‘What are you talking about?’
She stiffened. Why was he so irritated?
He twisted away, shoving his fingers through his hair and combing it into unruly furrows. Frustration snapped in the air around him before he gave a long-suffering sigh and turned back. ‘You say you need money.’ He said the words slowly, surely, as if he were talking to a dim-witted child. ‘I gave you money. Why are you giving it back to me?’
‘Because it’s not my money,’ she shot back, annoyed at having to state the obvious. ‘It’s yours.’
‘So what? It’s only five hundred bucks. I don’t want it back.’
‘But I thought that was the advance we’d talked about.’
‘What advance?’ he said, holding his palms up in exasperation before slapping them down on the sideboard.
Realisation suddenly dawned on Kate. With it came the grinding feeling of helplessness, of inadequacy, she’d fought throughout her childhood.
‘Wait a minute,’ she said, carefully. ‘You mean you gave me five hundred dollars. Why would you do that?’
She’d thought the money was an advance, but if it wasn’t…? The events of the previous night came reeling back to her. Without the glow of sexual excitement, the romance of the moment, what she’d done took on a whole different hue.
She pressed her thighs together, felt the lingering tenderness and was suddenly ashamed of all the times he’d been buried deep inside her.
What had he been thinking when she’d flirted with him, when she’d thrown herself at him, when she’d come apart in his arms? She covered her mouth, scared she might throw up.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she blurted out, desperate to get away.
Zack couldn’t believe his eyes as the colour drained out of her face and she turned and ran out of the room. ‘What the…?’
It took him a minute, but he caught up with her in the hallway, snagged her arm. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
She shot him a disdainful look, but he could feel her shaking. Something had really upset her, but what?
‘I thought I told you yesterday,’ she said, the tears hovering on her lids. ‘I’m not a prostitute.’
‘What? Who said you were a prostitute?’
‘You don’t give someone five hundred dollars for nothing.’
So that was it. They were back to the money again. Damn, the woman had more issues than a daytime chat show. ‘You were in a fix. I helped you out. It’s not that big a deal.’
‘It is to me.’ He could see by the stubborn tilt of her chin she wasn’t kidding.
She tried to wrestle her arm free. He held firm. No way was she skipping out on him until they got this settled.
‘Will you let go of my arm?’
He softened his grip, but kept her in place. ‘Not until you tell me what the problem is.’
‘It’s simple. I don’t accept money from men I don’t know.’
‘First off,’ he said, pulling her closer, ‘you do know me. After what we did last night you know me pretty damn well.’ He felt a stab of satisfaction when she blushed a vivid red. ‘Second off, the five hundred wasn’t payment for sexual favours.’ Now he thought about it, he was pretty damned insulted himself. ‘I’ve never paid for sex and I never will.’
The blush intensified, but her arm relaxed. ‘Okay.’ Her breath gushed out and the rigid line of her shoulders softened. ‘I’m sorry I accused you of that. It’s just…It looked…I don’t know—it looked funny.’
‘It was a gift between friends.’
She nodded. ‘All right, but I still can’t accept it.’
Now she was just being stubborn. ‘Why not?’
‘Because I can’t,’ she said, her voice rising to match his.
Her lips puckered up into the defiant pout he’d admired the day before. He wasn’t admiring it so much any more.
‘Look, calm down, okay?’ He ran his palm down her bare arm, struggling to soothe while his own emotions were in turmoil. He could see the hot flash of temper in her eyes, but beneath it was something else that looked suspiciously like hurt. It bothered him he might have caused it.
He tried to figure out where he’d gone wrong. How things had got messed up so fast.
Everything had been great when he’d woken up, his body still humming from one incredible night of mind-blowing sex. He’d spent the next ten minutes lying in bed, the hazy dawn sunlight streaming over him while he’d breathed in the lingering scent of Kate’s perfume overlaid with the smell of freshly percolating coffee and enjoyed some inventive fantasies about what they could do for the rest of the day.
When he’d found Kate in the kitchen, clutching Joey’s Pop Tarts, the soft blonde hair he now knew was natural still damp from her shower and that sexy dress stretched across her lush rear end, he’d figured it wouldn’t take him long to start making his fantasies reality. The next few days had spread out before him like a smorgasbord of sexual pleasures and he’d had every intention of digging in.
Then she’d started babbling on about Pat and employment paperwork and money and everything had gone to hell in a handbasket. Well, she could forget about working here. He didn’t want her working for him, he wanted her with him—in bed as well as out—for the next couple of days, but he could see he was going to have to change tactics to get what he wanted.
‘Kate, this is dumb.’ He forced reason and logic into his voice. ‘We hit it off last night. I’ve got a couple of days before I have to head out to California.’ He stroked his thumb across the inside of her elbow, encouraged by her shiver of response. ‘We could have a lot of fun in that time.’She didn’t say anything so he pressed on. Surely she could see this was the smart option. ‘You can stay here as my guest and then I’ll buy you a ticket home to London when I leave. How does that sound?’
Kate didn’t think she’d ever been more humiliated in her whole life. This was worse than being turfed out into a hotel corridor in her underwear. She stepped away from Zack, humiliated all over again by the terrible yearning that seized her. That her body was clamouring for her to say yes to his insulting proposal only made the situation that much more unbearable.
‘I pay my own way. I always have and I always will.’ She tightened her arms across her breasts, willing herself to stop trembling. ‘And I’m very sorry, but, as much fun as we had last night, I’m not prepared to be your paid plaything for the next few days.’
He cursed softly. ‘That’s not what I meant and you know it.’
‘Mrs Oakley’s offered me a job here and I’m taking it,’ she continued, grateful when he made no move to touch her. ‘If you don’t want me working in your hotel you can have me fired, that’s certainly your prerogative.’ She prayed he wouldn’t do that, but she wasn’t about to beg. ‘But you don’t have to worry about sleeping with the staff, because we’re not sleeping together any more. How does that sound?’
He swore again, his big body rigid, his hands fisted by his sides. The frustration was coming off him in waves but he didn’t say a word.
She walked down the hallway to the elevator with as much dignity as she could muster and