Text Appeal (20 page)

She sighed. “
Chaz
, you just told me not to think.”

He cocked his head and studied her for a beat. “You’re changing, Riley.” And with that he left her office.

Riley didn’t waste any time before sitting at her desk and getting to work. Maybe she was changing, but she wasn’t sure it was so bad. She’d had wine in the middle of the week. Not bad. She’d danced with a notorious bad boy in the middle of the Eiffel Tower Restaurant. The media lash back had been unwanted but not terrible. She’d been so brazen as to have sex in an elevator.

Her hands froze on her keyboard.
The elevator.

Grand Escape had excellent security, including cameras and surveillance in every elevator.
Which meant that last night when Charlie had taken her up against the elevator wall, they’d had an audience.

She pressed in intercom and waited for her father’s response.

“Yes?”

She licked her lips nervously. “Daddy, I need to run out for a minute. Can I pick you up a latte while I’m gone?”

“Sure, that’d be great.” He paused for a beat. “Riley, is everything okay? Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“No.” She worried her lip between her teeth. “Everything’s just fine, Daddy.”

Chapter Fourteen

“You’re here.”

Charlie dropped his arms and backed away from the heavy bag at the sound of the kid’s voice. He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “I said I would be.”

Derrick narrowed his eyes. “You don’t have a reputation for being the most reliable guy.”

“Do you believe everything you hear on the idiot box?”

Derrick grinned and a dimple appeared. The sight of it almost knocked Charlie over.

“Here,” Charlie said, moving to hold the bag. “I need a break. You go first today.”

For fifteen minutes, they didn’t speak. The only sounds that filled the room were the thumps of the kid’s fists against the bag and his low grunts when he hit hard.

When Derrick came off the bag, he bent over, hands on thighs, breathing hard.
“I know why you were so pissed yesterday.”

“You do, huh?”

Derrick looked up and grinned. “I was right. It was a woman. That sucks that she’s marrying someone else.”

Charlie threw a couple punches at the bag before tossing a glance at the kid. “What do you know about it?”

He shrugged. “Just what was in the paper this
morning.
”

Charlie froze in mid-punch, thinking of the missing elevator footage. He swung around. “What was in the paper?” Fuck. He hadn’t even looked at the paper this morning.

“Whoa!” The kid lifted his hands, showing his palms. “Don’t hurt the messenger.”

Charlie took a step forward. “Just tell me what you saw.”

“Just an article about that hotel heiress.
There was a picture of her fiancé down on one knee and another of you kissing her.” Derrick narrowed his eyes. “You’re really hung up on her, aren’t you?”

Charlie pulled a hand through his hair, closing his eyes for a minute as his heart painfully resumed its beating. “You could say that,” he said, swallowing.

“Did you take my advice? Did you tell her how you feel?” His innocent eyes looked hopeful.

Charlie wished he could tell him life really was that simple. That if you had the balls to confess your feelings to the girl who was way out of your league, then you got to keep her. “She’s not going to marry him,” he grumbled.

The kid grinned. “Then the paper got it wrong? She picked you?”

His mind filled with the image of Riley’s face when she saw the subpoena—hurt, stricken, like he’d taken a ball bat to her hopes and dreams. “I don’t think she’s picked anyone. I’m not exactly the kind of guy her father would approve of.”

The kid grinned. “I wouldn’t have thought you were the kind of guy who needed his approval.”

Charlie couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re pretty smart, kid.”

The smile fell from Derrick’s face and he broke eye contact. “If things work out between you and the hotel heiress, would you move back to Vegas?”

Charlie frowned. What did the kid want from him? “I haven’t gotten that far yet,” he confessed.

The kid nodded but stepped forward to hit on the bag rather than look at Charlie. “Must be pretty cool to live in LA, huh? You’re lucky your mom let you leave.”

Charlie hadn’t given her the choice, but he’d been too young and dumb to care that he was breaking his mother’s heart when he dropped out of school to head to LA. Charlie’s phone beeped from his gym bag, saving him from responding. He squatted to pull his cell from his bag, and found a message from Riley.
We need to talk. Can you come to my office?

Usually when women said those words after a night of sex, Charlie wanted to run in the other direction. Getting them from Riley just made him smile.

“That from her?”
Derrick asked, hovering over Charlie’s shoulder.

“Yeah.
It is.”

He turned and the kid was grinning. “Well, don’t leave her hanging, man.”

Charlie returned the smile. “You’re all right, kid.” He hitched his gym bag over his shoulder and was two steps to the door before Derrick stopped him.

“You
gonna
be here tomorrow?”

Charlie froze. He’d never had a father to teach him how to do this. He’d never learned what it meant to be a dad. He turned back to Derrick. “I’ll be playing poker with some friends in here on Sunday.”

The kid’s face fell. “Oh. Okay.”

“Why don’t you come?”

He grinned. “You’ll teach me?”

“You don’t know how to play Texas Hold ’
Em
?”

“I know how to play. I want you to teach me how to win.”

Charlie grinned. “I can do that.” Hell, but he could really like this kid.

***

“How did you do it?”

Riley paced her office, arms wrapped around
herself
. Everyone had cleared out for the day, and Riley had waited here until Charlie arrived. She had no idea how
he would have convinced someone to erase that footage. When she’d gone down to the surveillance room, she’d done so knowing that even
she
wouldn’t have been able to talk her surveillance officers into erasing it. Grand Escape took security very seriously. Gaps in footage meant a pink slip for whoever had access to the server.

“How did I do what?” he asked.

She forced her feet to still and put her hands on her hips. “How did you erase the footage from the elevator? No one has access to those servers and my father’s staff is beyond reproach.” She swallowed, not wanting to say the rest. “And if anyone did let you tamper with the footage…he needs to be let go.”

Charlie raised a brow, and Riley put her palm out to stop him. “Listen, I’m the last person who wants there to be evidence of our…mistake…but I have the security of Grand Escape to consider.”

“I agree.”

Her shoulders sagged, though she wasn’t sure why that meant so much to her.

“I would have told you what I know this morning, but you seemed a little…”

She winced. “I’m sorry about that.”

“While you were sleeping, I remembered our
mistake
, as you call it.” His icy blue eyes burned into hers. “And for the record, the only part that was a mistake was the location.”

Riley swallowed. She wasn’t sure she agreed, but even now she felt that draw to him. Sexually speaking, the man had the gravitational pull of the sun.

“When I went down to the surveillance room, I was able to talk one of the guys into seeing the footage. It was three in the morning and a new shift had just come on. They were as shocked as I was to see the footage was gone.”

She blinked and staggered back. “What?”

“All that is on the server is you and me walking onto the elevator. Then there’s a fifteen minute gap and we’re walking out.”

Riley knew from experience that if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was. “How could that be?”

Charlie ran a hand through his dark hair. “Hell if I know.”

“Charlie, if you’re trying to protect someone,
stop
. I know you wouldn’t want whoever helped you to lose their job, but I need to—”

“I’m telling the truth, Riley.” His words were soft but this frustration seeped through.

Her mind spun through possibilities but nothing stuck.

“Do you think one of your guys could have alerted your father to what he’d seen?” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Maybe trying to protect you?”

Riley closed her eyes. Her stomach pitched at the possibility of her father being pulled out of bed to see that footage. He would have taken care of it. She didn’t doubt it. “That’s the most logical explanation.” And it explained why he’d been so awkward with her this morning.

Charlie pulled her into his arms and Riley let him. Sure, he was the kind of man who made a girl do something stupid like have elevator sex. He was the kind of man who might have children he didn’t even know about. He was the kind of man she
needed to stay far away from, but right now his heat comforted her in a way she desperately needed.

She looked up at him and focused on his mouth.
God, that mouth had done things to her last night—wicked
, delicious things. She’d told herself she was done with him. Playing with Charlie Singleton was playing with fire, and she couldn’t afford any more scars.

But he was here now and she couldn’t deny herself one more taste of him.

“We should talk about the papers you saw this morning,” he said softly.

She drew her bottom lip between her teeth and made a decision. “No. We shouldn’t.”

“Riley—”

She put up a hand. “Charlie, you don’t owe me any explanation. This—” She wanted to tell him their relationship wasn’t like that, but it was too embarrassing to admit out loud that she had considered—even for a moment—the possibility of something real, something long-term and exclusive with a man like Charlie.

She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Instead, she decided to explain with her mouth. She lifted onto her toes and pressed her lips against his, hoping he would understand.

He pulled away for a moment, studying her through dark, thick lashes. Then he lowered his mouth to hers, his touch soft,
his
movements tentative. She plunged her hands into his hair and his kiss grew stronger, bolder, more demanding. It was a messy kiss. Tongues slid against each other, teeth nipped at lips, hands grasped for bare flesh.

They both came away breathing heavily.

He brushed his thumb across her cheek. “I have to go,”

“Where—” She stopped herself. He didn’t need to report his whereabouts to her.

He answered anyway.
“To the surveillance room.
The crew should be on now that was on shift during our…elevator ride.”

She nodded.
“Right.
I’ll go with you.”

“No. There’s a chance that your face isn’t clear on the tapes. Until we know otherwise, I’m keeping you out of this.”