LAD: A British Bad Boy Romance Novel (Bad Boys of London Book 1) (5 page)

“I can…I can do that,” I nodded, feeling more strength in me that this might happen.
 

“You can do it. You know why?”

“No.” My eyebrows tensed. The worry crept back again.
 

“Because you’re Hayley Fucking Frost and you don’t give a shit about some guy. You have his bag. You did some sleuthing like any intelligent female would and you found him. It’s not creepy. It’s tactful. You’re tactful.”

“And pretty,” Ako added.

“Right, and super pretty and polite and everything a man deserves.”

“I love you guys.” I’d decided. I chose to approach him and settle this once and for all and, hopefully, get a phone number or a drink out of it. What motivated me, as well, is that I wanted my damn suitcase back. I’d had to wear one of Ako’s dresses today and felt totally too girly in it. Taking one last, drawn out bite of scone a l’orange for courage, I then got up and traipsed towards the hostess stand.

The whole way there I hadn’t looked up until I knew I was close, keeping my eyes locked to the plum-hued carpet. I didn’t want any more awkward heated stares from him that might throw me off my game.
 

Finally, two-feet away from my destination I finally lifted my head.

But…he was gone. Just like that, vanished into a sexy cloud of smoke.
 

“Pardon me, do you know where that guy went? The one standing here before?” I asked the hostess.

“Mr. Cartwright?” the lady asked.

“He’s…Is he Edward Cartwright? The manager of the hotel?”
 

She gave a condescending giggle. “No, Miss. That’s his nephew, Felix.
 
The Mr. Cartwright you’re looking for is still busy until this evening.”

“Does he work here? Felix, I mean.” The curious name suited his alternative style. It suggested that perhaps he were also a little playful too, which had me biting my lip and coming up with new fantasies almost instantly.
 

“He lives here, Miss,” the hostess replied nonchalantly, now putting her head down to pretend to be lost in the guest registry.

“Jesus, he must be loaded,” I said, looking in the direction of the hotel lobby. “Oops, I mean…Is there any chance that I could speak with him, please?”
 

The hostess smiled at my momentary slip. “Hey, look, I don’t always do this but I suppose I can make an exception here.” I felt my pulse ringing in my ears. “His residence is on the 5th floor, room 506.” She wrote it down for me. “Perhaps consider calling the room before you go up.” A suggestive look of knowing sparkled in her eye. “Mr. Cartwright is known to have quite frequent guests to his suite.”

I smirked, knowing full well what she meant. He was a dirtbag. He knew how attractive he was to women and used that to his advantage. Kristen proved to be right yet again in matters of the heart. I had to stop my belief that my prince charming would come riding in on his white horse. This day and age, you had to be a heartless lover— Love ‘em and leave ‘em wanting more before they do the same for you, as Kristen would say. “Right,” I said gently. “Thank you so much for this.”

“Of course.”

I walked from the hostess station back to our table to inform the girls that I’d be going up to the room to reclaim my suitcase. After hearing about his revolving door of women, I no longer felt inspired to delve any deeper into this. He’d already penetrated my thoughts enough that I’d put him on a white knight pedestal. Therefore, anything I experienced with him in reality would only be a letdown.

“He lives here?” Kristen, clearly much more intrigued now, sat up higher in her chair. “A guy who’s that smoking hot living at the Chateau? I hope you won’t be back down for two hours at least. I told you I’m on a mission to get you to let your hair down, and now is the chance!”

“You and your filthy mind.” I chose to dismiss her innuendoes. Yes, this guy was smoking hot and made my palms sweat and was endearing to me beyond any other man I’d met, but playboy didn’t match my type. I couldn’t accept being a notch in someone’s belt.

“Why would she give you his name and room number like that?” Ako inquired. “Whatever happened to guest discretion?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” I sighed.

“Hey, what’s up? What happened over there? You were all starry-eyed as of two seconds ago.”

“Doesn’t matter. Look, I’m going to go up there, tell him I’ve got his bag, get mine back and finish this. What a dumb idea this was. It’s time to get on with actually exploring this place.”

“O…K. Well, you can’t go up there alone.” Ako had moved from the savory to the sweet delicacies and held a piece of glazed fruit tart on her fork. “Kristen’ll go with you.”

“Hell no, I won’t. She’ll be fine alone.”

“Go with her. What if he’s a creep?”

“Ako, you don’t need to worry. He’s not some sort of serial killer. He lives in this place, for crying out loud,” I grabbed my purse. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”

“No, you wo-on’t,” she sung.

I presented Kristen my middle finger and pivoted in the direction of the elevators. Screw calling ahead to see if he had company. I owed him nothing, not even my manners. Should he be fucking some chick right now, I couldn’t care less. There were plenty of other boys in this city for me— Thousands of them, in fact, and perhaps a good few of them would be more attractive than Felix…Perhaps.

The gilded ride up the elevator was beyond impressive. Hands down, it was the most beautiful hotel I’d ever seen in my life. But I guess it would be since the only one’s I’d experienced were Holiday Inns and out-dated Marriotts. If this Felix could afford to reside here it meant he was well off. I wondered what he did for a career— Music producer, investment banker, some British actor I’d never heard of. Having come from a total working class family in Southern California, I began to wonder what it must be like to live this way, to have this much money. Did it tarnish even the most grounded characters, turning them into arrogant assholes like him? Would I still be as humble should I come into this kind of money? Or would it change me just the same? I settled that I didn’t want to find out— I’d rather stay humble.

The bell gave a polite ring once I had reached the fifth floor.

Shit!
 

I took a minute to lean against the corridor wall, nodding my head to an elderly couple who walked by. My palm pressed firmly to my rapid-firing heart. A firing squad of nerves let rip into my chest.

“Channel Kristen, just channel Kristen.”

My body breathed deeply once more, lifting my posture so I appeared somewhat confident. I tousled out my hair a little then began counting down the door numbers.

As I approached the door of 506, my nerves started to get the best of me again. Why did I feel so anxious? Something about this guy unsettled me to my depths — Like I never wanted to face him lest we never end up seeing each other again. That was it — I literally didn’t want to this to ever be over, this way he made me feel. I didn’t want the illusion I had of him to be tarnished anymore by reality. If I pretended that I never found his bag, I could return here to the hotel on occasion to “accidentally” bump into him. I could use the excuse that I enjoyed the high tea here which wouldn’t be a lie per se.

Fuck it
, I thought. I wanted this farce to go on forever. I wanted the sexy eye-contact, the belief that he might turn out to be a good guy, the way he made my insides simmer…My heel spun me back toward the elevator.
 

Bang!

— A loud thud followed by some muffled sounds of a girl behind Door 506. I rolled my eyes so violently it ached my head. Mine and the hostess’s suspicions had been confirmed. My posture dropped back to its usual hunch and I trudged back to the elevator, dragging my ballet flats along the ornate carpet. Then from behind me, I heard the door click open.

“Come back here,” I heard Felix say from deeper inside the room.

“Shh,” said a partially clothed woman with legs that ended at her neck stumbled into the corridor. “I’m getting ice.”

“Babe, why don’t you call it up?”

And there he appeared like a GQ magazine cover come to life; Shirtless and pressing his hand against the door frame so that his tattooed muscles — oh! Those muscles — flexed against his olive skin.
 

“What the—?” I heard him say quickly when he spotted me. His eyes locked with mine. “Oh.” He stopped in his tracks and gave me that same old smolder. Like some blushing school girl, I cocked my hip and pushed some hair off my face to relieve the tension. Had that been a surprised ‘Oh’? Angry? But he carried on: “Something I can help you with?”

“Um…Shit…”

I held my hands out in self-defense of my character. “Sorry. Sorry.”

I looked to the girl, definitely intoxicated on…something. “You invited extra fun? Oh, Felix, baby, now this is what I call a party.” The girl swayed slightly as she sauntered toward me.
 

“No. It’s okay. I’m sorry to interrupt, but did you by any chance pick up the wrong suitcase at the airport yesterday? I collected the wrong one, it would seem.” Spitting it out, the right move. I needed to get it all out there before I stumbled over the hurdles of my thoughts.

“I did.” His eyes never left mine and barely blinked. He seemed pleased. A slight grin spread through his smooth lips.

“Baby, I forgot where the ice is actually.”

“It’s down the hall…In the only direction you can go in.”

“But I…”

“Relax and go wait inside, Becky,” he commanded. He appeared visibly annoyed by her. She followed his orders immediately with a slight pout and squeak of the throat.
 

“What’s your name?” He still stood partially in the doorway and clearly had no intention of inviting me in, considering his present company. In the brief time he took to check back on his booty call, I managed to look down to explore his assets a little further. Goddamn, either he had a big sock tucked away in there for safe keeping or this guy…Someone had blessed this man in one too many ways. I snapped my eyes back to his, giving up on finding any part of him that didn’t intimidate me. He had muscles of a God, but in a slender sort of way, the perfect height for me to rest against his chest, and hair that you couldn’t help but want to run your fingers through and grab.

I aggressively twirled the end of my braid. “Hayley. I—It’s Hayley Frost. My name will be on a bag…on the bag, my bag…on the…there’s the tag on the side of it.”

A terrible silence landed between us making me bask in how uncomfortable I made this whole thing. I stammered. Like, actually stammered like I’d suffered a sudden aneurysm. If only I had then I’d have an excuse to get out of this whole thing.

“So, where’s mine?”

“Where’s your what?”

“Where’s my luggage?”

“Oh…Oh! Of course. It’s at my hotel.”

“Alright. So, you planned to simply retrieve your suitcase without giving me back my own?” His face remained flat with no hint of humor or irony. What a fucking dick.

“I never planned on running into you here, so I didn’t bring yours. Sorry. I’ll get it ASAP for you.”

He stepped into the hallway with me and closed the door behind him. Leaning against the wall, he crossed his arms across his gorgeous chest that I tried not to drool over.
 

“It’s quite mysterious, Miss Frost.”

“It’s just Hayley.”

“Well, just Hayley, it’s quite curious that you somehow magically knew that it was my bag, and then just so happened to appear here at my place of residence.”

“I saw you at the airport.”

“Right. And I you.”

“You remember me too?” I said with surprise.

“How could I forget? But that still begs the question how you knew it was my bag.”

“I, yeah, I totally went through your stuff. An accident, I swear! I hadn’t realized it wasn’t mine at that point. I mean, you should put a lock on that thing.”

“Well, I don’t usually expect some bird to steal my luggage and go through it, usually.”

“Hey! I didn’t steal it. For all I know, you grabbed my bag first.”

“Right. So, you went through my shit and what might you have found in there? Anything worth keeping?”
 

“Look, I didn’t come here for an interrogation, buddy. I’m no Sherlock, but basically, I noticed your fingernails so when I found nail polish amongst men’s clothing, figured it must be yours.”
 

He let a sharp exhale from his nose. “I’m the only guy who wears black nail polish?”

“Whatever esoteric reason you have for wearing it, I totally respect but, yeah, you might’ve missed the memo about My Chemical Romance breaking up.”

“Ouch.” Pfft, the quip didn’t phase him one bit.

I kept explaining the full story about finding the business card and fabricated it a little to make out like I wasn’t overly keen. Despite his unreadable expression holding course like a ship, he seemed to buy it. He leaned up from the wall and walked back into his room, closing the door behind him.
 

I coughed out some frustration. Unbelievable. For a moment, I stood there truly believing he’d locked me out, but then he abruptly re-entered the hallway with my suitcase.

“I like your style,” he said as he placed it before me. “I almost considered borrowing a few things.” As much as I didn’t want it to, a smile forcibly pushed itself onto my face. I felt relieved that he returned some lightness back into the conversation.

“Uh! I’m so happy. Thank you so much.”

Completely taking me off guard, he started moving towards me, closer and closer. His pushing-in made me counter with steps back until I found myself pushed into the wall behind me. His braced his hand on the wall beside my head, his other on his hip. He looked into my eyes with that intent gaze again.
 

“Do I intimidate you, doll?” His tongue ran along his half-smiling lip.

What the hell was going on?

I wanted to shout for an adult— No…I didn’t. I wanted a time-out for a debrief with the girls about what to do next that wouldn’t make me cringe. Awkward. Why did I have to be so awkward? It took me a while to form sentences on a good day. So, I honed in my college degree— I had to channel some femme fatal archetype, the antithesis of me.