Kiss and Makeup (10 page)

He shucked his suit jacket and crawled onto the bed, but when he tried to take charge, Chloe wasn't having any of it.

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head, a hand on his chest. “It's my turn to explore,” she told him. And that was how he found himself flat on his back, staring up at a sexy vision as she reached for the zipper that ran down the side of her body. The sparkly gray dress began to gape as his temptress lowered the zipper inch by seductive inch.

Finally, the fabric fell open to reveal a strapless red lace push-up bra and a whole bunch of warm, willing Chloe.

Ben groaned as she pushed the dress down over her hips—the red lace panties were as sexy to look at as they'd been to touch—and finally the dress was gone and she was reaching for the buckle of one strappy studded high-heel.

“You said you'd leave the shoes on.” Ben wasn't sure if it was an order or he was begging.

Chloe frowned playfully. “Hey, I thought I was in charge here.”

“You leave those shoes on and I'll do anything you want.”
Begging. Definitely begging
.

Her smile signified the complete shift in power. “Well, how can I refuse an offer like that?” She crawled toward him, and her breasts looked so amazingly soft and perfect. Then she was straddling his hips and tugging off his tie and unbuttoning his shirt, and he was lost.

She dropped kisses along his chest as she bared it, then his stomach. He tore his shirt the rest of the way off as she fumbled with his belt buckle, and he loved the look of concentration on her face. She was amazing. Sweet and edgy and sexy and real, all wrapped up in a cute little package that drove him wild. Then his belt came undone and he stopped thinking altogether.

She divested him of his shoes, his socks and finally his Calvin Kleins. Then she ran her hands up his thighs, and his breath stuttered with the pleasure. His hips flexed involuntarily as she drew ever nearer to the part of him that wanted her most. Ben didn't know what he was expecting from that moment, but the sudden wet heat as she dragged her tongue the length of his shaft ripped a groan from his chest and he swore at the overwhelming sensation.

When she slipped him into her mouth, her fingers squeezing the base of his cock, the warm suction made his hips jerk.

“God. Chloe. I want to be inside you so bad.”

He reached down and dragged her up his body, kissing her as he rolled her onto her back. He paused to drink in the sight of her lying there in sexy red lingerie and do-me heels, wanting him. Thankfully he'd left his suitcase beside the bed, because he was half-mad with lust for her, and he wasn't going to be able to hold out much longer.

He had the condom on in record time, looking up from his task as Chloe popped the front clasp on her bra. Her breasts were beautiful, and he ached to feel them pressed against his chest as he took her.

He dragged her panties down her thighs, and she raised her knees so he could pull them past her shoes. And then there was nothing separating them. Ben positioned himself between her legs, staring into her eyes as he slid home into the slick, smooth heat of her.

His name was a gasp on her lips as they moved together, and Ben tried to take it slow, but her nails were digging into his back and she was meeting him thrust for thrust, and things got out of control before he knew it. She wrapped her leg around his hip a split second before she came apart in his arms, and the aftershocks of her orgasm started his own. He gave in to the sharp wave of ecstasy and let himself drown in it.

* * *

M
ORNING
CAME
TOO
EARLY
, as it always did, in Chloe's opinion. Despite the early hour, Chloe found herself smiling as she indulged in a sleepy stretch. The reason for her good mood was slung out on his stomach, his arm nestled against the underside of her breasts, his stubbly chin resting on her shoulder and his lips close to her neck.

“What was that?”

“What was what?” he mumbled into her hair.

“The whole macho caveman thing? Carrying me off to bed and having your way with me? That was kinda hot, Masterson. I didn't think you had it in you.”

“Yeah, right. Everything about me screams sex god. You knew what you were getting into.”

Chloe laughed as he pulled her closer, kissing her neck before levering his big body out of bed. Chloe enjoyed the view, especially when he turned and began rooting through his suitcase. Ben Masterson was in possession of one very fine ass.

She pushed up on one elbow, clutching the sheet to her breasts with her other hand. “Where are you going?” she asked with an overly dramatic moue.

“Shower. Why, you wanna join me?”

“Forget it.” Chloe flopped back into the lavish bed, stretching luxuriously. “I am on vacation, sort of, and when I'm on vacation, I don't go anywhere until the glowing red numbers on that devil machine over there start with at
least
an eight.” She made a halfhearted gesture in the general vicinity of the alarm clock.

“C'mon, Chloe. Get up. Greet the day. You know what they say about early birds.”

“Whatever, drone. Tell the Man I said hi.” She snuggled deeper into the pillows.

“Fine,” he relented, closing his suitcase. He faced her, slinging his jeans and a white T-shirt over his shoulder. “You've got twenty minutes of peace while I shower and shave. But in return, you have to order room service.”

“Deal.” Chloe lifted a hand. “Pass me the menu?”

“Are you kidding me?” He reached behind him to grab the leather-bound menu from the ornate desk, lobbing it so it landed squarely on her stomach with a soft
thwump
. “Such a diva.”

“Not my fault.” Chloe picked up the menu and leafed through the gold-lettered pages. “Let's put the blame on this king-size bed, where it belongs.”

Ben shook his head. “This bed is turning out to be more trouble than I expected.”

“The good stuff always is. No worms on the menu, Mr. Early Bird. You might have to settle for waffles.”

“Mmm. Syrupy.” He leaned over and pressed a kiss to her lips. As startled as Chloe was by the familiarity, she was even more startled that she didn't mind. He was not what she'd expected from the corporate poster boy who'd struck up a conversation on the plane. She couldn't help her grin as she watched him and his cute butt pad toward the bathroom wearing nothing but a pair of tube socks.

The shower flipped on, and Chloe reclined on the mountain of pillows behind her, abandoning her menu-perusal duties now that Ben was gone. Instead, she nestled into the plush bedding and mentally relived some of last night's more memorable moments.

By the time the water flipped off, she found that her dirty mind was sort of regretting turning down Ben's offer for a tandem shower. She'd begun to formulate a plan to entice him into a second one when a knock at the door startled her back to reality.

“Who the hell?” she wondered with a glance at the clock. It seemed someone else was breaking her pre-eight in the morning rule.

Chloe was in the midst of wrapping a sheet around herself when the insistent knock sounded again. “Coming!” she called, but she was trapped on the bed for a moment until she located her abandoned stilettos. Shoving her feet into them, she hurried to the door as quickly as the unbuckled death traps would allow. “Coming,” she called again.

She wrenched the door open, shocked to find a distinguished man in a suit with a full head of white hair and a bushy white mustache. He looked equally surprised to see her standing there in nothing but a bunched-up sheet and last night's heels.

Clearing his throat, he glanced at the girl beside him in the hallway. She was tall and thin, probably about fourteen, and her attention didn't waver from her iPhone for even a second.

“I'm terribly sorry to disturb you, miss. I thought this was Ben Masterson's room,” the gentleman said, making a move to leave, but as though his name had conjured the man, Ben pulled open the door to the bathroom, a white towel slung around his hips, and another draped around his shoulders as he rubbed one end over his wet hair.

“Is room service here already?” he asked, then froze as he spotted the man. Chloe noticed the kid had finally looked up from her phone. Not that she blamed her. Ben's bare chest was a pretty powerful draw.

“Mr. Burke!”

Uh-oh
. This was the hotel guy? The head honcho? Chloe realized, in retrospect, that smeared makeup, a bed sheet and stilettos might not have been the most inspired fashion choice for this moment.

“Mr. Masterson.” The address dripped with censure.

Chloe knew Ben was panicked because he stepped right out onto the carpet with bare feet, cellulitis be damned.

“Sir, I apologize for the towel. I wasn't expecting you. I'd like you to meet Chloe...my wife.”

7

“H
AVE
YOU
LOST
your mind?”

He'd expected the rage. Hell, he probably deserved it. He was just thankful she'd held it in check until their surprise visitors had headed off toward the dining room to procure a table for the breakfast meeting he and Chloe were about to attend with them.

“Don't you get it? It's a test, Chloe. That means I'm still in the running. He told me we were having lunch, but he showed up for breakfast—with his granddaughter. He wants to know if I can handle myself, and, by extension, his business when the shit hits the fan. This is my chance for redemption. Did you see the look on his face when I walked out of the bathroom? I couldn't tell him I'd spent the night with a woman I met on the plane!”

“This is a horrible idea, Ben.”

“But you'll do it?”

There was a long, heart-stopping pause as he watched a dozen expressions fight for dominance in her stunning eyes.

Her huff let him know he'd won.

“Fine. I'll go to this stupid breakfast with you.”

Relief flooded through him in waves.

“You'll pretend to be married to me?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes. You suffered through an entire wedding with me. It's only fair.”

“You're the best, Chloe. Seriously.” He hurried over to the bed, searching for the suit pants he'd worn to the wedding. Ben grabbed them off the floor and reached into the left pocket, fumbling with his wallet for a moment before holding his hand in her direction. “Here. Put this on.”

“What? What the—? Is this a ring? Did you just pull
a ring
out of your wallet? Did you have that with you the whole time?”

Ben winced at his blunder. Guess he should have laid a little groundwork before springing the ring on her, but he was in kind of a hurry. “Just put it on, okay?”

“You said you were single! Single and, quote
‘loving it'
end quote. Why the hell do you have a ring with you?”

“Relax. I am single. I swear. It's not what you're thinking. I just carry it around as a reminder,” he added. Leaving out the “to never be so stupid as to end up married because women are nothing but trouble,” because he liked irony better when it wasn't happening to him.

“What, it's a good luck charm or something?”

“Or something,” Ben said.

Chloe looked skeptical. “It's still weird,” she said, but to his infinite relief she slid the ring onto the appropriate finger, holding it up for inspection.

He wondered what she thought of it—a modest diamond flanked by two deep purple amethysts. A simple ring. Elegant, he'd always believed, though Mel had disagreed when he'd gotten down on one knee to give it to her. She'd been more into the idea of something “newer” with a “bigger diamond.”

“This is really pretty,” she said after a moment. “I love amethysts. They make everything look so elegant,” Chloe said, and his head snapped toward her.

“I'm still weirded out by the fact that you keep a ring in your wallet, though,” she grumbled. “That's creepy. I'm talking serial-killer creepy. Putting this on had better not have made me the Bride of Death or something equally messed up,” she warned. “I don't want to find out that all the ring's previous owners are dead and I'm next.”

Ben smiled in spite of himself. “Well, you're not totally off the mark. It was my grandma's wedding ring. She left it to me when she died. Natural causes,” he assured her, and the joke defused some tension.

He walked over to the armoire and pulled out two of his suits—the gray one from the plane and a navy one—holding them up for Chloe's inspection. “Which of these will best erase the memory of seeing me in a towel and re-establish me as a competent professional?” he asked.

“The navy one is extremely boring. I'd go with that,” Chloe advised, rooting through her suitcase. “I'm just going to wear jeans, a T-shirt and a black blazer, because I'm pretty sure I didn't pack anything that says ‘sorry we met while I was dressed like a slut.'”

“Don't worry about it,” Ben said. “You never have to apologize to a man for that.”

* * *

“B
EN
,
SO
GLAD
you and your lovely wife could join us.” The distinguished elderly man rose to his feet, and exchanged a swift shake with Ben before extending his hand to Chloe as well. “Chloe, thank you for coming. Please accept my apologies for our unorthodox meeting this morning. I wasn't aware Ben was traveling with such a lovely companion. He didn't mention he was married in our meeting.”

“Consider it forgotten. My husband is all business on these trips. Sometimes I think he forgets I'm even along for the ride. So thank you for inviting me, Mr. Burke. This is a lovely hotel you have.”

“Why, thank you, my dear. And please, call me Edward.”

Chloe nodded and sat in the chair Ben held out for her. She was disgusted with herself at how easily she could still fall back into the niceties of polite society. Fiona Masterson had trained her well.

Edward gestured to the young girl. “This is my granddaughter, Kenley.”

The sullen teen glanced up from her phone in momentary acknowledgment, but her thumbs never stilled on the screen. She was wearing a plaid, flannel shirt unbuttoned over a My Little Pony T-shirt and thick-rimmed glasses that were probably fake, and Chloe would have bet a substantial amount there were some Doc Martens hidden under the table, if anyone were offering odds on it.

“Kenley, what did we discuss?”

With a put-upon sigh, Kenley set her phone facedown on the table beside her. Edward gave a “kids these days” shrug of apology before calling the waitress over to take their breakfast orders. Once that was taken care of, he and Ben got down to business.

Chloe sipped gingerly at her coffee as she waited for her waffles to arrive.

“This is boring.”

Hearing Kenley speak in actual words startled her—she'd grown so used to the girl's sighs and theatrical movement of limbs—but Chloe couldn't argue with her assessment of reach and revenue and target markets.

“I like your makeup.”

Oh, man. Were they having a conversation now? “Thanks,” Chloe replied, hoping monosyllables might be her ticket out of whatever weird thing was happening on this side of the table.

Just pick up your phone
, she willed the little hipster.
Gramps isn't paying attention anymore. Ben's wowing him with jargon. Take advantage
.

“How do you do that? That wingy eyeliner thing? It looks good.”

Definitely
a conversation. But at least now an interesting one.

“It's easy,” she said, earning a withering look. Teen wrath at its finest, Chloe had a moment of empathy for the girl's parents. “A little bit of practice, and you'll be an expert in no time.”

“Oh.” The tiny spark of life that had been there a minute ago extinguished, and just like that, she was back to being a Mopey McMoperson.

Well, crap
. Chloe pushed her coffee aside and reached into her purse. “Here.” She pulled out her makeup bag and plopped it on the table.

Kenley's eyes rounded behind the irony of her fake, plastic-rimmed glasses. “Wow.”

“Kid, you ain't seen nothing yet,” she assured her, spilling its contents across the tablecloth.

She smiled a bit at the awestruck look on Kenley's face, but only because Chloe was sure that it was the same look of dazed euphoria that she herself always wore while stepping over the threshold of Sephora.

“Give me your napkin,” Chloe ordered. After a bit of rummaging, she managed to locate a pen in her cavernous purse, and when she looked up, it was to find Kenley holding up a white square of cloth.

Chloe shook her head. “Swanky restaurants are the worst,” she lamented, shoving her hand back into her bag and producing a couple of crumpled receipts. “We'll just have to make do.”

Smoothing one out the best she could, Chloe sketched a quick picture of an eye, complete with lashes and brow. Then she plucked her liquid eyeliner from the melee of makeup. “Okay, here's what you do...”

* * *

B
EN
NOTICED
C
HLOE
and Kenley giggling over a pile of receipts, a dozen shades of eye shadow spread across the table before them. Neither of them had made much of a dent in their breakfasts.

“So what do you think, Mr. Masterson?”

“Huh?” Ben turned his attention back to Burke.

The man smiled. “You seem a little distracted.”

Shit
. “Yeah. No! Mr. Burke, I assure you that if you choose Carter and McLeod to represent Hotel Burke, we will work with laser-precision focus to promote your brand and—”

“Please, son. I recognize the look of a man enchanted by his lady. I'm old, but I'm not dead, and I certainly don't need you to blow smoke up my arse. I'm well aware of your agency's reputation. You wouldn't be here if I wasn't already impressed.”

Impressed? Huh
. After yesterday's meeting, Ben had been sure the firm fell somewhere below root canal on Edward Burke's list of
Things That Are Awful
.

“Thank you, sir. We at Carter and McLeod work hard to exceed expectations.”

The old man leaned in. “You're here because it's important to me that I know the man behind the scene. And I have to say, you surprised me today.”

Uh-oh
. Ben could feel the deal slipping away.

“Yesterday, I'd made up my mind about you. I thought you were confident to the point of being cocky—” He held up a hand to silence Ben's defense. “Which is not necessarily a bad thing,” he continued. “However, I didn't think you were a fit for my hotel. This is, at heart, a family business. And I didn't believe you truly understood that. Today, you changed my mind.”

“If you'll just— I... What?”

Burke took a sip of his coffee. “You really impressed me today. Not only do you obviously know your stuff, but more importantly, you have your priorities in order.”

Ben didn't mean to glance at Chloe again. It just happened.

“As you've no doubt surmised, Mr. Masterson, my showing up at your hotel room unannounced this morning was a strategic move. Anyone can be impressive with the right preparation and enough notice. It's the hiccups in life, the moments you didn't see coming, that tell me who I'm really dealing with.”

Ben followed Edward Burke's gaze to the other side of the table. Kenley looked happy and engaged, nothing like the sullen, phone-addicted girl he's met earlier.

And Chloe...well, her smile was really something when she had her guard down.

“Today I got a glimpse of who you are during the hiccups. So you send the contracts over, and I'll have my legal team take a gander at the fine print. After that, Mr. Masterson, I'd say we have a deal.”

Ben did his best to avoid any outward manifestations of fist-pumping, victory dances and expletive-laced exclamations, but his handshake definitely had more vigor than it had at the conclusion of yesterday's meeting.

“Thank you, sir. You've made a great choice in Carson and McLeod.”

“Only by extension, Ben. You're the choice I made here. And I hope it's a great one.”

“I won't let you down.”

“Grandpa, I really need to use my phone, quick. Chloe has this awesome YouTube channel and I want to subscribe.” Mr. Burke nodded and the phone was a blur, Kenley grabbed it so fast.

With a final round of goodbyes and more handshakes, Ben and Chloe wound their way through the restaurant, dodging tables as they walked toward the dining room's grandiose entrance.

“You look pretty pleased with yourself.”

Ben nodded, jamming his hands in his pockets as he and Chloe stepped into the lobby. “That would be a fair assessment of my current state, yes.”

“I take it that means the meeting went well.”

“‘Well' does not even begin to describe it. The meeting was great. Beyond great. It was the meeting all other meetings aspire to be. Baby meetings will grow up hearing the legendary tales of this meeting, hoping one day to be just like it.”

She grinned at him. “Congratulations, Ben. I'm really happy for you.”

“Thank you. I'm actually really happy for me, too. Except for the giant-wife-shaped lie I had to tell to get me to this point, everything is going according to plan. By the way, what was all that about back there?”

“What was what about?” she asked innocently, but Ben wasn't buying it, even with the raise he was going to get when Carson and McLeod promoted him to account director for landing Hotel Burke.

“Don't play coy with me. You know I'm talking about Kenley and her phone and her sudden desperate need to connect to Wi-Fi.”

“It's nothing,” she said as they passed the ballroom that had hosted Caroline's wedding the night before.

“Lies! You have a YouTube channel! I want to hear all about it.”

“Let's change the subject,” she countered, but there was no real heat to her words, and he was in far too good a mood to deny himself the pleasure of teasing her.

“If I guess will you tell me?”

“Can't you just focus on gloating about your better-than-great meeting?”

“Do you do acoustic covers of Neil Diamond songs on your channel?”

Chloe rolled her eyes.

“It's makeup, isn't it? I saw you teaching Kenley.”

“Just forget it.”

“No way. You were so smug about nailing my occupation, but I got yours, too!”

“What? No, you didn't.”

“Sure. I said artist. You're a makeup artist. That counts.”

Chloe's eyes widened. She looked a little...stunned?

“Come on! I want details.”