One Wild Wedding Night_ No Way Out - Leslie Kelly [2]
“Jeez, Gloria,” Mia muttered.
“It’s okay. It’s a legitimate question. And the answer is, if the boy is fine and doesn’t judge me by my skin color, I’m not going to judge him by his.”
“I imagine most men judge you by those legs,” Mia said.
She chuckled. “I haven’t broken a man’s hips yet.”
When they reached the hotel, Vanessa hoped the three of them could continue their party in the hotel bar. She was a stranger in town, after all, and she had one last night before heading back to New York tomorrow.
But they both bailed on her. Gloria due to her family, and Mia because…well, Mia because she wasn’t nearly as into this whole wedding thing as a typical sister of the bride would be. That was okay. Vanessa liked her anyway and she appreciated the effort the feisty woman had made. From conversations she’d had with Izzie, she knew the bride had appreciated it, too.
After the other women had gone, she decided to can the bar idea and head up to her room. But as she crossed the lobby, one of the hotel managers hurried out from behind the registration desk, calling her name. “I’m so sorry to inconvenience you, Miss McKee, but we’ve had a bit of an…incident this evening.”
Great. First a bar fire, now what?
“One of the rooms on your floor was broken into.” The man grew red in the face, hurrying to add, “Not a robbery, the hotel wasn’t the target, apparently the guest was. Still, the authorities have blocked off that section of the corridor.”
“Okay. So?”
“I’m sorry, they’re not allowing guests access to that area, including…your room.”
She sighed heavily. “So, what, I sleep on a lobby sofa?”
“Oh, no, indeed! We have arranged for you to be moved to one of our finest suites. If that is acceptable to you, we’ll have your luggage moved and you can go up in short order.”
“Whatever,” she muttered, not particularly impressed at the whole “finest suites” thing. She’d traveled all over the country performing. A hotel room was a hotel room, no matter how much fancy crap they shoved into it.
“While you wait, please enjoy complimentary refreshments in the bar. I’ll have someone bring your new key to you shortly.”
Hmm…free drinks and an excuse to hang out in the bar without looking all single and pathetic. That did sound okay.
Entering the bar, she spotted a table in a corner, shadowy and separate. Perfect. She didn’t feel like getting hit on tonight, not unless a superhot bad boy did the hitting. And the chances of that happening in this swanky, snobbish hotel were slim. Superhot bad boys didn’t hang out at places like this.
At least she thought they didn’t. But a few minutes later, while she sipped her chocolate martini, she saw a man walk in. A man who filled up the whole place with heat and simmering intensity and who instantaneously silenced every conversation and caught the attention of the entire room.
Like everyone else, she recognized him immediately. And Vanessa realized she’d been wrong. Because the baddest boy of them all had just walked back into her life. Not twenty feet away was the person she’d once so despised: the boy who’d made her fall in love with him, taken her virginity, then abandoned her, leaving her alone to face humiliation and scorn.
She wondered just how bad he was going to look after she greeted him the way she’d fantasized about doing for many years.
With a punch in his face.
* * *
Stan Jackson always stayed in this particular hotel when he visited Chicago . Not just because the staff was equipped to deal with celebrities—and offered privacy and anonymity. But also because his mother had once worked as a maid at a hotel from the same chain down in Atlanta . That appealed to him the same way it appealed to him to know she now had a maid of her own, even though she insisted she didn’t need one.
He didn’t care if the woman did nothing but play cards with his mother…for the first time in his life, he had the money to take care of those he loved. And he intended to do it. Whether it was putting his