She heaves a thick sigh. “Okay, fine. Just… book me in a new room, then.”
“We’re fully-booked this weekend, ma’am.”
“Of course, you are… Can you please just look one more time? I’m having a day here…”
I ease forward, slinking around Paige to get a little closer. My pulse thumps faster but I can’t know for sure it’s her until I see her face.
Rian taps the keyboard, refreshing the page, but if he says it’s gone, then it’s gone. And if I know this woman in front of me, this tepid frustration is about to get a little more…
“I’m sorry,” Rian says again, visibly bracing himself for what’s obviously going to be a rough few minutes. “It’s not—”
“Are you fucking with me right now?”
A little more vulgar.
My breath catches. It’s definitely her.
She hasn’t changed at all.
Rian hesitates. “Uh, no. I’m not.”
“Did you double-check the hard logs? If you can’t find the reservation on the system, then it should be in the logs. Everybody knows that.”
“Well, actually—”
“Look, I know what I’m talking about, all right? I used to have your job.”
He frowns. “Okay, but we—”
“I want to talk to somebody about this,” she says, glancing over his shoulder. “Oliver! Is Oli in? He’s still the building manager, right?”
I step forward and Rian breathes a noticeable sigh of relief as he sees me.
“Sir, I have a customer here who would like some assistance,” he says to me.
She spins toward me and her face falls as she sees mine. Those sharp, green eyes. Bright, pink cheeks. Even I pause for a moment as another chapter begins in our long, sordid history.
Jennifer Parker.
“Ah, shit,” she says under her breath.
“What Rian is trying to say…” I begin, holding a straight face, “is that we no longer keep hard logs for reservations. That information is stored on a secondary server, so if your reservation is gone, then that would mean that you didn’t confirm it properly,… ma’am.”
She bites down. Hard.
I look over the desk. “Rian, please put the lady in my room and—”
Her mouth opens to object.
“—and I will share with Hayden down the hall,” I say quickly before she can speak again. “He won’t mind.”
She snaps her jaw shut and clears her throat. “Okay, I guess that’ll work.”
Rian nods, offering me a silent thank you. “Right away, sir,” he says as he focuses on getting this woman away from him as quickly as possible.
But I could stand to stay beside her a little longer.
I gaze at her but her eyes are locked on the wooden desk instead. Random strands of black hair cling to her wet cheeks. Her skin is just as bright and clear as it always was but several lines have started to take over her forehead, no doubt due to her signature scowl.
“Hey, Jenny,” I say.
Finally, she looks up. “Graham,” she merely says.
I wait for her to say something but she stays quiet. I wait for me to say something... but if we haven’t said it before now, then what’s the point?
Rian returns and sets a room keycard down in front of her. “You’re all set, ma’am. Room 2505.”
Jen swipes it off the desk and bends down to grab her suitcase. “Thank you,” she says, noticeably more stiff and polite.
I step to the side, giving her ample space to leave. She looks at me once more as she passes, her bright, green eyes hitting me even harder in the gut than I expect them to.
“Here you go, Mr. Botsford,” Rian says as he passes me my room keycard. “Would you like me to call up and let your brother know you’ll be crashing?”
“No,” I answer with a smile. “I’ll surprise him.”
Rian nods and gestures Paige forward, already tapping his way into the system for her reservation, too.
“Who was that?” Paige asks me, sensing the tension.
“That...” I exhale hard, my eyes straying toward the golden elevator doors across the lobby as they close on Jen’s downturn face. “That is my ex-wife.”
Her jaw drops. “You were married?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Oh, about ten years ago.”
She does the math in her head. “You got married at nineteen?”
I pause. “Yes.”
“How long were you married?”
“Twenty-three days,” I answer.
Paige gawks at me in disbelief.
“Like I said...” I say as I pick up my suitcase. “I’ve already done Vegas.”
Click Here to Keep Reading JUST A TOUCH!
Also by Tabatha Kiss
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Heartthrob Hotel
Just a Touch
Just a Kiss
Just a Fling
Just a Crush
Just a King
Old Habits
The Mechanic
The Milkman
Chicago Nights
Pretty Little Thing
Pretty Dirty Trick
Pretty Ever After
Sweet Cravings
Muffin Top
Hot Sauce
Bad Ballers
Bump and Run
In Too Deep
Home Run Baby
The Pink Diaries
In the Pink
Pink Christmas
Stand-alones
Lumberjack Boss
The Midwest Alphas
Writing as Tabatha Drake
Untouched
Unbroken
Undying
Killer Love
Writing as Tabatha Drake
Killer Love
Secret Love
Tainted Love
Broken Love
Mad Love
Cruel Love
Endless Love
For more, go to TabathaKiss.com
About the Author
Tabatha Kiss lives in Chicago, Illinois. You can probably catch her huddled up in a hoodie, reading a good romance beneath a tree in Jackson Park with her trusty husky by her side. She enjoys roller derby, sushi, and is always searching for her forever bad boy.
In the meantime, she writes.
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