Heated Rush - Leslie Kelly [69]
10
ANNIE WASN’T SURE what to expect when they reached the city. Sean might take her back to his hotel as he’d sworn to do. He could be planning to make love to her in every way humans had ever tried until tomorrow morning when the sun came up.
Or, judging by the near silence—broken only by occasional small talk—in which they’d shared the two-hour ride, he might be ready to drop her off at her place. Some men might toss her cat and her suitcase on the sidewalk, and drive like hell to the airport.
She should have kept her mouth shut, should never have told him exactly what her mother had said. Honestly, though, the intuitive words had stunned Annie so much, she’d almost had to share them. If only to see whether saying them out loud made them any less shocking to her own ears.
Her mother had seen love in their eyes? Hers and Sean’s? Was that even possible? After one week, could such a thing really happen?
In her mother’s opinion, of course it could. She and Annie’s father were a well-known case of love-at-first-sight. But those things didn’t happen nowadays, did they? Especially not to women like Annie.
And especially not with men like Sean.
Arriving in the city, she almost held her breath to see which way he’d go. When he turned toward his own hotel, rather than Lincoln Park, she somehow managed not to fall over and kiss his feet. Or to jabber her thanks for not yanking away these last hours they had with each other.
She wanted those hours. Wanted them desperately now that her mother’s accusation had filled her brain with possibilities.
Not that she believed Sean loved her. But the idea that she, Annie, had truly fallen in love with him, suddenly didn’t seem so ridiculous. In fact, she suspected it could be true. And knowing that, she wanted as much time with the man as she could get.
“I can’t wait to explain the emu-prints on the hood of the car,” Sean murmured, smiling for the first time in two hours. He’d just pulled into the garage beneath the hotel.
The garage…the one where she’d left her van.
Damn, maybe he’d brought her back here because he had to. She had to get her car, didn’t she?
Parking, he reached into the backseat and picked up Wally’s crate. She was sure he would kiss her goodbye and wave to her from the elevator. They couldn’t very well traipse through the lobby of this five-star hotel with a fat, mean cat in a cage.
But it seemed that’s exactly what he meant to do. Not even asking if she was coming up, he hoisted their two small bags over his shoulder, balancing the crate in his other hand, and walked toward the elevator. Not toward her own vehicle.
When she didn’t follow right away, he looked back over his shoulder. “Annie?”
She swallowed hard and hurried to join him. “Coming.”
Though she had no idea what he was thinking, or how he felt about what she’d said in the car, Sean was making it pretty clear that his plans for the rest of today—and tonight—hadn’t changed. At the very least, they would have that much.
Beyond that? Well, she couldn’t think about that now.
Almost giddy with relief, she followed him into the elevator and watched him punch the button for the lobby. Unfortunately, it appeared the elevator did not go straight up to his floor, so they were going to have to take Wally on tour.
“Are they going to let us bring him up?”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “If anyone has the nerve to try to stop us, I’ll put down a pet deposit.” He lifted the crate, eyeing Wally. “That means you have to be on your best behavior.”
The idea that the cat would be refused simply didn’t seem to occur to him. The man’s self-confidence, his certainty of himself and what he was doing, poured off him. It was such a part of his personality that he didn’t allow for any negative reaction to anything he did.
How amazing to be that confident. If Annie had that ability, she certainly wouldn’t have had to go to a bachelor auction to