Sinful Reunion (6 page)

Natalie woke to the sound of a discreet knock. From behind her James shuffled to a standing position and walked briskly towards the door, a tee shirt and a pair of cotton pants covering his body. Natalie looked down to find her own body had been outfitted in a clean white tee shirt that was several sizes too big and smelled distinctly of
him
. Sometime during her sleep he'd modestly covered her nakedness and moved her to the couch. She sat up just in time to watch James turn from the door with a silver platter balanced on one hand.

"Not to brag, but we do make the finest grilled cheese sandwich in Vegas." He grinned as he set the platter down on the coffee table before her and lifted the warming cover to reveal two places of golden cheese deliciousness. "The trick is to first grill the bread
and
the cheese, then grill them together. Otherwise it's just two grilled pieces of bread with some melted cheese in the middle. Enjoy!"

Natalie picked up a perfectly coiffed triangle of grilled cheese and bit, immediately closing her eyes as melted cheese filled her mouth. "Oh my god. Why did I not know how to do this in college?"

"Because you didn't have one of the finest chefs in the country around to make it for you," James quipped from beside her on the couch before biting into his own grilled cheese sandwich.

"If you tell me you
did
I will throw my sandwich at you."

"No, I hoofed it to the cafeteria with my meal card same as any other proper uni student."

Natalie smiled at his slip, noting it was the first time she'd hear him say something that sounded non-American. She leaned back into the couch and brought her knees up to her chest, not caring for modesty as the shirt slid down and exposed her to the room.

"Can I ask you a personal question?" she thoughtfully inquired.

"I don't know, can you?"

Natalie rolled her eyes. "How old are you?"

He gave her a pointed look. "Google didn't tell you?"

"Actually,
no
. It didn't. But you look pretty young."

"So do you," he quipped. "But I know you recently finished grad school so unless you're some kind of baby genius, Doogie Howser-type I figure you have to be at least in your early-to-mid-twenties."

"Okay, with that reference you
must
be forty," she mocked him with wide eyes and a faux-horrified grimace. She side-eyed him as she took a slow bite of her meal. He looked mildly offended, though whether it was a put-on or for real, she had no idea.

"Christ, Natalie, I'm
34
!" he laughed. "Why do young people always think thirty is so damn old?"

"Because we're too busy thinking that we are invincible, can do whatever the hell we want and lack any personal responsibility. At least that's what
old people
think about us."

"Touché. But for the record I don't think any of those things about you."

"Good. Then we can be friends. Even though you're, you know,
old
."

"That's it!" James grabbed for her sandwich and threw both it and his down on the platter before tackling her back to the couch, straddling her waist as he tickled at her sides and beneath her arms. Natalie screamed through a laughing protest, trying helplessly to push him off her body with no success. "Call me old again, Natalie. See what happens when you do."

"No! No, no!" she laughed hysterically, her eyes watering instantly. "I take it back! You're not old!" she squealed.

The tickling stopped but his hands remained. "Good girl."

Natalie stared up into his blue-green eyes as she caught her breath. "So when I was graduating from elementary school you were graduating from college?" A sly smile split her face and she grinned at him like an idiot.

"Geez," he sighed, but smiled in spite of himself. Still straddling her waist he leaned forward and balanced his weight on his arms at either side of her head. "You really aren't very polite anymore, are you Natalie?"

"Sorry, I get a little frisky when I've had really good
cheese
." She drew the word out and smiled again, biting her bottom lip in victorious pleasure at her own joke. When the moment passed and her humor subsided, she braved asking him another question. "Where exactly do you live?"

James absentmindedly ran a thumb along her cheek as he considered the question. "Here at Eden when I'm in Vegas. Various hotels when I'm traveling, some of which I own, some which I don't."

"Right, but where do you
live
?" She emphasized the word. "Where do you call home?"

"I have a home in New York but that's where..." he drifted off.

"Your wif- I mean Celine and Frankie? They live there?"

James' smile faded a touch. "They do. So did I."

"So now you just flit around to your various hotels like you're playing Monopoly?"

His eyebrow screwed as he viewed her shrewdly. "Something like that. Why? Where do you live, Miss Harlow?"

"In a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles that is almost quite literally the size of this living room alone."

"Sounds nice," he smiled.

It was her turn to eye him shrewdly. "How so?"

He ran an index finger down the length of her nose, his face softening into the smile he wore. "Because it's yours."

Natalie smiled and then yawned, turning to cover her open mouth with a couch cushion. "Sorry. I'm not used to staying up this late."

"Want to go to bed?"

There was that atmospheric shift again, as though he wasn't asking her something as innocuous as whether or not she'd like to go to sleep but if she'd like to move in. For a question so simple the emotion behind it seemed loaded. She wondered if he even knew his own thoughts, or if he did, if he had any intention on sharing them. The hour was far too late and their lovemaking far too consuming for her to analyze any deeper meaning or convictions behind his words.

"Sure," she merely replied with a kind smile.

Natalie woke again to sunlight streaming through diaphanous curtains draped like wisps across the length of the bedroom windows. She picked up her head and read
7:56AM
on the alarm clock sitting by the bedside. It was an all too familiar memory, waking up with only a handful of minutes to spare before it was time for goodbye.

She looked down to find James sleeping soundly at her side, his face completely relaxed and content as he softly snored. Natalie lay back down and just watched him, thinking about the kind of life he must live the other days of the year. There was something incredibly sad about a grown man - a successful, but sad grown man - living from a suitcase and going from city to city with no real home to speak of. A hotel room was not a home, no matter how finely or warmly appointed. She assumed the home he did once have, the one he spoke of in New York, was forfeited to the soon to be ex-Mrs. Fitzgerald and her daughter. But then again, who would want to stay in a home where the person you're meant to trust most in the world has betrayed you so deeply?

If he were to pick just one place as his home, one place that was his and his alone to come to at the end of the day, where would it be? She should have asked him, but a part of her feared his answer would be Los Angeles. If he were in LA that would mean the possibility for
more
, and she wasn't sure what 'more' was. Aside from sex they barely knew each other, and quite frankly she didn't think she had much in common with a billionaire hotelier whose most frequent mode of transportation was likely an airplane. And as great as the sex was it was nothing to build a relationship on, no matter how tempting the proposition seemed.

Still... everything she knew of James told her that he was inherently a decent man, one worthy of finer treatment than he had received. He deserved better than a nomadic lifestyle of going from one hotel to another.

"James." She shook his arm gently as she called his name. "James, wake up."

"What is it?" he asked before his eyes could even open. When they did they were heavy with sleep. "What's wrong?"

"You need to buy a house."
Okay, just ignore how utterly crazy you sound right now
,
she thought to herself. "You're too old to do the rich person version of couch surfing."

"Stop calling me old," he yawned. He sat up and leaned back against the pillowed headboard. "Okay what are you saying?"

Natalie scooped up her legs and sat Indian-style at his side. "You need to pick a place to live and buy a house there. Every person deserves a home to go to at the end of the day and a hotel room is so impersonal.
No offense
."

"Okay?" He looked a bit bewildered but seemed to be listening as much as he could. "Where is this coming from, Natalie?"

"No place, really."
From my crazy brain, actually.
"I just woke up thinking about it."

"You woke up thinking about me living in a house?"

"Yes. And as your friend I felt it was my duty to inform you."

"Okay,
friend
." He tugged on her arm until she crashed into him, his arm wrapping around her and holding her tight. "On Monday I'll buy a house. Anything else?"

Just like that? 'On Monday I'll buy a house'? God, rich people...
"Yes. Thank you."

"For what?" he croaked tiredly at her ear.

"For you."

At that James picked up his head and turned to look for something - presumably the clock, judging by the look on his face - sighing as his head came down next to hers again. "This isn't you saying goodbye to me, is it?"

Natalie turned in his arms until she was facing him and chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip. "Is there another way?"

"Yes, there is.
Don't
."

"I have to leave and go home, James," she sighed.
We've been through this already.

"But you don't have to say goodbye, Natalie." He opened his eyes again and stared at her with that same blue-green intensity she'd seen so many times before. "Do you really want another five months to go by before we randomly meet again? Because I don't."

There it was: the 'more'.

Of course she didn't want that but what conceivable alternative was there? Dating a billionaire? A semi-broke recent college grad dating a man who occasionally lives in the hotel he owns in Vegas? That was fantasy, not reality.

"I don't either, but..."

"Good, then it's settled." He leaned in and kissed her softly before returning to the comfort of his pillow, leaving Natalie utterly confused.

"What's settled?"

"Neither one of us will say goodbye. You'll leave at nine, have brunch, fly home and then go to work tomorrow."

"And then what?"
Wait, didn't we already have this conversation?

"Exactly."

She opened her mouth to protest her confusion but was met with a hand on her mouth and a stern look from a sleepy twelfth man.

"Natalie, it's Sunday. Give your brain a rest and lay down with me. Please?"

She sighed and relented to his plea. Even she was surprised at how wound-up she was. Without muttering a word further she turned back into his arms and rested her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes to enjoy the last of their time together in the peaceful quiet of his penthouse hotel room.

She'd barely started to drift off before she felt his hips pressing into her backside. "What happened to just lying down?" she asked, breaking the silence.

"I was thinking about when I walked in and you were naked and standing in front of the window."

She could feel him smiling into the back of her head and she couldn’t help her own smile from spreading into her cheeks. His hand made its way down her stomach to between her legs, a finger slipping in to gently prod her clitoris. A small moan escaped her mouth as she adjusted her hips to give him more room.

James leaned up on his free elbow and stared admiringly down at her. "Have I mentioned how beautiful you are?"

"So you're dating?" Quinn asked over breakfast potatoes.

Natalie considered a forkful of eggs benedict before shrugging her shoulders. "Honestly I have no idea."

"How did you leave things with him?"

Natalie covered her mouth with her hand as if she'd taken too much to chew, but she was really hiding the stupid smile that came unbidden to her mouth as she intimately recalled their morning lovemaking. "I gave him my number and I left."

"You say it so casually, like it's nothing that you spent the night having sex with a gorgeous billionaire who didn't want to say goodbye to you." A woman sitting next to them made a sharp
tsk!
noise and looked pointedly from her small child back to Quinn and Natalie. "Lady this is Vegas. I'm not the one who brought your child here," Quinn snapped. She took a deep sip from her coffee and turned her attention back to Natalie. "So you'll definitely be seeing him again?"

"I guess? Maybe. I don't know." Natalie took a generous sip from her own caffeinated beverage. Her phone buzzed against her thigh from within her jeans pocket and she retrieved it quickly, a flutter in her chest.

'You forgot two things. Pick them up at Eden. Find Brandon in the lobby and ask for me.'

"That him?"

"Yep," Natalie sighed as she placed the phone facedown on the table. If she'd forgotten something she'd be stuck with a sneaking feeling. But as she mentally catalogued everything she packed in her carry-on she noted nothing of importance was missing.

Natalie entered Eden dressed as casually as when she'd first entered it, only this time she didn't feel so much like an outsider in her common jeans and James' white cotton tee. The lobby was bustling with guests following bellhops pulling luggage on golden colored carts towards valet or the taxi line. Before Natalie had a chance to really look for Brandon - whose face she barely remembered in their very short time together - she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to find the man had found her first.

"Welcome back, Miss Harlow. Please enjoy a glass of champagne in our lounge upstairs while I call Mr. Fitzgerald for you."

Natalie couldn't help the flush of embarrassment that heated her cheeks at such attention. "Thank you."

"Of course. Miss Harlow. Miss Potter." Brandon's smile exceeded the limits of charm when he addressed Quinn, and she was only too happy to appreciate the extra bit of attention.

Together Natalie and Quinn climbed the grand staircase to Bidden, where a server dressed in the silver-sparkle-flapper-girl uniform greeted them with a brilliant smile and two glasses of bubbly champagne. They took one each and settled into a sleek booth made of glossy wood and peacock blue quilted velvet.

"Well I could certainly get used to this," Quinn sighed contentedly into her glass of champagne. "I may just quit my second job and become your official hanger-on. If you don't mind," she bowed her head to Natalie.

"I don't think my life is about to turn into an episode of
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
, Quinn."

"You say that now..." Quinn arched her brows and looked away, taking in the glamorous view around them as if it were the most natural setting in the world to her.

Natalie's phone vibrated in her pocket and she knew immediately it would be from him.

'I can't decide what I like seeing you in more: that silver dress you wore last night or the shirt you wore when you left this morning.'

Natalie smiled and began to type a response when a second message came in.

'Maybe I like you better in nothing at all.'

"Wow," Quinn muttered. Natalie looked up and found her friend staring off in the distance. She followed her gaze and found James crossing the bar to them dressed in a fine suit, the top button of his tie-less shirt unbuttoned ever so casually. He could have been a billboard advertising a luxury men's brand or a model fresh off the Paris runway. To Natalie's delighted surprise, however, he felt like hers.

"Hi," she shyly greeted as she rose to her feet. Were they supposed to kiss on the cheek or the lips? Hug? Shake hands? James gently took her elbow and placed a kiss at the delicate space between her cheek and ear.

"Definitely nothing at all," he whispered before pulling back and introducing himself to Quinn. " How did you enjoy your stay at Eden?" he asked her.

"Not nearly as much as Natalie did." She wore a devilish smile and was clearly not at all intimidated by him.

They shared the same arrogance, James and Quinn, and Natalie found herself grateful they had never previously crossed paths. Not that she wanted to so much as imagine that scenario.

"I thought you might like this," James offered as he picked up a garment bag that had been carefully slung over his arm. "One brand new, stunning silver metallic silk dress, Miss Harlow."

Her cheeks flushed crimson at the memory of what happened to the first iteration of the dress. "Thank you. How'd you find it so quickly?"

"This is Vegas," he smiled, gesturing his hands out around him.

"Okay," she chuckled, accepting his explanation. "What was the other thing I forgot? I don't think I left anything behind?"

"Just this." He leaned in and kissed her, lingering with her lips on his to savor the moment. Her eyes closed she sighed into him, her insides flipping at the intimate contact. It was their first and only physical contact outside of the bedroom and held the promise of
more
.

When James pulled away one half of his mouth was cocked into a smile like he was the victor of a bet only he knew of. He turned and bowed his head slightly towards Quinn. "Miss Potter, it was lovely to have met you. Thank you for staying at Eden."

Quinn nodded back but said nothing, her eyes conveying more than words could. She approved, that much was clear. And Natalie knew she would be bombarded with requests for the real details on the plane.

"Miss Harlow," he began, turning again to face her. "Natalie." His smile faded but the humor in his face remained. "I'll see you soon."

She knew they weren't empty words. It was a promise. A guarantee. And for the first time since leaving his room that morning she felt relieved that they hadn't said an actual goodbye. There would be no five months of nothing but fantasy and borderline-obsessive thoughts about a night spent in a penthouse. This time there was something to look forward to.