Speed Dating (7 page)

From long experience, he knew he could make mmm-hmm noises periodically and Ashlee would keep talking. Right now she was going on about twinkle lights. Twinkle lights! “Mmm-hmm.”

He banged on Kendall’s door, hoping she’d still be there.

“Who is it?” he heard a minute later, in a tone that sounded as though she were expecting a firing squad.

“Honey,” he said, loud enough for her to hear him through the hotel door, “Ashlee is on the phone. She wants to talk to you.”

A beat passed.

“Honey?”

The door opened.

He blinked. “Kendall?” He’d barely have recognized the woman standing in front of him. She was dressed in a dirt-colored suit with a turtleneck the color of mould underneath. Her shoes were the flat kind favored by old women with bad knees. Her hair was neat and her posture stiff. What had happened to last night’s wild woman?

Even her eyes had changed. Last night, they’d been sparkly and daring; this morning, they looked far too old for a young woman.

“What is it?” he asked, forgetting for the moment why he was there. He felt an impulse to wrap her in his arms. If anyone had ever needed a hug, it was Kendall.

She shook her head. “Is there something I can do for you?”

Right. The phone. “Ashlee wants to speak to you.”

“She does?”

He nodded. He didn’t have the heart to tell this model
of propriety that Ashlee was about to apologize for calling her slutty. He simply handed over the phone.

She hesitated and he mouthed, “Please?”

“Hello?”

After that there was a pretty long silence from Kendall’s end. A simple “I’m sorry” from Ashlee was going to take at least fifteen minutes. Since he didn’t feel like waiting out in the hallway, he nudged past Kendall and went to sit on the armchair in the corner of her room.

She followed him in, the phone still held to her ear. There was an open suitcase on the bed with a lot of suit-type clothes neatly folded. He’d never seen so many colors inspired by mud.

“That’s all right. Really. I quite understand. No offense taken.”

Then her gaze flew to his and she blushed. Ashlee must have got to the part about them being crazy in love.

Kendall crossed to the bed and sat primly on the edge, beside the open suitcase. “Oh, well…” She faltered.

He jumped up. She’d better not undo all that good work from last night. “Come on, honey,” he said loud enough that Ashlee could hear. “Get off the phone and come back to bed.”

“Oh, I know,” she said weakly, shooting him a glare that she hadn’t put much effort into. “Yes. Insatiable. You, too. Goodbye.”

Kendall hung up, then handed back his phone. She looked a little stunned, but at least she had some color back in her face.

“So, you did a good job last night. She thinks we’re totally in love.”

“That’s nice.”

“Nice? It’s fantastic. You saved me. Thanks.”

She hung her head. “I impersonated someone else, went out on a date in my underwear, gave a speech the actuarial association will never forget. Don’t thank me.”

He chuckled. “That speech was fantastic. I was proud to know you.”

He shoved the suitcase out of the way and sat beside her on the bed, putting his arm around her shoulders. “Forget that bunch of dull suits last night. Your acceptance speech was probably the most fun any of them have ever had.”

She shuddered against him. “Some of those dull suits were my bosses. First thing this morning I was given a ‘sideways promotion,’ which is weasel-speak for I’ve been demoted.”

“What?”

She nodded, still looking down.

“Well, that’s plain stupid. I hope you told them to take their lousy job and shove it.”

She sighed and fiddled with one of the latches on her case. “We live in very different worlds, you and I. Mine is all about risk assessment. Up until yesterday, I was an asset to my company. Today I’m a liability. I’m risky. If I could embarrass my bosses at an organization function, then maybe I’d do the same at a board meeting. My company is very conservative. They’ve taken steps to minimize damage. They say I’m being moved for my own good and they probably mean it.”

“They’re messing with one of their best people—or do they give that pencil to anybody?”

“No. You’re right. It’s a very prestigious award.” She
looked at him and there was a crease between her brows. “So why didn’t I simply tell you who I was when we first met last night, get my dress, go to the actuarial banquet and give the speech as scheduled?”

The question seemed a no-brainer to him. “Because you wanted to have some fun, and there was no way fun was going to be had at that corporate dinner. I about went into a coma from entering the room. It wasn’t until you got going that the place livened up.”

She put a hand to her head. She had dainty hands, he noticed, with long fingers. Her nails were longer than he would have expected, too, and painted pink. “Maybe they’re right and I showed poor judgment.”

“Maybe your ex should keep it zipped.”

She glanced up and laughed, giving him a glimpse of the woman he’d had so much fun with last night. Then she sobered. “The two women involved were reassigned. Marvin gets to keep his job. The old double standard is alive and well in corporate America.”

He didn’t even know how to respond to that, but he felt vaguely guilty simply for being a man. “What are you going to do?”

“Take the job. At least I’ll have the security of a paycheck while I think about my options.”

“You don’t sound real thrilled at the idea.”

“I’m not.”

“Do you need the job that badly?”

A tiny smile tilted her lips but not a hint of teeth showed. “I’m an actuary. I calculate risk for a living. The first thing I did after I paid off my student loans was build an emergency fund equal to six months’ salary. But it’s easier to find a job when you already have one.”

“You started a job by figuring out what the odds were on losing it?”

She nodded.

He scratched his jaw. She was still pale, but a little color was coming back into her cheeks.

“Why don’t you tell them to shove it and take a few weeks’ vacation, which, if you don’t mind me saying, you look like you could use, and then you find another job?”

“In your world it may be that simple. Not in mine.”

“Babe, when you screw up in my business, you end up turning cartwheels strapped inside a tin can going a hundred and eighty miles an hour.”

She shuddered.

“So do something else. You’re too much fun for that roomful of corpses last night.”

She shook her head, then put a hand to her forehead as though she’d forgotten she had a headache. “You’re wrong. I’m exactly like those corpses. You’ve unfortunately got the wrong impression of me from my behavior last night. Perfectly understandable. We make decisions about a person based on first impressions. I showed up in your room half-dressed, I—”

“I thought you looked great.”

Those long fingers with the pink nails touched her turtleneck as though checking it still covered her up to her chin. Unfortunately, it did. “Thank you. The point is, our meeting was all in error and then I compounded that error by pretending to be someone I wasn’t, for which I owe you an apology.”

This woman was way too hard on herself.

“Bryce left a message. The woman who was sup
posed to be my date last night had an appendicitis attack. Honey, you saved my butt.”

“Well. That’s good.”

“Why don’t you take some time off? Stick around here for a few days. Watch the race tomorrow. You’ll be doing me the biggest favor of my life if you hang on my arm and tell Ashlee more about how much you love me and how incredible I am.”

She managed a small eye-roll, which made him grin.

“She’s married now. What difference can it make?”

“Hah. Ashlee treats marriage as a temporary inconvenience. All she has to do is get it back into her head that the astrologer meant she was supposed to be with me and she’ll do something like embarrass me on national TV. Really.”

Kendall shook her head. “I’d like to help you, but I can’t. I have to get back to Portland.”

“Hey, I tell you what. Tell them you need a couple of weeks off. It will give them time to organize your move. Stick around until Thursday when Ash leaves on her honeymoon, then I’ll fly you home.”

She blinked at him as though he’d suggested she detour to the moon. “You’ll fly me home?”

“Well, not me personally, but my plane will.”

“What kind of plane?”

“A small Lear.”

“I’m being offered a ride in a Learjet. I don’t believe it.”

He grinned at her. “It would be another first for that list of yours. And if you wear one of those slips tomorrow, you’ll get on TV for sure.”

That earned him a genuine laugh. “As tempted as I am, I can’t.”

Before he could argue, there was a knock on the door.

“Now what?” she muttered to herself in exasperation.

K
ENDALL’S WORDS
were still echoing in her ears when she opened the door and got a big dose of exactly what she didn’t want right now. Aggravation.

Standing outside her door, looking self-righteous and condemning, was Marvin.

Before she’d worked out how to handle this—her instinct was to slam the door in his face—Marvin was inside her hotel room.

He’d begun talking as soon as she’d glimpsed his face. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself,” he said, his usually placid tones jerky and annoyed. “What in—” He stopped short as he caught sight of Dylan, who seemed like a dynamic comic book hero with his tall, dark good looks and his imposing body.

Next to him, Marvin seemed like exactly what he was. A nondescript, desk-bound middle manager with nice blond hair and not another interesting thing in his appearance.

Her head started to pound. She glanced at her watch. She still had fifteen minutes until it was safe to take another dose of painkiller.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” said Dylan, holding out his hand as though Marvin might be a fan in search of an autograph. “I’m Dylan Hargreave.”

Marvin, as caught in the restraints of polite behavior as she, shook the offered hand as briefly as possible but spoke to Kendall. “Why is he in your hotel room?”

She opened her mouth to explain and Dylan said, “Well, there’s a stupid question if I ever heard one.” His drawl was so good ol’ boy it almost took him half an hour to spit out those words. The look he sent her as he said them almost made her bones melt.

Marvin stared from one to the other. “Did you sleep with him?”

The words seemed to echo around the room. Dylan didn’t say a word but glanced her way with a tiny, self-satisfied grin.

“That is none of your business,” she snapped. Then she stalked into the bathroom leaving the door open. She took one of the hotel glasses, ran water from the tap, shook out two pain pills and swallowed them fourteen and one half minutes before the instructions printed on the back of the bottle said it was safe to do so.

At the moment, a little analgesic poisoning seemed a small price to pay for relief from the pounding in her skull.

“I would never have believed it,” Marvin said in outrage. He was doing such a great job of the innocent act that she was certain he’d end up getting promoted after he’d managed to dump her personally and screw her professionally in the space of a day.

“Well,” she said, coming back into the room, “I would never have believed you’d start a relationship with one of our colleagues right under my nose. What do you want, anyway?”

“I feel it is my responsibility to the firm to ensure you get home safely.” And in full view of everyone who was anyone in the industry. How had she never noticed what a toad he was?

“Well, aren’t you the Boy Scout?” Dylan said, sounding like his mouth was full of grits.

He piled a couple of pillows up against the faux-wood headboard and plonked himself down on her bed as though he were planning to stay for a while.

“Marvin, I’m fine. Thank you. I’ll see you downstairs.”

“I wouldn’t feel right leaving until he does,” Marvin said, gesturing with a jerk of his head to Dylan.

“The thing is, I’m trying to proposition Kendall and it’s tough with an audience.”

“Oh, stop it,” she snapped, beyond exasperation. “You’re not—”

“I am,” he said, suddenly rising to his feet and stepping close. “Take a holiday. You sure look like you could use one. You can see a couple of races. We’ll have a few laughs, go home when you feel like it.”

“But I’ve got responsibilities, ob—”

She became aware that hers was not the only voice speaking. Marvin talked over her. “You’ve got obligations at home. You’ve got to stop acting irrational.”

When she talked about her responsibilities, she felt mature and needed. Why, when Marvin mentioned the same thing, did she sound like an old maid?

“I’ll be fine,” she said firmly. Then walked over to the door and held it open until her ex-fiancé left, muttering under his breath.

She turned to say goodbye to Dylan, and it was harder than she’d imagined to walk away from the only
man in her entire life who’d ever mistaken her for an exciting woman.

“Dylan, I…” What? If you’re ever in Portland? For a wild second she contemplated giving him her business card, but Portland was nowhere near the NASCAR tracks—which was only one indication of how far outside Dylan’s world she lived. “I enjoyed meeting you,” she said.

“I had a great time last night,” he said, his voice low and sexy.

Their night out might have resulted in disaster, but she couldn’t help the momentary spurt of pleasure when she recalled their evening. “I had a great time, too,” she admitted, hoping she didn’t sound too wistful.

“Bye, Kendall,” he said, and pulled her to him and kissed her. He did something that made her shoulders and head tilt back and suddenly she was being kissed like she’d never been kissed before. A tiny sound came from her throat, kind of an oh-I-never-knew-it-could-be-like-this moan, and her arms went around his neck.

Suddenly, she wanted the clock to flip back to last night. She wanted to be in that foolish slip of silk, masquerading as the kind of woman a man like Dylan would parade on his arm. She felt her body tingle as the kiss continued. She’d have gone on kissing him for days if Dylan hadn’t finally pulled away.

He looked a little dazed. She couldn’t imagine how dazed she must appear.

“Here’s my card,” he said, digging one out of his pocket. “If you change your mind.”

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the small rectan
gle. Of course she wouldn’t call him, but she imagined she’d hang on to this card forever.

He left and, after she’d carefully placed that card inside her wallet, she fixed her lipstick and wheeled her suitcase out of her room and toward the elevator, forcing herself not to look at Dylan’s door when she passed.

She passed a housekeeper a couple of doors down from Dylan’s room with a cart of cleaning products and bags of little soaps and shampoos. The woman nodded at Kendall and then pushed her dark hair behind her ears. There was a newspaper sticking out of a full trash bag and a headline about a presidential speech. Two things immediately struck Kendall as odd. One: she hadn’t read this morning’s paper—what with all the drama, there hadn’t been time. And two: she didn’t seem to care.

In that paper there was probably a whole lot of ink about tomorrow’s race. She wondered if Dylan was mentioned and if her date would soon fade into one of those amazing celebrity encounter stories that don’t seem quite real.

Thankfully, she was alone in the elevator. She made her way swiftly through the lobby, having used the express checkout and left her keys in her room. When she got outside, she noted that the air was warm, the skies sunny. There was a lineup of people standing in front of the hotel, each with a black bag or two. As her eyes focused, she realized that she knew most of them.

They were all members of the actuary association, people she’d hoped to avoid this morning. Now she remembered the chartered bus that had been booked to take the departing actuaries to the airport before they went their separate ways.

She greeted a few people as she walked to the end of the line, the wheels of her case bumping across the pavement.

Conversation wafted her way from some of the people standing in the line, bits and pieces of desultory chitchat which stopped suddenly. She turned slowly and saw Marvin and Penelope. They weren’t holding hands, but they looked as though they’d only recently stopped.

They took a few steps forward, saw Kendall at the end of the line and hesitated in perfect synchronization. She glanced at Marvin and, as though realizing he couldn’t stand there much longer without looking like an idiot, he started forward once more.

The two of them took their place in line behind Kendall.

Humiliation burned in her stomach. Some of these people were colleagues she’d known for years. They’d been on her wedding invitation list. How could Marvin do this to her?

“Um, Kendall?” Marvin said softly behind her. He sounded tentative and kinder than he had earlier. The thought flicked through her mind that he was going to apologize.

She had no idea how she’d respond, but an apology would be nice. Some admission that his behavior had been reprehensible would go a long way to soothing her lacerated feelings.

“Yes?” she said, turning to face him. She knew that every eye was on them and felt that she could one day forgive Marvin if he tried to smooth things for her today, on this most difficult of days.

A low roar that sounded familiar came from behind
her, where the cars exited from the parking garage. Marvin had to raise his voice to be heard above it. “I was wondering if you would mind changing seats with Penelope so she and I can sit together on the plane?”

Unbelievable.

Dylan’s car appeared, a shiny red blur in her peripheral vision.

The line of dark-suited men and women stretched like a black rope that bound her to her past. Dylan’s sports car was the future, a rocket ship to adventure. It was her getaway car.

They wanted to gossip about her? She’d give them something to talk about.

“Hey, Dylan,” she shouted, stepping forward with her hand outstretched as though she were hailing a cab.

He slowed and pulled close to where she stood.

“Is the offer still open?”

He grinned at her, the dare in his eyes. “Hop in.”

“Kendall, I strongly advise you to think about your behavior,” Marvin was saying behind her, while all those curious, gossip-hungry eyes looked on.

In seconds, Dylan had stowed her luggage in the tiniest trunk she’d ever seen, then jumped back behind the wheel of the rumbling car.

They were pulling away when she heard Marvin shout, “Are you crazy?”

“Oh, yes,” she cried, turning to send him a goodbye wave. “That’s why I’m on stress leave.”

Crazy had never felt so good.