The Dare (8 page)

e simply dropped her hands and nodded, clearly agreeing with her. As she hurried from the bathroom to her clothes, she asked as she was getting dressed, “How did my clothes get here?”

“I used your room key and got them. I figured you’d rather wear something clean,” he answered from the bathroom.

Thanks for the reminder. But she smiled inwardly at his thoughtfulness. Most men would have made her do the walk of shame in her soiled clothes. “Thank you.”

“Does what I picked work?” he asked, coming out of the bathroom.

Looking down at her tennis shoe as she tied it, she shrugged and said, “You can’t really go wrong with plain on plain.” It was true; her entire wardrobe was monochromatic. Black on black, beige on beige, white on white or gray on gray. Didn’t get more exciting than that.

Simon chuckled as he rooted through his dresser. “You were anything but plain this morning.”

“Stop. Please.” She was about to do the walk of shame. She didn’t need to be reminded why.

“Only if you’ll have breakfast with me.”

“I ah—” Suddenly she was famished. And she didn’t want to leave. “I guess I could …” She knew the minute she agreed that she shouldn’t have. It was important to her that
she
be the one to walk away. Having breakfast with Simon only delayed the inevitable and gave him the chance to walk away first. She was about to retract her acceptance when his cell phone rang. To the tune of Barry Manilow’s “Mandy.” Ugh, breakup song. Her stomach did a slow, queasy roll.

“Hey,” he said to the caller. “What’s up?”

Katrina gathered her soiled clothes to go.

His tone was familiar, caring, and—just a hair shy of guilty. “I’m sorry, I’ve been busy.” He looked over his shoulder at her and smiled an awkward smile and put his finger up in a wait-a-minute motion.

“Right now? You’re here?” He asked surprised. “Yes, of course, give me five and meet me in the lobby.” He strode past her into the bathroom. “No, don’t come up here, I’ll meet you there.” He hung up.

Katy just stood frozen. Was she really the blindest female in the world? When Simon came out of the bathroom he looked like a man on a mission.

He looked at her as if just realizing she was still there. “Kat, I need to take care of something, I’ll be back in fifteen minutes tops. Would you wait for me?”

“I—”
Hell no
was on the tip of her tongue, but she knew those words would make her look like a woman scorned—which was how she felt, but had no right to feel. Secondly, it could either cause an argument or, even worse, he would just shrug and say adios. “Sure.”

He smiled, finished dressing, shrugged on his shoulder holster, pulled his big gun out of the dresser drawer, tucked it into the holster, grabbed his wallet and cell, then slid on his suit coat. He turned and caught her up, bent her over his long arm and soundly kissed her. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Breathless, she touched her fingertips to her lips, and stared at the door he had just gone through. Minutes later, she wondered why she was not running for her room and packing. Finally, she admitted it. She’d just had the best sex of her life and she wasn’t quite ready to admit it was over, even if he was downstairs meeting his ex-flavor of the month or current flavor of the month.

So she paced as she tried to sort her feelings out, but more importantly asking herself—why she was bothering in the first place!

Damn it, while she believed Simon when he said he wasn’t married, she highly doubted a stud of his caliber was unattached. Her shoulders sank. She just
knew
he was downstairs kissing and making up with someone just like her: an out-of-town fling. The rosy glow of the last few hours washed away as embarrassment took full root in her psyche. Always the fool, aren’t you, Katy?

Or maybe she was just overreacting? Allowing Evan’s lies to affect how she saw all men? Biting her lip, she looked around for a clue. Finally, they landed on Simon’s laptop. She shouldn’t spy, but …

The laptop was in sleep mode and once she woke it up her jaw dropped. His screen saver was a picture of him with a gorgeous blonde and the cutest little girl she had ever seen. There was no mistaking it: The little girl’s brilliant green eyes were the same as Simon’s.

She slammed the lid shut, grabbed her pukey clothes, shoes, and purse and ran from his room to the safety of hers. She had kicked herself over Evan because every damn sign had been there and she’d just been too ignorant to see them. With Simon, she had imagined him to be some knight in shining armor who had come to her rescue. And while there was no fantasy when it came to the sex, the reality was that it would end when she left the hotel. Believing he was not in a committed relationship with another woman, only to discover that he was just like every other guy out there, tarnished everything. She would never knowingly date a cheater.
Period.

She was done. Done taking sloppy seconds and done being the consolation prize. She could not pack fast enough before she was striding through the lobby. Glutton for punishment that she was, she couldn’t help glancing at the open restaurant that was serving breakfast. There she was, the blonde in the picture, clinging like a vine to Simon as he whispered sweet nothings in her ear.

Hot tears stung her eyes as she ran from the hotel and into the waiting cab.

Wanting to get home to familiar territory to lick her wounds in private, Katy took an earlier flight.

On the cab ride to her apartment, she turned her cell on for the first time in days. It pinged that she had a text. No one but Evan texted her and she was not interested in anything he had to say. She turned it off.

When she exited the elevator to her penthouse apartment atop a converted Neo Classic mansion in Pacific Heights, she bumped into Rosalinda Mai Ramirez Lowenstein, her best friend, and her only neighbor on the penthouse level. Rosie was an eclectic combination of Cuban, Vietnamese, Caucasian and crazy. Her husband, Elliot was a warm, and gentle Jewish man from Brooklyn who everyone called “Supe.”

“Hey, love,” Rosie squealed throwing her arms around Katy’s neck. Rosie was like a dog that way, Katy could be gone for a day or a month or in this case four days, and Rosie enthusiastically greeted her as if she had been gone for a year.

“I was just checking to see if you were home yet. I have to talk to you, sweet-pea. And you’re not going to like it.”

Exhaling loudly, Katy’s shoulders slumped. As if she needed more bad news. “Can’t it wait, Rosie? I’m exhausted.”

Rosie cocked her head sideways making a clucking sound. She was in great shape for her age, which Rosie never divulged but Katy figured to be in the neighborhood of sixty-ish. After contemplating Katy’s request, Rosie shook her head, grabbed Katy’s elbow and guided her down the hall to her apartment door. “No can do. This info is too hot to keep the lid on.”

Katy allowed herself to be half dragged half pushed toward her apartment. “Because the world will come to an end if you don’t share you gossip with me tonight.”

Rosie shook her head. “I wish it were gossip.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a string of keys, inserted one into Katy’s door and pushed it open. Holding the key up, Rosie smiled. “Sleeping with the supe has its perks.”

“I’ll remember that.” If it had been anyone other than Rosie, Katy would have been angry. But Rosie was like family.

Katy walked through the threshold and calmness immediately infiltrated her being. She was home. Her retreat from the world. “Set your bags down, we have to talk. But you have to promise not to kill the messenger, okay?” Rosie nervously said.

“I could never kill you.”

“Wait until you hear this!”

She pushed Katy down into the Dante chair in her circular marble floored foyer and leaned over her, tilting her chin up so they looked directly into each other’s eyes. Katy blinked. “Hear what?”

“I hate to tell you this, but Evan has a wife.”

Katy felt as if she had been kicked in the gut again. Not this time because she was hurt, she was over Evan, but the hurt and humiliation that went along with how and when they broke up still stung. It would for a long time. “I know.”

Rosie gasped and stood up straight. “And you kept seeing him knowing he was a cheater?”

Standing Katy shook her head. “I didn’t know until two nights ago. Then I kicked him to the curb.”

“I’m so sorry, sweet-pea. I really am,” Rosie soothed patting her shoulder.

Katy walked through the foyer into the short hallway then into her small but highly functional gourmet kitchen and dropped her purse, cell phone and portfolio on the kitchen table, then headed for her bedroom. “How do you know?” she asked.

“Eliot saw him and a blonde coming out of Kuleto’s last week while you were in New York. He watched them being all kissy-huggy-face while they waited for their car, and well, Elliot being Elliot, he wrote down the license plate number and because he has access to secured sites for tenant background checks, he ran the plates. Came up registered to a Melinda Anne Scott and Evan Dryer Scott of Menlo Park. She matched the Mrs.’s driver’s license picture.”

So the blonde in the hotel room
was
his wife. Lucky for Evan she hadn’t shown up a day earlier. “Remind me not to break any laws around you two,” Katy dryly said but wondered,
was a threesome with a cop breaking the law?
Her body flushed as she thought of Simon. She hadn’t stopped thinking of him all day.

“Ohhh, I know that look! Did you meet someone else already?”

“I’m done with men, Rosie. I pick lousy ones. And I’m tired of getting hurt.”

“You just haven’t met the right man yet, sweet-pea. Did I ever tell you how many lovers I had before I met Elliot?”

“Surprisingly no,” Katy chuckled. Rosie never held back details. The more sordid the better.

“I stopped counting after thirty.”

“You stopped counting after thirty? Oh, my God, Rosie!”

“Most of them were frogs. A few had prince potential but I never settled for any of them because I knew they weren’t the one for me. But I knew the minute Elliot walked into my restaurant he was the one. I told him so too. It took about a year before he believed me. And that was thirty-one years ago.”

“I can’t believe you had sex with over thirty men!”

“How else was I going to know if we were compatible? If you aren’t compatible in the bedroom, chances are you won’t be out of it.”

Katy swallowed loudly. If that was an indicator, she and Simon were soul mates. “Sex isn’t everything in a relationship, Rosie.”

“If you’re not getting good sex, it ain’t. But once you have great sex, there’s no settling for less.”

Then Katy was doomed to be disappointed for the rest of her life. Simon had ruined other men for her.

She turned on her bedroom light and tossed her suitcase onto her bed.

“We’ll talk more later, Rosie. Right now, I’m exhausted.”

“You look like you’ve been crying, sweet-pea. I’m sorry about Evan. He seemed like such a nice man, although Elliot thought he was a bit of a bore.”

“Elliot was right.” She hugged her friend goodnight and told her to lock up after herself. When she heard the front door open and close, Katy stripped and took a long hot shower.

Afterward, as she stood naked looking at herself in the steamy mirror, she touched the small bruises along her jugular, compliments of Simon. Her body trembled, and despite her anger at him, her nipples tightened and her womb constricted with desire. God she was going to miss the crazy sex with that talented stud. She wrapped herself in a big fluffy robe. She was going to miss his warmth and his deep voice. Goose bumps erupted along her arms and chest, ending at her nipples as she heard the deep husky timbre of it in her imagination. Dragging her feet into the kitchen, she warmed a can of soup and stared at her cellphone on the table while she ate in silence.

Piercing green eyes that looked past her beige exterior to her core, flashed before her. A deep-seated loneliness gripped her. She choked on a noodle. There was more to Simon, the hot cop, than met the eye, and damn if she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to get to know all of him better.