Umm…still thinking about that one.
“How do you know my name?” she asked, and he lifted one huge shoulder in a negligent shrug.
“I asked.”
“I don’t know yours.”
Amusement danced in his eyes, turning them to pure gold. Good Lord, she was in trouble. “Then do the same.”
“Fine.” She was, Louise realized, clutching her wineglass as if it were a life preserver. Any harder and it would shatter. She forced herself to relax. “What’s your name?”
“Jaiven. Jaiven Rodriguez.” He paused, his firelit gaze steady on her. “I’m an old friend of Alex’s.”
“All right, Jaiven.” His name sounded strange and yet weirdly right on her tongue. Familiar too, although she didn’t know why or how. “As appealing as your…proposition might be, I can’t leave this party. Chelsea is my sister, and I’m her maid of honor.”
He raised his eyebrows. “So?”
Already Louise could imagine what his skin would look like underneath his shirt: like burnished gold. Silky-smooth, his chest hair crisp and rough under her fingers—
Stop this right now. “So?” she repeated, her voice just a little too high. “So, that would be rude.”
“I’m sure Chelsea would understand.”
“Why? Because you’re such a stud?”
He laughed softly, a huff of sound that wound its way around her. “That too, but mainly because she’s in her own little world. She doesn’t need you right now.”
No, she didn’t. Sudden tears stung Louise’s eyes and she quickly glanced away. She was a little bit drunk and definitely overemotional, not a good combination. Definitely not a state in which she should be making any decisions about her love life. Or sex life, rather, since she was under no illusions about what Jaiven Rodriguez wanted. A good time in the sack, not a lifetime commitment, or even breakfast.
“I can’t,” she said after a moment, realizing how revealing that statement was. She couldn’t, not that she didn’t want to. But Jaiven had probably known she wanted to from the moment he’d walked into the room. He must have seen all her darting little looks, felt her interest and desire as if they were coming off her in waves of heat. Maybe they were.
How totally humiliating, not to mention stupid, because Jaiven Rodriguez was surely way out of her league.
And yet he wanted her.
That, Louise thought, had to be the most powerful aphrodisiac in the world. Simply stated desire.
“I have to stay here for Chelsea,” she told him, her tone resolute. Because I didn’t before. When Chelsea was only sixteen, she’d walked away from her, left her to make her way in a world that had been cruel and unforgiving to them both for far too long already. The memory of that last meeting was burned onto her brain, seared into her soul.
She’d had her own plans, a scholarship to the University of Alabama, a ticket out of the trailer park. Chelsea had two years left of high school and a serious boyfriend on the football team she didn’t want to leave.
Look, Louise, just go. I’ll be fine. I’ve got Rick.
And so Louise had ignored the hint of vulnerability in her sister’s eyes, had chosen only to see the defiant tilt of her chin. And she’d walked away, gone to live her own life at college. When she’d returned for her October break, Chelsea had disappeared. She hadn’t seen her sister again for fifteen years.
Fifteen years to think about what she should have done differently. To wonder, regret, and burn with both guilt and shame.
She and Chelsea had forgiven each other now, and Louise had moved on from the guilt, but she could still hear and feel its echo, especially in moments like this one, when Chelsea was so happy and she’d had too much to drink.
“Fair enough,” Jaiven said easily, bringing her back to the present with slamming force. She felt a ridiculous flicker of disappointment. He was going to give up that easily?
Of course he is, you idiot.
Jaiven hoisted his beer bottle in a mocking toast. “Never say you didn’t do your duty as a bridesmaid.”
He turned away, and she watched him go with a churning mixture of relief and regret.
Jaiven Rodriguez was definitely not the kind of man she should go home with. Go anywhere with. She needed safe. Unthreatening. Maybe even boring.
Jaiven was none of those.
But for a single night…a night to remember, to remind you you’re actually a woman and that you’re alive…
Jaiven seemed just about the perfect choice.
He was right, though, when he’d said Chelsea didn’t need her, Louise thought an hour later. She’d stuck to water and was coming down from her tipsy state so she felt only flat and tired. Chelsea had introduced her to a few media types, tried to include her, but Louise couldn’t make the effort.
It was only ten o’clock but she wanted nothing more than to go home to her one-bedroom apartment near Columbia and curl up in bed with the TV on mute and a pile of essays she had to mark. Just another typical Saturday night in the life of Louise Jensen.
Get over yourself, she thought crossly. You have a rewarding career, a lovely apartment, a small but close group of friends. There was absolutely no reason to feel sorry for herself.
Except she’d just turned down what she really wanted, and he was standing across the room. The only tempting offer of sex, of any kind of physical intimacy, she’d had in a decade.
Not that there hadn’t been other offers: a brief and unremarkable relationship with another grad student at Columbia; a blind date that had been excruciating in its awkwardness and, even more awkward, a pass made by Pete, the neighbor who had looked after her cat when she’d gone to San Diego to present a paper on women’s changing roles in the workplace.
Louise had thought he’d been inviting her in to retrieve Mallow’s litter box. He’d tried to pull her into a clumsy embrace while she’d been going for the box and the result hadn’t been pretty. Cat litter and kisses didn’t go so well together. Neither had she and Pete.
Sighing, she decided it was time to call it a night.
She caught Chelsea’s eye from across the room and waved a farewell; her sister made an apologetic face and waved back. She got it, Louise knew, and she wouldn’t try to cajole her into staying a little longer.
Louise handed her ticket to the young woman behind the coat check, slid her arms into the sleeves of her black wool trench coat. It was April, but there was still a nip in the night air.
In the lift down to the lobby she pulled out her phone and for curiosity’s sake—that ship had sailed, after all—she did an internet search for Jaiven Rodriguez. Half a million websites immediately came up, and she soon saw why: Jaiven Rodriguez was the founder and CEO of JR Shipping, one of the largest delivery services in the world. No wonder his name had sounded familiar.
And you could have had him in bed.
With a shake of her head she slipped her phone into her pocket and stepped outside the Plaza Hotel, breathed in the smell of New York: taxi fumes and litter and that inexplicable, muggy steam that rose from the subway grates, and over it all the damp freshness of a wet spring night. She dug her hands into her pockets and started across the Grand Army Plaza toward the park. She’d walk for a little bit, she decided, and clear her head.
She’d just crossed Fifty-Ninth Street and was turning left toward Sixth Avenue when she heard the sputter of a motorbike behind her. She tensed,