Hard No: Secret Baby Enemies to Lovers Romance by Hazel Parker (fun to read txt) 📗

In my experience, fury lends a woman an uncanny speed. For now, though, I will just stay here in the hotel bar with my thoughts for a while.

Jamie’s visit, as jarring as it has been, hasn’t been a throwaway experience for me. It helped to shine more light on what I had done wrong to botch things so badly between Steph and myself.

I guess it could be said that my heart had been in the right place, but also that my head hadn’t thought it all the way through.

My heart. Where had it been then, and where was it now?

Now, here, between one sip of bourbon and the next, I realize where my heart is in this present moment.

I think I love Steph.

I had wanted to do anything in my power to help her, and that had led me to grossly overstep my bounds. Everything she had said had been true.

But I loved her then, and I love her now. The question is, is that enough to sponge away the stain of my mistake?

Only one way to find out.

I reach for my phone. It isn’t there. Then I remember setting it down on the coffee table back up in my suite just before Jamie turned up. It must still be there. Hopefully, the same could not be said about her.

“Molly?” I say to the bartender. “Is there any way I could borrow the house telephone to use for a few minutes?”

“Of course, sir,” she replies. “Just a moment.”

She places the phone on the bar between us. I have stared at my own so much over the past couple of weeks that I have the number I need committed to memory. I dial it with surety.

It rings several times before going to voice mail. Damn. Is she working? Sleeping? Just not taking any calls?

I try again, with the same result. I do not leave a voice message. I will not settle for anything less than talking with her at this point.

I look at my watch. It is ridiculously late. Although Molly seems perfectly happy to be there and serving me, I myself feel almost completely wiped out. It’s time to return to my suite and hope that I’ll be coming back to an empty set of rooms.

I am not disappointed. There is no overturned furniture, no angry message in lipstick written on the mirror in the hallway. Jamie is just gone.

Well, at least there’s that, I think. That could have ended up so much worse than it has.

My phone is on the bar. I briefly consider calling Steph again. After all, she might not have picked up earlier because I was calling from a strange number. But it’s getting pretty late on her end. I am almost brain-fried from the events of this evening. I will call her first thing in the morning, the Chicago morning.

I have a long, hot shower to allow my exhausted body to concede defeat along with my mind and then fall into bed, where I sleep like a dead man.

When I finally wake, it is full daylight. The rarity that is the London sunshine is streaming in through the windows. I look at the bedside clock. It’s already after noon. Perhaps I can still catch Steph before she gets busy with her morning work.

I go out to the living room and take up my phone from the bar. When I bring up the call feature, I see that my last exchange was an incoming call from Steph the night before. I had missed it, obviously, when I was down in the hotel’s pub, waiting for Jamie to get fed up and leave.

At first, I take this as a strongly encouraging sign—Steph had called me. She wanted to talk.

Then I realize that my phone doesn’t register the call as having been a missed one. It had been received, and not by me. I check the time stamp. After it had been picked up, the call lasted ten seconds.

Jamie had answered my phone, of course. What had she said to Steph in those ten seconds? I don’t know, but I am sure the words were bound to have had sharp points on them.

Fuck, I think. Why hadn’t I just closed the door in her face when she turned up last night? There’s no telling what kind of trouble she’s caused now.

I hit the callback button, and it rings over to voicemail again. Not a good sign. She can tell it’s me this time, so there’s a good chance that she’s just not picking up.

I am painfully aware that I am on the other side of the Atlantic at the moment. It’s not like I can just swing by her place and ask her if she wants to have a coffee and talk things through.

In spite of my thoroughness, I still have a few appointments scheduled over the next couple of days. I loathe canceling business appointments. After much calling and apologizing, though, I reschedule all of them to one long series of sessions tomorrow.

I will leave London immediately after and go back to America.

I’m pacing the room, impatient for tomorrow, when my phone rings, an incoming international call.

It’s Curtis. He speaks. I listen. Close my eyes. Hang up.

It’s time to go home.

Chapter 25 - Steph

“So are you sure it was her?” Tira asks.

“It was her, all right,” I reply tiredly. I’m sitting cross-legged on my couch, hugging one of the throw pillows to me with one hand and holding my phone with the other.

“And what, exactly, did she say?” she demands.

I take a deep breath. “She said that Trent was busy and couldn’t come to the phone. Then she hung up on me. That’s it.”

“That bitch,” Tira snarls. “That reedy little, glossy-paged bitch. I’ll break her in half if I