Mr. Right Now (4 page)

“The problem is this cruise is completely booked. It’s late August, you know. I’m afraid I don’t have a solution other than you rooming together. I will take ten percent off the final bill and all of your excursions will be paid for by the cruise line.”

“Can’t you find someone on board who is willing to have a roommate?” Anyone would work, as long as they didn’t mind running out of tissue within ten minutes. Surely there was one single, desperate woman aboard ship. Casey ignored the fact that until she met Mason she could have been the single, desperate soul.

January shook her head sadly and clasped her hands in her lap. “I’m afraid we can’t ask our passengers to accept a stranger into their rooms.”

“But you can expect me to share my room because of a computer malfunction? Get this through your head: I’m one of your passengers who does not want a stranger in her room,” Casey said. Before she could get rolling, January interrupted.

“But he’s booked into this room.”

“So am I. I have my itinerary right here.” She pulled a sheet of paper from her carry-on and handed them to January, pointing. “
One guest
. One. How long have you been booked in?”

Tyler looked from Casey to January, clearly not sure what to think about two women fighting over where he would sleep. He probably never had this problem in his real life, wherever and whatever that was.

“Do weeds.”

Do weeds. Do weeds. Two weeks?
Two
weeks? No way. She wasn’t losing her single room to a nose-bleeding nerd who had only been booked onto the cruise for two weeks. Sorry, wasn’t going to happen. She’d been booked for two weeks and one day.

She gritted her teeth and pulled a card she had never used in her life. “Do you know who I am? I’m Cassandra Cash, and I need space. I have a book deadline to meet and I can’t do that with some stranger living in my room. You’ll have to move him into crew quarters or something.”

“No. We can’t do that. He paid for a suite. The crew quarters are too cramped, and that wouldn’t be fair.” January stood and clapped her hands together. “Unless Mr. Cash is willing to move to crew quarters, we simply have no other choice.”

Casey looked from January to Tyler, who was shaking his head no. Great. She could move. But where to? Casey couldn’t exactly track Mason down and ask if he’d mind a roomie.

January continued. “I know this is a huge inconvenience, but there is simply nothing we can do. I have made notations in both of your files and the next time you sail with the Sweetheart Line, you’ll sail for free.” Before Casey could speak, January left the room.

“I ged we’re stud, huh?”

Stud. Ha! He was no stud. Cash was right, though. They were stuck together. At least for now. Casey wasn’t finished fighting for the private room she had booked.

Tyler stood, moving to pick up the leather bag beside the bed. “I’b soddy. You cad hab the ded, I’ll sleeb on the cowjuh.” He pushed the bag with his foot, trying to see which direction it was moving while keeping his head tilted back. The bag was headed for the closet.

Casey shook her head. She was being a jerk. Rooming with Tyler wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world, but it wasn’t the end of it, either. And if things did work out with Mason... No, not going there. If things didn’t work out with Mason, Casey would seclude herself and finish the damned book. She and Tyler would probably only see one another a couple of times each day. She wasn't attracted to him. It wasn't as if she would jump his bones while he slept on the tiny sofa.

Mason’s were the only bones she was interested in jumping at the moment. She wondered if he’d found some other woman. She couldn’t blame him. Leaving him all hot and bothered was an idiotic move. Space. Yeesh. But she couldn’t leave Tyler alone just yet, either.

“It’s okay.” Casey relented. She picked up his bag, moving a lamp to make room for it on a side table. “We’ll set up the ground rules later. Has the bleeding stopped?”

Tyler nodded. “I think so.” He tossed the tissue in the trash and let his head rest in its usual place. He waited a few seconds, then patted his upper lip just under his nose. “No blood. That’s a good sign.”

Without the tissue, he was much more attractive. His skin wasn’t so pasty; now that he had stopped bleeding, it was a nice peach color. Tyler obviously hadn’t been out in the sun much, but then what professional man spent their summer days outside? No late afternoon shadow on his cheeks, so she still wasn’t convinced he could grow a mustache, but that wasn’t so bad. Smooth skin wouldn’t irritate the sensitive skin on her chest.

Like Mason, he was almost a version of her perfect fictional romantic hero.

Oh, crap. Jane hadn’t... There was only one way to find out.

“Are you...supposed to be here?” Casey couldn’t bring herself to ask if he was being paid.

Tyler smiled, and reclined back on his elbow. “What do you mean?” He propped one leg against the back of the couch and stretched the other toward the floor.

“I mean...” But how to ask Tyler, tissue-breathing, nose-bleeding Tyler if he was the escort without insulting him? Or would he be embarrassed? Were escorts proud of their jobs? “What do you do for a living?”

Tyler smiled a semi-come-hither smile. It would have worked better without the remnant of tissue stuck to the corner of his mouth.

“What do you want me to do?” Spoken like the male version of Julia Roberts in
Pretty Woman.

She sat down hard on the edge of the bed. If Tyler was the escort, that meant Mason was just some guy. Some guy she’d just attacked in the elevator. Her face burned. He must think she was a real piece of work.

Not that it mattered; her hopes for spending the next seven days turning Mason into Mr. Right Now for her pleasure and for the book were dashed.

She doubted he would be interested in anything with Mr. Nosebleed on the couch. And even if he was, she wasn’t. She had a rule: one man at a time.

“Are you in...” She grasped for the right word, finally choosing, “Sales?”

Tyler shrugged. “More or less.”

Sighing, Casey said, “We’ll get to that later.”

Right after she killed Jane. How could she do this? Setting Casey up with a guy was one thing, making sure they were sharing a room was quite another. She was capable of getting her own men, thankyouverymuch,
and
deciding when to invite them in or leave them out in the cold.

“For now, let’s just say I know why you’re here.” At his surprised expression, she placed a wry grin on her face. “Jane spilled everything before I checked in. But that doesn’t mean anything—” She waved her hand between them. –“Is going to happen between us.” She picked up the trash can filled with tissues. “Does this happen much?” Casey wasn’t sure if she meant the nosebleed or rooming with a client. Thankfully, he didn’t ask.

Lounging against the sofa, Tyler said, “Hardly ever. It usually only kicks in when I’m in a dry climate. The last time I visited my folks in Arizona I practically needed a blood transfusion.”

She watched out the window as the ship began to make a slow turn toward sparkling blue water. “But this is southern Florida. We’re on the ocean. It’s not dry here.”

He shrugged. “I know. That’s why this is so weird.”

A tiny giggle bubbled up from her chest, then grew to a full-blown belly laugh. Really, this was too much. First getting dumped, then that crazy headline in the paper and Jane’s revelation. She thought she found Mr. Right Now, and went so far as to attack him in the elevator, only Mr. Right Now wasn’t in the elevator. He was bleeding all over her bed. It was just her luck to get stuck with a nose-bleeding escort. A man now looking at her like she had grown two heads.

Great, he thought she was nuts. Perfect.

Two sharp raps on the door interrupted her thoughts. Motioning to him to stay on the couch, she walked to the door. Maybe January found a spare room. Or would invite Tyler to share her own cabin.

Mason Drury lounged in the doorway. Thumbs tucked in his front pockets, shoulder supporting his weight against the jamb, legs crossed at the ankle. He looked like an
Obsession
ad.

Double crap.

She scooted forward a few more inches, pulling the door closed along with her. Angling her body so he—hopefully—couldn’t see around her to the warm male body on her couch, she smiled.

“Mason. What a surprise.”
Great line, Case. You must be a writer.

“I decided six o’clock was too far away, and I wanted to see if you got that cell phone removed from your hand yet.”

Holding out her hands, Casey asked, “As you can see, the surgery went fine.” The phone was once again buried in the bottom of her bag. She’d never answered the earlier call. It was probably just Jane reminding her to take a chance, and she was already doing that on her own.

Mason pretended to examine her palms, his index finger tracing the life line and sending a shiver up her spine.

She needed to get him out of here. Away from bloody tissues, and questions from a male escort. Or his questions about why she needed a male escort.

Or her own questions about why Jane had started this whole crazy thing.

Jerking her hands away from him, she blurted, “Let’s go get that drink.”

He raised one eyebrow. “Don’t you want to know why I’m here first?”

“Doesn’t really matter. I’ll just get my bag,” she said, slipping back through the door and shutting in it his face.

She looked from her bag to Tyler's questioning gaze. She grabbed a couple of tissues and pressed them in his hand. “I’ll be back and we can figure this all out.” Before he could reply, she escaped out the stateroom door.

She took two steps down the hall before she realized Mason wasn’t following. “Aren’t you coming?”

“Sure. I just thought we might need to talk about this before we dive right in,” he said, rubbing one hand over the back of his neck. “I don’t usually do this kind of thing. I mean, we both have our reasons for being on this ship. I’m here for work, but that will be simpler if we...uh, talk first.”

The world tilted and she flung her right hand against the wall to steady herself. “Work?” The words came slowly from between her lips.

His face darkened. Was that a blush?

“Well, I mean we...we both know what this is about.” He stumbled over the words. “It can still be fun. I mean, I’m all about enjoying my work, but I usually lay down some ground rules. For both our protection.”

Jane was dead. Absolutely. Positively. Dead.

She set up this fiasco by hiring an escort, and now Casey had a nose-bleeding nerd in her room, and a blushing stud outside her door. Either could be her escort, and both of them were leading to nothing but trouble.

Her cell phone buzzed inside her bag. Before Mason could stumble over his we-need-to-lay-down-some-groundrules-speech anymore, she held up her finger for silence and flipped open the phone.

“There is big trouble, Casey. You’ve got to get off that boat.” Jane’s voice was bordering on hysterical. Casey had never heard her agent be anything but calm and supportive. This new Jane sent chills up and down her spine.

“I can’t get off the boat, Jane. We’re already underway.” Had been for some time, because when Casey had gone inside to grab her purse, she’d seen only a shrinking Miami outside her window.

“This is all my fault. I should have never suggested this. Should have just let you slink away and hide out in your apartment. The reporters would have gotten bored eventually. I could have brought you take out and we could have bashed stupid Nate.”

Bam, bam, bam.
Was Jane hammering her desk?

“What’s going on Jane? We’ll handle it.” She smiled at Mason and shrugged her shoulders as if to say, “Hey, we all have someone we have to take care of.”

Mason jiggled his head and grinned back at her.

Casey tried to decipher Mason’s attempt at sign language.

He walked the fingers of his right hand across his left palm, asking if she wanted him to leave.

No.

Yes.

Hell, she didn’t know. Shaking her head, she again focused on Jane, just in time for her world to explode.

“There’s a reporter on board with you.”

Casey fought down the bubble of panic rising in her throat. “But you’re the one that keeps telling me all press is good press.”