Romancing Miss Right (27 page)

She kept walking.

“Marcy.”

She ignored Craig’s irritated call behind her
as she pushed through the door and wended through the maze of
stairs and hallways to get back to the main part of the hotel. She
moved quickly, wanting to put some distance between her and her
latest mistake, but she could hear his footsteps on her heels. He
was only a few feet behind her when she realized she must have
taken a wrong turn.

She stopped, glaring at another hall that
looked exactly like the one she’d just left. “Shit.”

“Do you trust me to at least help you get to
your room?” he asked behind her, irritation thrumming through his
voice.

She turned around, a refusal already on her
lips, prepared to ask the nearest PA for directions rather than
give in to him even that much—but they were alone in the hallway.
No cameras, no producers. Just them.

Of course the one moment she actually
wanted
the cameras on her, they would be tangled up in their
own cords on the freaking roof.

“Which way is it?” she asked grudgingly.

Craig jerked his chin and they started back
in the direction they’d come. She wasn’t sure what she
expected—definitely some sort of long-winded diatribe, no doubt; he
wasn’t the strong silent type—but he didn’t say a word as he guided
her through the maze of halls. They reached a cream colored door
with
Palazzo
painted on it in flowery gold script and Craig
stopped with a mocking half bow.

A single cameraman appeared at the end of the
hallway, the red light gleaming above his lens.

“Do I at least get to know what I did wrong?”
Craig asked, defensive acidity coating the words.

“It isn’t you. It’s me.”
I realized you
were never going to change. Never going to magically become the man
who can let himself love me.

“I deserve more than a cliché, Marcy,” he
growled.

“And I deserve more than a man who
might
feel something for me someday.” She plucked the key
from his fingers, unlocked the door and slipped inside, keeping one
hand on the door to make certain he knew he was not invited in.
“Good night, Craig.”

The door shut with a definitive snap.
Closure. That was it. The end of her last date with Craig Corrow.
The next time she saw him would be the day of her Final Choice. She
would tell him that she couldn’t be with him, pick Daniel, and be
officially Daniel’s Girl for the rest of her life.

She’d never kiss another man.

She’d never kiss Craig again.

“Shit.”

Marcy whirled, throwing open the hotel
door.

His name came out a panicked yelp.
“Craig!”

Chapter Thirty-One

He’d only made it a few feet down the
hall—still wondering what the hell was wrong with her all of a
sudden—when he heard the door open and Marcy call out his name. The
camera guy had stayed only long enough to catch the door slamming
in his face before slipping away—doubtless eager to finish his own
shift and call it a night—so there was no one watching them in the
hall when Craig turned to face the woman who confused and intrigued
and turned him on.

“Yeah?”

Some wild light lit her eyes, fervent and a
little desperate.

He came closer and her hands shot out,
gripping his lapels and yanking him into the room. The door clicked
shut behind him and then she shoved him back against it, pressing
her body against his as she went up on her toes and dragged him
down for a kiss.

His blood heated as they went from zero to
pure, blinding lust in two-point-two seconds. She was a live wire
in his arms, twisting her arms around his neck, rubbing her breasts
against his chest and grinding her hips into his. He barely had the
presence of mind to lift his head, thunking it against the door.
“Marcy, damn. Not that I’m complaining, but what the hell?”

“No regrets. Okay?”

She lunged for his mouth again and he
dodged—
why the fuck was he dodging?
“I don’t know what that
means.”

“It means kiss me.”

He caught her hands as they tangled in his
hair, carefully unwinding her. “Marcy…”

“It means if this is the only night we’re
ever going to spend together, I don’t want to waste it.”

The only night. The words hit him hard and he
sucked in a breath heavy with the scent of her. She hadn’t made up
her mind yet, he knew that. But it hadn’t occurred to him that if
she really did choose Daniel, this might be all he ever got of
her.

He claimed her mouth without another word,
spinning them so it was her back pressed to the door, pinning her
tight against him. She made a sound, half pleasure half plea, and
lifted her arms around his neck. He spanned her waist, lifting her,
and her legs came around his waist. He groaned and his hips pulsed
forward of their own volition, rubbing his erection against the
apex of her thighs.

She twisted her lips away from his with a
gasp, meeting his eyes with big blue pools of lust. “Did they rig
this room with cameras?”

He struggled to make sense of her words with
all the blood rushing away from his brain. “Just the other
bedroom—for confessional footage. Overnights are private.”

She was yanking at something beneath her
clothes and then the small black wireless microphone pack emerged.
She flicked it off and flung it aside, along with the tiny mic from
her hair. Her hands plunged beneath his clothes to rip off his mic
and send it flying after hers.

“Nothing is private,” she muttered, and
pulled him in for another kiss, tongues tangling and bodies
straining toward one another until cameras were the farthest thing
from his mind. He finally had her alone, in his arms, right where
he wanted her.

“Bed,” she gasped against his lips.

Okay, good call,
that
was where he
wanted her.

He hitched her up, stumbling into an end
table he couldn’t see in the muted light filtering through the
curtains, and strode toward the bedroom. He kicked the edge of a
chair and cursed, making Marcy break away from his lips as she
clung to him.

“You should put me down before you seriously
injure yourself.”

“I’ve told you how I feel about
should
.” He made it through the door to the bedroom—with a
blessedly unobstructed path to the bed. “Besides, I’d be crazy to
let you go now that I’ve got you in my arms.”

“You
are
crazy.”

“Not that crazy.”

He eased her onto her back on top of the
duvet, lowering himself over her until just the impression of his
weight pressed her into the mattress.

She hadn’t chosen him yet—he knew that—but
that uncertainty was part of the beginning of most relationships,
wasn’t it? How many couples had everything perfectly defined the
first time they had sex? This was just like that. Uncertainty and
fire.

Craig looked down at her, caught by the
expression on her face. There was lust and heat and need—but
something else softened her eyes and parted her lips. Something he
didn’t dare examine too closely.

He’d had plenty of meaningless sex, but as he
studied the familiar shape of her face and got lost in the
unplumbed depths of her eyes, he knew this would be different. It
would mean something with Marcy. It would mark a piece of his soul
he’d kept purposely untouched—but tonight he wanted that. He wanted
her to brand him, even if it was just for tonight.

Tomorrow he could go back to being an island
unto himself. Tonight he was hers.

Craig eased himself down and pressed his lips
to hers, sealing the silent promise with a kiss.

#

Marcy stood in the hotel bathroom, swathed in
a hotel robe, and stared at her face in the mirror, wondering why
it didn’t look as cataclysmically changed as she felt.

She might have just cheated on Daniel. Sort
of. They weren’t technically in a relationship and according to the
rules they all lived by in this messed up situation Craig had as
much claim on her as Daniel did—so why did it
feel
like
cheating? Had she already made her decision on some instinctive
level and this feeling was a reaction to that?

And if she had cheated, why didn’t she feel
guilty? If she didn’t feel guilty for cheating, that definitely
made her a terrible person. Didn’t it?

Either way, hiding out in the bathroom wasn’t
going to help matters.

Marcy splashed some water on her face, patted
it dry with a fluffy towel, and returned to the bedroom. Craig was
sitting up in bed, naked—but at least there was a sheet draped over
his lap. “You okay?” he asked, demonstrating that uncanny ability
to read her as she approached the bed.

“Fine.” She knelt on the bed near his
feet.

“Just fine?” he asked with mock affront.

“You know that was better than fine.”

Craig had aptly demonstrated that he knew how
to make her feel very fine indeed. Multiple times. But taking
pleasure in something didn’t make it right. Even if it was a
lot
of pleasure.

“It doesn’t have to be the only night,” he
said, turning somber and soft on her.

Yes, it does.
The thought rang in her
mind with absolute certainty. “Daniel talks about forever. About
marriage and kids and the future,” she said, her tone as soft as
his, but twice as firm. “You can’t even admit you have feelings for
me.”

His expression darkened in another lightning
turn of his mood. “So this was what? Sowing wild oats?”

“Something like that. I haven’t chosen him
yet, but as soon as I officially do, I can’t be with you
anymore.”

“Are you so certain you will?”

She looked away, unable to answer the
question, but knowing the answer had to be yes.

He reached for her, catching her by her robe
and tugging her closer. “Then we’d better make this night
count.”

She knew she should resist. She was Daniel’s
now. Her heart and mind knew that now even if her body hadn’t quite
caught up. She shouldn’t fall back into Craig’s arms again… but she
was adopting his aversion to shoulds.

And it was so easy to fall.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Miranda sat in the hotel
café with her tablet and didn’t bother looking up from the adjusted
budget for the Final Choice shoot when a shadow appeared, hovering
over her espresso and biscotti. “Spit it out, Emily.”

“We might have screwed up.”

Miranda lifted her eyes to the wide-eyed PA.
Had she ever been that young? “I don’t like vague, Emily.”

The girl wet her lips, shifting nervously
from foot to foot. “Craig spent the night with Marcy.”

Miranda frowned. “Linus told me she threw him
out and slammed the door in his face last night. We have footage of
it.”

“He must have gone back,” Emily squeaked.
“When Amelia went in this morning to run through the previous night
with Marcy for the confessional, he was still there.”

Miranda pinched the bridge of her nose. “Tell
me we got footage of his walk of shame,” she said without much
hope.

“Amelia didn’t bring a mobile camera team
because she thought it would just be standard confessional
footage.”

“And we didn’t put hidden cameras in the
suite. Shit.” She pursed her lips. “We have no video evidence of
them entering the room together, being together inside or him
exiting the room. Were the mics hot at least? Audio?”

“Indistinct. It’s very muffled. And then they
took off their mic packs.”

“Of course they did.” She cursed softly.
This is what happens when you fucking delegate.
She’d been
so much better lately. Letting her people do their jobs, actually
getting nearly normal amounts of sleep each night. She’d finally
learned how not to micromanage every little detail and now this.
Fantastic. “So who am I firing? You? Is that why Linus and Amelia
sent you to deliver the news? Did they think I would kill the
messenger?”

Emily’s face drained of color. “I—I
didn’t—”

“Relax. I’m not firing you. Yet. I still need
you to coordinate the drivers to get us out to that god forsaken
lake for the Final Choice shoot.”

“Ms. Pierce—”

“Emily. This is an epic fuck-up. Someone is
getting shit canned, but it won’t be you because it wasn’t your
epic fuck-up. Tell Linus and Amelia to stop being cowards and get
their asses in here to face the music.”

“Asses already present,” Linus stepped
forward from a nearby alcove, Amelia at his side.

“Sending a PA to deliver the news was
cowardly, Linus. I expect better from you.”

“You would have fired me on the spot if I’d
told you myself.”

“Probably. It’s still an option. Our job is
to get footage of
everything
and you let Miss Right get laid
without even a PI-style still shot of our boy entering the room.
Care to tell me how that happened?”

“It was the roof shoot,” Amelia complained.
“We weren’t prepared for being on battery that long and when they
ran downstairs, we lost them for a minute. One of the camera guys
caught them outside the room and managed to get the shot of Marcy
kicking Craig out, but his battery was dying and it was late and we
didn’t think there would be anything more that night—”

“And no one thought to track either of them
down to get their reactions to the fight while they were still
worked up?”

“We did, but we couldn’t find Craig.” Amelia
swallowed nervously. “His mic pack was off by then so we figured he
must have gone to walk it off or something. I knocked on Marcy’s
door but she didn’t answer and her mic was dark so I figured she
was asleep.”

“I’m really liking the idea of firing you,
Amelia. When did you think to playback the audio?”

She wet her lips. “This morning. After I
saw…”

“Sadly we can’t put your account of what you
saw on the air.” Miranda cursed again, closing the budget
report.