On His List (Entangled Flirts) (5 page)

And he was only offering to stay another day.

“Remy?” he asked.

She met his eyes. His beautiful hazel eyes looked puzzled. He was not for her. Owen Savoy was for girls like Mallory from that company. Girls who understood his world. Girls who didn’t have couches that had to be flea-bombed when they first got them.

“Maybe next time you can plan on staying a little longer.” She forced a smile onto her mouth, though it probably looked more like a grimace, and it hurt. It literally hurt to smile with as disappointed she was.

“Can I get your phone number?”

She nodded, reaching into her purse. Grabbing her business card, she scribbled her home and cell numbers on the back. Her pen paused for a moment, and she almost added a heart. No. Too obvious. Even if he was taking her heart with him, he didn’t need to know it.

He took the card and leaned forward to kiss her one last time. It was just a brush of their lips, nothing deep, but it almost killed her resolve. She almost sprung from the car, yelling, “Take me! Take me! Take me!” But she didn’t. Because for the first time, Remy Maison was being cautious and sticking to a list.

He made quick work of gathering his papers and luggage from the backseat. When he got out a moment later, he still looked confused in an adorable way that wanted to break her in half. She waved when he did.

At least he hadn’t tipped her and, damn, she hated being evicted.

Good-bye tip.

Good-bye rent.

Good-bye Owen.

Lists truly and completely sucked.

Chapter Six

“You don’t look so good,” Hannah said when she walked through the back door of the day spa the next morning. “You okay, Remy?”

“Long day that didn’t turn out to be a day off,” she explained.

Remy yanked open her locker with enough force to nearly rip it off its hinges. Her eyes had been red-rimmed when she’d gotten back to the apartment last night, and Denny had wanted to ask a ton of questions, but he’d had to return the sedan. She’d hidden in her room, feigning sleep, when he got back.

This morning, their conversation had been terse.

“What happened? You got back later than expected and you never mentioned a tip.”

“I didn’t sleep with him.”

“I didn’t say you did. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Of course not!” She’d done that all on her own. “It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ve got work.”

She shoved out the door with her brother shouting after her, “We’ll talk about this later!”

Remy took a deep cleansing breath as she often had her clients do. In. Out. Today would be better.

“What’s on the books for today?” she asked Hannah. Hopefully, she’d be busy. Too busy to think about Owen.

“Actually…I need to talk to you about that.” Hannah’s nose wrinkled up, and she tilted her head to the side. “We had a really strange request this morning.”

Remy shoved her purse in her locker, but shifted to look at Hannah. “Strange like…creepy?” She couldn’t handle creepy. Not today. Not after yesterday. She was spun glass perched on the edge of a precipice today.

“I’m not sure.”

“I’m
not
doing hot stone massages on a guy again,” Remy said. Somehow, the last guy had totally misinterpreted the name of the treatment. It should have clued her in when he’d asked if rock massages were painful.

“Well, no. He scheduled you for the entire day…or he wants to. I told him I’d have to run it by you. I can shift your appointments to my book if you’re on board with this. I
think
he likes you, but he also might need that long of a massage to actually relax.”

Remy blinked and repeated, “The whole day?” She swallowed all the swear words that wanted to trip off her lips. “Does he have short black hair, a hot, hot body, and look really uptight in a sexy ‘do me’ sort of way?”

Hannah grinned. “He had me estimate how many appointments you could possibly have in a day. And he asked me if you ever skipped lunch to do a massage and insisted on paying for that hour too when I said you had.”

Her heart sunk. So much for last night’s clean break. He wanted one more day. He was going to shatter her heart to smithereens.

“What? Is that not okay?” Hannah asked, watching her face.

“No. It’s okay,” she said with a sigh. It was amazing, and it sucked at the same time. Her heart and hormones couldn’t compete with Owen Savoy’s determination. If he wanted her for one more day, he could have her for one more day. Some fights had no winners.

“He’s really cute,” Hannah said. “And he even insisted on calculating tips for each appointment.”

“He would.”

“You know how Melissa swears you can tell what sort of lover a man will be from how much he tips?” Melissa was always getting in trouble for shooting off her mouth around clients. There was friendly, and then there was Melissa.

“Yeah?” Remy asked. Okay, fine, she wanted to know.

Hannah snorted. “All I’m saying is that you’d better get him out of here before Melissa comes in, and if his tips are any indication…trust me, you would have been too busy to eat lunch.”

“I might get in trouble for this.” It was a last-ditch effort. If Owen wanted her day this badly…if he wanted her this badly…

“You won’t. I swear, you won’t. We’ll cover for you,” Hannah said.

Remy groaned and slammed her locker closed. “Okay. Fine. He is somewhat irresistible.”

They walked through the front desk to see Owen, sitting in their waiting area, flipping through a cooking magazine, engrossed. She inhaled. Warm cotton and pine trees. And he looked good enough to eat. All her sinful fantasies about wooded places and Owen returned, making her skin flush.

Hannah bumped her shoulder with hers, whispering, “Go get him, Remy,” before going to the schedule book to start moving clients from Remy’s schedule.

Remy cleared her throat and tried not to grin when Owen looked up and his mouth spread in that gorgeous perfect smile.

“C’mon, Mr. Savoy,” she said dryly, gesturing for him to follow her.

In her massage room, she shut the door and turned the lights down to a soft glow. She dimmed the lights for all her clients, especially when they were facing the ceiling, but it felt more like mood-lighting with Owen. She took another one of those cleansing breaths before saying, “Okay, take your shirt off.”

It wasn’t the way she’d pictured saying that for the first time in their relationship, but it was just as breathless as if they’d been in one of her fantasies.

“What?” he asked.

“You’ve paid for a massage, and I’ve thought you needed one since I first saw you. Normally, I’d leave the room and have you strip down, but I don’t want to lose my license for inappropriate behavior.” If he were naked, she’d want to be all kinds of inappropriate—especially when he smelled so good, and she’d been thinking about him all night. Until they settled things between them, she was just going to give him a massage.

That was all.

“Yeah. Just your shirt,” she reinforced. Just his shirt.

Turning away, he unbuttoned his shirt, pulled it off, folded it carefully, and set it on a chair in the corner. She’d pegged he’d be a “folder.” Some of her clients did that, and it had always amused her. With Owen, it was sexy as hell. He’d done it all so slowly and deliberately it was like a free striptease. Of course,
everything
was sexy as hell with him.

Shaking her head at herself, she spun and pulled down the sheets on the thickly padded table. When she turned around and saw his chest, she almost had him put his shirt back on. The flash of heat nearly staggered her. Holy wow. His pectoral muscles alone were begging to be touched. And those abs! Remy closed her eyes and took a few more deep cleansing breaths. At this rate, she was going to hyperventilate and pass out.

“I wanted to talk with you,” he said.

It hit her like a blast of cold air. Most of her relationships had ended with those words. Why would he still pay for her whole day if he was trying to end it? They’d barely begun.

She arranged the face cushion for something to do with her hands. He’d paid for a massage, and she’d give him a massage. She was a
professional
, dammit. Clearing her throat, she patted the massage table. “Lie down. Facedown,” she said.

He stared at the table. “I’ve never had a massage. I don’t really care for strangers touching me.”

Swallowing back the hurt, she folded her arms and glared at him. Oh for hell’s sake, she was going to walk out. Enough was enough.

He glanced up. “No, not you. I mean, I’ve never done this.” His obvious chagrin at mentally replaying his previous comment made him docile as a lamb, and he lay down on the table quickly, almost eagerly.

Clenching her jaw tightly, she swallowed her frustration. She’d start at his neck and work down. Hopefully he wouldn’t say anything that would make her want to choke him to death.

“I can tell you’ve never had a massage. You know these muscles right here.” She rubbed along his trapezius muscles at the base of his neck, which stretched taut into his shoulders. “These aren’t supposed to be so tight you can bounce things off them.” Steel was softer and more pliant than the muscles in his shoulders.

He laughed and then relaxed, bit by hard-won bit, as she rubbed his shoulders. She’d forgotten to turn on the songs of nature soundtrack she usually played, so she hummed snatches of music softly under her breath.

“I like your noise,” he murmured.

“What?” That was a weird thing to say and, besides, Denny had told her over and over Owen preferred quiet.

“Last night, when I was alone in my hotel room, I realized how cold the air felt without you, humming or talking or moving around in it. It felt dead. You made the air feel alive.”

Even as her heart skipped, she said, “You’re just being nice. These muscles probably weren’t half as bad yesterday.”

“No, Remy. I’m not. You’re always humming, always moving. It’s not like me to enjoy that, but I do. With you, I do.”

She licked her dry lips and went in a little deeper on the muscles at the base of his skull.

“Do your jaw muscles sometimes pop when you eat?”

“Are they not supposed to?” he asked.

She laughed. “No. That’s from clenching your jaw all the time. We need to teach you how to loosen up.” Realizing what she’d said, she clamped her own jaw shut. What was she saying?
Stop it, Remy. Stop talking. Let him do all the talking.

“I can see your feet through this face cushion,” he said, pointing down at her painted red toenails. A minute of silence elapsed as she massaged his tight muscles. He was actually starting to relax up until he cleared his throat to say something. “Last night. In the car.”

For a moment, she froze like a statue, bracing for the emotional and physical hurt to follow. Waiting for him to say she’d disappointed him somehow. A blink later, she’d put on her game face and was back to massaging his neck. “What about it?”

“I wanted to go do something with you, but I think I screwed up,” he said.

“What did you want to go do?”

He tipped his head to the side so he wasn’t addressing her feet “Anything. It didn’t matter.”

“I’m not a one-night stand kind of girl.”

He frowned. “I didn’t imply that I…Remy, I wasn’t ever thinking you were.”

She swallowed and moved down to rub the taut muscles in his upper back. He
had
offered to stay another day. Maybe he was saying she was a two-night stand kind of girl. Today was going to be cruel and unusual torture. It was like offering a girl a taste and then taking away the frosted cake and sending it to Miami. “Yeah, well, you don’t live here, and…”

“I could.”

She lifted her hands and took a few steps back. “We don’t know each other that well, Owen. You’re probably just curious because I’m so different from what you’re used to.” There was no way she was going to let him make huge changes in his life for her. What if he couldn’t handle that much change? He’d eventually get annoyed with all the little things she did which didn’t follow any of his lists. She was
not
a list follower. She had firmly jettisoned them after last night, and her list had just been in her head.

“I took the next two weeks off. I’m staying here for two weeks. I think we can figure things out in that amount of time.” Reaching out, he grabbed her hand, tugging her back toward him. He flipped on his back so he could watch her expression. “You can show me around. I can actually find out how my investments run when the companies don’t know I’m coming. We can see how we are and if it’ll last between us.”

“I work, and you can’t just use your money to buy me again.” It drew attention to how different they were. Crap, when he saw her apartment, he might run for the hills anyway. She dropped her head in frustration but that drew her eyes to their joined hands, and the small circles he was tracing with his thumb on the outside of hers.

He tugged on her hand to get her attention. His eyes were so sincere that her heart gave in with a single, fatal thump. She’d put up a token resistance, but he
was
staying for two weeks. They could get into all sorts of trouble in two weeks.

“I won’t. I’ll see you at lunch and then after work. Whatever it takes. That was just for today—to make up for using up your day off yesterday.” He smiled. Her doomed heart did backflips. She’d never grow immune to his smile. “On your next day off, I can drive you around.”

She snorted at that.

“I also called and left a rather substantial tip for your brother since I was grateful for his misery yesterday. That was something else I might have screwed up last night. I wasn’t thinking…rationally.”

“Well, we had gone off your list.”

“Wait, that reminds me, I have a list.”

She tried not to groan. A list? Not another list.

He dug into his pocket and pulled out a list that had been typed…and printed. Okay, that was sort of adorable. He’d printed it. That had to mean something. She saw her name on the top as he unfolded it, so she snatched it from him.

Reasons I Need Remy

1) I want her more than a window in prison.

2) Watching her put on lip gloss was better than most of my previous dates.

3) I couldn’t sleep last night because I thought I’d upset her.

4) I’ve never felt this way about anyone.

5) I need someone to remind me that I don’t always need lists.

6) I’d rather be shanked in my sleep than go back to my life in Miami.

7) She’s a good driver.

“I’m a good driver?” Remy asked.

“You are,” he pointed out. “We saved a lot of time yesterday.”

She smothered a smile and went back to reading.

8) Because I’ll always regret not taking this chance.

9) I still don’t know her real first name.

10) Not kissing her again might kill me.

“Those are ten good reasons,” she said, folding the list back up. A love note—in list form. Lists might grow on her if they were always like that. He was right about ten being ideal. It felt ideal. Instead of putting it in his outstretched hand, she tucked the folded paper into her bra, and a smile spread across his face.

“What do you say?” he asked.

“Remember,” she said.

He frowned. “Remember what?”

She leaned down and brushed a kiss across his cheek in a soft caress before stopping her lips beside his ear. “Remember is my real first name,” she whispered. “My parents were cruel and thought it was fun. My last name, Maison, means home in French. So, Remember Home. They thought they were clever.”

His mouth stretched in a wide grin as the words sunk in. “What’s Denny’s real name?”

“I can’t tell you. You’ll have to make him fall for you too, Mr. Savoy.”