Beautiful Secret (Beautiful Bastard #4) (14 page)

“Always.” But I wouldn’t tonight. I couldn’t, at least not on her mouth. Instead, I bent and pressed a single kiss to the skin just beside my hand, over the soft skin of her navel. Her hands ran briefly through my hair, sending a renewed pulse of heat through me.

As I stood, Ruby sat up. Watching as I grabbed my coat, she didn’t bother to reach for her clothes.

“Is it going to be weird tomorrow?” she asked quietly, eyes sobering. “Have I ruined this already?”

It was all I could do to not go to her, kiss her senseless in reassurance. I didn’t know what I needed in order to be able to take this final step.

“To the contrary.”

She smiled a little, but I suspected she wanted what I wanted, which was for me
to stay the night with her. Even not touching, it was better to be near her than anywhere else.

“Good night, Ruby, darling.”

“Good night, Mr. Stella.”

Her name was a constant, looping mantra in my thoughts, but not once had I heard her call me Niall.

I opened my eyes to the sun beaming in the window, the phone ringing with my wake-up call, and an immediate dousing of cold, hard
Holy Hell what have I done?

You know, just an average morning after I drunkenly masturbated in front of Niall Stella.

I rolled face-first into my pillow and groaned.

As the details returned—and oh, they did—I wasn’t embarrassed exactly. I remembered the he-said-she-said. I remembered how hard he’d been, how breathless. I remembered how he stared so intently at my hand between my legs, completely unashamed to simply
look
. Seeing him there, hungry in that way, completely open in his desire . . . I’d been a woman
possessed
.

My fear was that, after a few hours alone to contemplate what we’d done,
he
would be mortified. If the suggestion of a kiss in the office yesterday turned him stiff and silent, what happened last night might make him crawl back into his shell and never emerge again.

How often had I fantasized about something happening
between us? Countless times. And in every fantasy, I was brave enough to tell him what I wanted, and it unleashed something in him to know that I could be a safe place for him.

That I understood his reserve and would let him shed it when he needed to.

Then last night—suddenly—he
was
right there. And for once I wasn’t mute, I wasn’t a babbling mess.

He’d looked so gorgeous, eyelids heavy and cheeks warm with alcohol, the uptight and buttoned-up persona barely hanging by a thread. He’d worried he was being presumptuous, or that he was somehow taking advantage of me, but he was wrong.

I’d wanted to see that final thread unravel. See
him
unravel. I’d wanted it so much I could hardly breathe. My skin felt like it was on fire, so sensitive I might turn to ash with just a touch. He may have thought keeping his distance had been for his benefit, that we’d been drinking and he wanted to be in full control of his senses when we did more, but somehow, it had been exactly what I’d needed.

I bet he thought intimacy happened in ordered stages: admiring, flirting, consensus about feelings—but not too much discussion—permission to touch, kissing, hands up shirts, hands down pants, the I Love You, and then, finally, sex. I wondered if, in his mind, what we’d done—or hadn’t done—last night still allowed him a certain amount of emotional distance.

How could he not know that it had been more intimate than any sex I’d ever had?

How could I show him?

I knew I needed to get up and get going, but I wasn’t ready yet. My stomach was in knots and my muscles hummed with a tangle of nervous energy too big for my skin. I missed my friends and having someone to talk to. I missed shuffling out into the living room on Sunday morning and having coffee with the girls, huddled over steaming cups while we talked about our lives and work and school and men.

Tucking the blankets around me, I rolled over and reached for my phone. I was three hours ahead of California, but I reasoned that this was still far preferable to the UK time difference, where I was getting up just as everyone else was going to bed. I’d stayed up late countless nights so I could listen to London or Lola unload; it was their turn to do it for me.
I needed to talk to someone
.

Without another thought, I sent a group text. Most of Lola’s late nights were spent working, so there was little chance of her answering. She was the sensible one, the driven-to-succeed-since-she-was-tiny one, and probably would have her phone set on
do not disturb
hours ago. Mia and Ansel rarely answered the phone after the sun went down, and Harlow, more often than not, was up on Vancouver Island newlywedding it up with Finn.

London, my best friend, was my best bet.

Anyone awake? I need help :(

My phone buzzed almost immediately.

You have a phone so you MUST know what time it is,
came London’s reply.

I know and I’m so sorry. But . . . something happened.
I held my breath as I hit
SEND
.

Something or ~something~?

I’m not sure which something I’m supposed to use??

The phone vibrated with a call just a few seconds later, and I answered before the first ring had even finished.

“I assume this is somehow referring to Niall Stella.”

I groaned. “Of course.”

“So when I say
something
,” London began, sounding tired and groggy. She worked as a bartender, and I wondered what time she’d actually got off this morning. She cleared her throat and if I hadn’t been so thankful to hear her voice right then, I might have felt the tiniest bit guilty for waking her up. “What I mean is, something like you had coffee together? Or
something
like he’s seen your vagina?”

I rolled onto my back, blinking up at the ceiling. “Uhhh,” I started. That was disturbingly close to the mark. Could she hear it in my voice? Was there something in the way I sounded that screamed,
I bared my entire body to him last night, but yeah, he mostly stared at my vagina
.

“Oh my God, you little shit. You had sex with him?”

I brought my hand to my forehead.
“Not exactly,” I answered truthfully.

“Not exactly? Ruby, honey. You know that I love you, but I’ve been up late every night this week with work. I need some sleep, not a brain teaser.”

“Okay,” I started, trying to work out how exactly to explain what had happened. “Imagine having phone sex, but in person.”

I could hear rustling in the background, the sound of London getting comfortable, or smothering herself with her own pillow. Honestly, it could be either. “You went from ‘he doesn’t know I’m alive’ to masturbating in front of each other in less than a week?”

“Well . . . if we’re going to get technical, it was just me doing the masturbating,” I told her, imagining the face she must be making. “Also, I don’t ever want you to say ‘masturbating’ again, starting now.”

The rustling stopped. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Ruby Miller, are you telling me you put on a little show for your dream boy?”

“I guess? I mean, obviously?”

“You’ve been talking about him for the last, what? Five months? I assume you’re thrilled with all of this masturbation.”

“London, you just broke the oath.”

“I said ‘masturbation,’ a different word. And why are you calling me at four thirty in the morning? Are you requesting a long-distance high-five or someone to hear you melt down in mortification?”

“Maybe both?” I groaned.
I
didn’t even know how I felt; how could I possibly expect someone else to help me? “I don’t regret it, but I’m not sure where we stand right now. We’re not
together
, we’re colleagues. I’m actually not even sure we’re friends. Plus, he was drunk and I was mostly drunk and this morning I can almost hear him freaking out across the wall.”

“Freaking out as in
he’s
regretting it?” she asked, and I thought I could hear her sit up.

“I don’t know.” I chewed on my lip, considering. “I hope not.”

“But he’s into you, too?”

“Yeah, I mean. Yeah. As much as he can be this quickly? He went through sort of a bad divorce and it’s left him a little—”

“Ruby, I know this must have been your way of putting yourself out there, but what did you expect would happen?”

“Um . . .” I started, because to be truthful, I wasn’t really thinking at
all
in that moment.

I sighed. Was I thinking that he would realize he’d loved me all along and sweep me off my feet? That he’d admit to looking for me all his life and there I was, willing to get myself off in front of him the entire time? Um, probably not.

“I’m not sure really,” I said instead. “Maybe that it would be the first step.”

London yawned and I heard the sound of blankets being rearranged, as she settled herself back in bed.
“That’s a hell of a first step, but make it work. Go into the office today, face him like the kind of woman who masturbates—sorry, sorry—in front of the love of her life and doesn’t regret a thing. You know I don’t have a ton of faith in the male population, but if he’s half the man you’ve described—because really, why else would you fall for him?—he’ll be smart enough to catch on. Go get him, Gem.”

Making last night the first step proved to be a bit more complicated than I’d hoped. It seemed Niall Stella was going to go out of his way to keep things exceedingly, frustratingly normal between us. He’d gone in early, and was packing up his laptop for a meeting when I arrived, head down and phone pressed to his ear. He acknowledged me with a small nod, a smile, and then he stepped out past me, into the hall for privacy.

In the handful of seconds it took me to walk around his chair and reach my own, I came up with at least twelve different ways to translate his small smile and semi-avoidance, each more insane than the last.

It was one thing to dissect everything he said in a meeting or to a colleague when there was zero chance it had anything to do with me, but this? There was no way he wasn’t also thinking about what we did last night.
Everything
had a meaning today.

I heard him talking, still just outside our office door.
Was he waiting for me? He’d looked like he was packing up to leave; was he coming back in first?

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said into the receiver, his posh accent the only thing keeping his words from sounding clipped or flat-out annoyed. “The timeline we were given for estimated completion was a full six months before the date you’re giving me today. The alternative is unacceptable.”

My ears perked at this; I’d never seen or heard him sound angry before.

He was silent while he listened to the person on the other end of the line, and I had the strangest sense of his eyes on me. I unwrapped my scarf, slipped out of my coat, and hung it on the hook behind the door. His attention pressed on my skin and I shook my head, careful to let my hair fall forward and hide the warmth I could feel blooming in my cheeks.

“Tony, I’m not leading the Diamond Square project to be a yes man, I’m leading it because I know what the bloody hell I’m talking about. Tell them that, or better yet, let me. I won’t have any problem setting them straight,” he said, followed by the distinct sound of his exasperated sigh.

Tony.
Gross
.

I grabbed my notebook and turned to join him. “Everything okay?”

He nodded, but shoved his phone into his pocket, not bothering to elaborate about the call.
“Aside from a meeting with some of the MTA engineers this morning, I’d like to visit some of the stations, see for myself a few of the proposed floodgate sites.” He gave me another polite smile.

Niall was back in his shell.

Nodding to the stairs, he asked, “Would you care to accompany me?”

The South Ferry station was one of the hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy. With a street-level entrance of only one hundred feet above sea level, the tunnel was flooded in minutes. The seawater destroyed practically everything in its path, damaging wiring and equipment and filling caverns deep enough for workers to swim through. This was why we were here, to think ahead of Mother Nature and design a system that would prevent catastrophic damage like this from happening again.