Page 17 of Never Marry the Best Man (Whatever It Takes #4)

“Dear Chunk, We waited around but you didn’t seem in the mood to talk, so we’re off to get some sleep. We stayed behind because Ranney refused to leave in your hour of need and I didn’t think she should be alone in the City of Sin. See you tomorrow. T”

“There,” Tom said, folding the note like a tent and placing it prominently on the rolling bed tray. “That should make it clear to everyone that you didn’t abandon your post.” For good measure, he took a picture of it with his phone.

“Maybe we should just sleep in the waiting area,” Ranney suggested. “We don’t have a hotel room and it’s three a.m.”

“Absolutely not. If I sleep sitting up in a chair, my mouth will drop open and I’ll drool, and possibly snore, and I don’t want you to see me that way at this early stage.”

“Early stage of what?”

“Our courtship, of course.”

The reply was as matter-of-fact as if she had asked him the time, which just added to her confusion. She wondered briefly whether exhaustion could cause hallucinations; it didn’t seem impossible.

“Our..?”

“There, you see? This is a subtle operation. Even you don’t realize it yet. Don’t want to risk overexposure. Tempting, but a fatal mistake. Achilles is outside. What’s your preference, Luxor or Bellagio?”

This must just be his British sense of humor. All her friends loved BritBox, but half the time, she couldn’t see exactly what was so funny. She decided to ignore it.

Odd, though, when they were driving around the city, she got all his jokes…

“Whatever is closest–a Motel 6 or a Holiday Inn. It’s just a place to shower and sleep for a couple of hours. I don’t even have a bag. It went to the Freestone.”

“As you wish.” Charlie stirred in the bed and Tom held a finger to his lips and nodded toward the door.

When Achilles delivered them to the nearest budget hotel, Tom tried to pay for both rooms, but she intervened in time. The desk clerk seemed entirely unsurprised at the three a.m. arrival of a bedraggled couple with no luggage who requested separate rooms, but it was Las Vegas, after all.

Anything can happen.

“All right, then,” Tom said at her door. By now, even he was looking a little bit worse for the wear. “Call me when you wake up. You’d better call the room, my phone will probably be dead again. Are you sure you have everything you need?”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

“Thank you .” His smile was tired but genuine. “This bachelor weekend has turned out to be much more fun than I ever anticipated.”

He started toward his room, then turned back and kissed her quickly on the cheek. “Good night.”

Her room, once she was inside, was obviously recently re-done. The king-sized bed was as inviting as any at the Four Seasons, and she had to force herself to shower before falling face down onto its crisp white sheets.

It was 3 a.m. in Vegas, which was 6 a.m. in Boston. She could call and leave a voice mail, but why not sleep for a couple of hours and enjoy this nice, clean bed.

Which was where she found herself when the hotel phone rang in the morning. She woke with a little shriek, pulse jumping–for Pete’s sake, why is that phone so loud? No hotel room, not even a suite, is so big that it requires an Emergency Alert System siren to alert you to a call.

Still in a fog, she fumbled for the receiver.

“Hello?” Even she could hear the rasp in her voice. But there was just a dial tone in response. Huh.

She sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at the Boston Irish Wolfhounds shirt–men’s 3XL–that she had bought in the airport.

A scraping sensation at the back of her neck made her reach up and she realized she hadn’t bothered to remove the tags before she passed out last night.

As she yanked at the thin plastic loop, there was a tap at the door.

For Pete’s sake - could she just wake up gradually, in a civilized manner, maybe with a cup of disgusting pod coffee from the machine on the desk?

“No service yet, please! Can you come back later?” she called in the direction of the door.

The tap was repeated, and she took a few steps in that direction.

“Not now! Later! No, thank you!” She raised her voice.

“Ranney?”

It all came flooding back. The plane, the accident, the midnight tour of Las Vegas, the debacle of missing the flight to Idaho… Tom.

Tom.

Tom was knocking on her door, not the cleaning staff.

Flipping the metal bar, she turned the bolt and cracked the door open a few inches. “Hey.”

A beat passed in silence as he took in her nightshirt, but he recovered quickly, holding a cup of coffee in his hand. He held the to-go cup toward her, which she reflexively reached for, then realized she had to open the door to get the drink.

“Good morning. I called, but you didn’t pick up,” he said as he walked in, the warm coffee tingling her fingers as she wrapped them around the cup. “I was thinking we might want to get to the hospital before Ani does? It’s ten o’clock and if–”

“ Ten o’clock! Oh, no!” The curtains were closed tight and the room was pitch dark. Running to the window, she pulled the plastic wand and blinding sunlight streamed in. Slowly, she walked over to the bedside table where her phone lay, cord plugged into the lamp base, and stood staring down at it.

Then she sipped from the coffee. Strong. Black. Bracing.

She needed it.

“I’m afraid to look at my phone,” she said in a small voice. “I silenced it when I went to sleep. My bosses, my colleagues - my team. I'm -- I’m not even dressed yet and already the day is a total disaster. This doesn’t happen to me.”

“Right. Here’s what we’re going to do,” he told her.

“First, get dressed. Then this won’t be happening before you’re even dressed.

Drink your coffee. Then Achilles is going to drive us to the hospital and you can start answering messages.

That way, when someone says ‘Where are you?’ you can say, ‘I’m at the hospital. ’ That always stops them cold.”

“That’s… brilliant,” she whispered, though a nagging thought tapped at the base of her neck; Work, for once, hadn't been a priority. She felt immense guilt, but something else as well.

Something nice.

Something different.

“One question. You’re a Hounds fan?”

She stared at him blankly, and he pointed to her shirt. “Rugby? The Irish Wolfhounds?”

“Oh! No, I bought this at the airport. I needed something to sleep in, and it was the only one they had. It’s not even my size.” She held the extra yards of fabric away from her body. “I don’t know anything about rugby.”

“I’m going to teach you.”

“Thank you, but we don’t have time for that.” Picking up her skirt from yesterday, she held it up for inspection, shaking it out.

“I didn’t mean right now! Anyway, it’s off season. We’ll go to some games in the fall.”

Genuinely perplexed, she looked up. “We..?”

His courtship joke from late last night popped back into her head. He didn’t sound like he was joking now; he sounded like someone who was matter-of-factly making plans for the future.

In the midst of all this work stress, the last thing she needed was an awkward situation with a member of the wedding party. Her mature, professional brain told her that she needed to address this, nip it in the bud, not ignore it until it turned into a real problem.

But… what if she were imagining the whole thing?

It was pretty hard to believe that such a handsome, intelligent, successful man–a man who was funny and charming and could have any woman he chose–was actually interested in someone old enough to be his…

aunt? How utterly mortifying if she brought it up seriously and he’d only been bantering with her, because it was so obviously out of the question!

How humiliating! But how could she know for sure?

And then she did know for sure, because he had crossed the six feet between them and he was kissing her.

Gently, holding her face in his hands, he was tasting her lips for the first time but intentionally, as if he knew this was only the beginning.

That there were infinite kisses ahead of them, no need to move too fast or press too hard.

As if they both knew it.

“Yes,” he said softly, breaking apart, “ we . You and me. In the fall. Because I want to spend time with you, doing all kinds of things. Doing everything.” He pressed his forehead to hers and she inhaled his breath, smelling coffee and hope, instinctively wanting more, not thinking of any time or space or anything beyond this moment.

Fall. Boston in autumn, the leaves changing color, the crew teams on the Charles, the way the air turned sophisticated and crisp. Imagine walking through Copley Square on Tom's arm. Or having dinner at Davio's. Taking in a concert.

Living a life with someone who got her.

Just as he moved one hand to the small of her back, beginning to slide it downward, a knock on the door made them leap apart.

“Housekeeping!” came the muffled call.

“Oh my God, we have to go!” Ranney gasped, then called out, “Later, please!”

Grabbing yesterday’s clothes from the chair, still holding the coffee in the other, she bolted for the bathroom.

Closing the door, she turned and met her own eyes in the huge mirror.

Her hair was wild, she was wearing no makeup, her teeth were unbrushed, yet even to her own critical eyes, she looked twenty years younger. She glowed.

What just happened?

There was no time to think. First, she drank as much of the coffee as she could, then brushed her teeth, briefly regretting that it meant scrubbing away the taste of his kiss.

Then she washed her face, patted it dry, and began her standard routine of toner, serum, and eye cream.

As she smoothed moisturizer over her skin, she paused, pressing upward with both hands to pull the skin tight over her cheekbones.

Looking back at her from the mirror was her thirty-five-year-old self, and she stared at her reflection as if at an old friend, with love and nostalgia.

Was that taut-skinned woman in the mirror more interesting, more desirable?

Did she somehow match up better with the younger man in the next room?

Was she more valuable in some way? These questions weren’t new, nor were they specific to her.

They were big cultural issues, discussed in the media every day, and the answers were self-evident.

And suddenly, they were specific to her.

Just like Tom’s kiss.

The skirt she’d put on to go to work yesterday wasn’t one she would have chosen to travel in, and certainly not for two days running. On the plus side, it was a medium gray and no smudges or spots were visible.

Her cropped black linen sweater over a white silk tank had held up better, but two days in a row was still one too many. Sighing, she opened her makeup bag and got to work, but she kept it to a minimum.

The clock was ticking.

Light foundation, a little shadow on her eyelids, lipstick of course. She was zipping the bag closed when she remembered her cologne and dug out the little bottle, spraying the air in front of her and walking through the cloud.

It’s not just for him, she thought defensively, judging herself. It’s for me. I wear it all the time.

But it was a little bit for him, and she knew it.

Hand on the doorknob, she took a deep breath. It took all the courage she had to turn the knob and walk out to face him, but like her outfit, there was no other option.

“You look great,” he said, his eyes warm. “Ready to go?”

“Almost.” Folding up the nightshirt, she stuffed it into her tote along with her cosmetic bags then did one last sweep of the room.

This was her standard procedure for leaving a hotel room, but since she’d checked in with almost nothing, there wasn’t much to look around for.

After she rolled up her charging cords, she was set.

On the one hand, she was relieved. His calm demeanor made it possible to move forward and do what needed to be done, no drama. On the other hand, this was unquestionably weird.

She was absolutely not in the habit of kissing members of a wedding party in her hotel room, or anywhere else, for that matter. Why was he so unruffled? He was acting almost as if they were an established couple. Was he in the habit of kissing random women in their hotel rooms?

Then again, she didn’t really want to think about that.

Tom stood by the door, tapping his phone.

“Achilles is outside,” he announced. “We’ll get to the hospital, sort out what’s going on with Chunk, you can answer your messages. Ani’s plane lands in forty-five minutes, so perfect timing. Then we’ll figure out how we’re getting to Idaho.”

“Okay.” This was different; she was normally the person who organized the day, managed the schedule, got everyone where they needed to be. Now she did as instructed, sitting in the back of Achilles’ Uber with her still-silenced phone in her hand.

It felt like she was holding a ticking bomb.