his grasp.
Alana shut the door and headed back to the bathroom, and Michael knew that she was going to get dressed.
“Is this why I had to pick up your dry cleaning?” he teased, and she stopped and turned to face him. “So you could find the time to get fucked by some bloke named Eric?”
“It’s really none of your business,” she insisted, grabbing the dry cleaning bags from the dresser.
Michael cracked a smile. “Although I must say, you’re sending me some mixed messages. Telling me you’ll put my balls in your purse and then asking me to pick up your lingerie.” Her eyes widened as she flipped through the items. She must have forgotten the delicate nature of the things she’d directed him to pick up. “I have to tell you, though, you look good in black—” he nodded at the bra and panties she was wearing under the blanket “—but I really like the red thing.”
Alana huffed out a breath. Michael laughed, and he knew that just made her angrier. He was having fun, and it gave him a sick kind of thrill to know that he frustrated her so much.
“Don’t worry, my dry cleaning will never again be on your to-do list.”
“Too bad,” he said with a shrug and a deep chuckle.
“I’m getting dressed,” she told him, heading again for the bathroom.
“Stop,” he commanded her, his voice just above a whisper. She did as he said and turned. He couldn’t tell if the flare of her nostrils was from fury or desire. He would put his money on a combination of both. He took a step closer. “You know, this might have been a mix-up, us ending up in the same room, but there’s no reason we should squander this opportunity.”
As he stood in front of her, she tilted her head upward, looking him in the eye. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe we were both thrown together in here for a reason. Like fate.”
“You believe in fate?”
If he believed in fate, he considered it a fickle bitch, given his recent past. Especially since the first woman he’d had a sexual interest in in the past couple of months, the one standing in front of him almost naked, was his boss.
He took a step closer. The blanket she’d wrapped around herself brushed against his chest. The contact made him tense up. “I can feel the sexual tension between us, and I know you can, too.”
“Oh, you really think so?”
“I know so.” He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and raised her face to meet his. “I don’t know the reasons why, but I know you don’t want me here. But I am here, and I’m not going anywhere, so no matter how cold you are to me, or how many meaningless tasks you give me, I’m going to stick it out and do my job, and that’s to run this club like I know how.”
“This is my club,” she told him. “You’ll do exactly what I say, when I say it, and you’ll thank me for the orders.” Her voice was firm, but the tremble of her lip told him that she was unsure.
But he took a deep breath, and inhaled her scent. Light, citrusy, breezy, playful—so unlike the woman who wore it. “Sure, but you have to know that I’m not a man who takes orders.” He hooked his finger underneath the blanket she’d wrapped around her body and it fell to the ground, again leaving her in only her bra and panties.
She gasped, but made no movement to cover herself. “That’s too bad,” she told him, pulling back from his touch. “I’m your boss. And I give orders.”
“I’m just asking for a chance to do my job without you micromanaging