LITMIR.BIZ

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him, but he managed to drag himself and his bags across the red thick-piled carpet to the empty reservations counter. Just his luck that everyone was taking a break. He looked for a bell to ring, but he guessed the hotel was a little too classy for ringers. Live flower arrangements the size of a person graced the enormous mahogany counter shiny enough to reflect his image—in his opinion, just another overdone element of the posh resort whose decorating philosophy seemed to be “Size does matter.”

      He wondered briefly how much green the bride and groom were dropping for the wedding. Between the rehearsal dinner, the ceremony and the reception, all of which were supposed to take place at the resort, he suspected his buddy would have to perform an extra face-lift or two to foot the bill. Derek scoffed, shaking his head. Marriage—bah. He gave his pal and the Murphy woman six months, tops.

      “Hello?” he called, trying to tamp down his impatience. He was not above stretching out behind the counter to sleep if he had to.

      A door opened on the other side of the elevators, and his mood plunged when Pinky herself emerged from the stairwell, pale and limping, hair everywhere, coat flapping. “Oh, brother,” he muttered. The last thing he needed was to spend one more minute with the leggy siren.

      Stepping up next to him, she said, “Derek, I insist you take the room.”

      One look into her blue eyes gave him a glimpse of Steve’s future—the woman would be a handful, even for Steve. He might have felt sorry for his pal, but, he reasoned perversely, the man who had led such a charmed life to date probably deserved a little grief. “Janine, go back upstairs.”

      She frowned and planted her hands on her hips. “I thought people from the country were supposed to be polite.”

      His ire climbed, then he drawled, “I get testy when I run out of hayseed to chaw on.”

      Her eyebrows came together and she crossed her arms, sending a waft of her citrusy perfume to tickle his nose. “What’s that smart remark supposed to mean?”

      He did not need this, this, this…aggravation, not when his body hummed of fatigue, stress and lingering lust. Derek felt his patience snap like a dry twig. He leaned forward and spoke quietly through clenched teeth. “I’ll tell you what it means, Pinky. It means I left my firm in the middle of a very important project to fly here and stand in for my runaway brother in a ceremony I don’t even believe in, only to catch some kind of plague and have my reservation canceled and have my sleep interrupted by a stranger crawling into my bed!”

      She blinked. “Do you have blood pressure problems?”

      Heat suffused his face and he felt precariously close to blowing a gasket. She and Steve deserved each other, and they’d never miss him. So after one calming breath, he saluted her. “I’m going home. Please give Steve my regrets.” He turned, then added over his shoulder, “And my condolences.”

      He picked up his suitcase, then headed toward the main lobby, not a bit surprised to hear her trotting two steps behind him. “Wait, you can’t go!”

      “Watch me,” he growled.

      “I’m sorry—you can have the room.”

      Derek lengthened his stride.

      “After all, you made the trip down here…”

      As he approached the lobby area, a buzz of voices rose above the saxophone Muzak, reminding him of bees. But then again, he did have honey on the brain. Good grief, he needed sleep.

      “And you’re not feeling well,” she rattled on. “Blah, blah, blah…”

      The buzz increased as he rounded the corner. He stopped abruptly at the sight before him, and she slammed into him from behind, jarring his aching head.

      “Oh, I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I didn’t realize—”

      “Can you be quiet?” He pulled her by the arm to stand alongside him, too distracted by the scene to worry about her tender feelings.

      The step-down lobby of the hotel was swarming with people, some in their pajamas sitting in chairs or lying on couches, others in lab coats, tending to the guests, others in security uniforms, hovering.

      “What the hell?” he murmured.

      “They’re medics,” Janine said. “Something’s wrong.” She walked over and knelt in front of a young man in a hotel uniform sitting in a chair looking feverish and limp. While her lips moved, Janine put a hand on the youth’s forehead and took his pulse. The coat she wore fell open below the last button, revealing splendid legs encased in those black hose, and bringing to mind other vivid details about what lay hidden beneath the coat. She tossed the mane of blond hair he’d come to suspect was real over one shoulder, evoking memories of its silkiness sliding over his chest and face.

      Recognizing the dead-end street he was traveling, Derek shook himself mentally and strained to remember what she said she did for a living. A nurse? A nurse’s aide? No, a physician’s assistant. Except the woman seemed way too flaky to oversee someone else’s welfare.

      She rose and patted the young man on the arm, then returned.

      “What’s wrong?” he asked.

      Janine shrugged. “No one knows. Several employees and guests have come down with flulike symptoms, so they called for medical assistance.”

      The remains of pink color shimmered on her full mouth…a mouth that had been kissing him not too long ago. His groin tightened. “Is it serious?”

      She shook her head. “It doesn’t seem to be. My guess is a bad white sauce served in the restaurant, or something like that.” Then she stopped and angled her head at him. “Wait a minute—when did you start feeling bad?”

      He shrugged. “When I got here, there was a mix-up on my reservation, so I hung around the lobby for a while until Steve arrived. I remember asking the clerk for directions to the gift shop to buy some cold medicine before I walked up to Steve’s room.”

      She stepped closer and tiptoed to place her small hand on his forehead. He flinched in surprise, but relented. Her eyes were the same deep color of blue as his mother’s favorite pansies. The best part of winter, she always said. His pulse kicked higher. He had to get out of here, fast.

      “You’re a little warm,” she announced, her forehead slightly creased. “But not anything alarming.”

      He stepped around her, his eye on the revolving exit door on the far side of the lobby. Outside sat a yellow taxi, his escape hatch. “Listen, I’m going to grab that cab to the airport. I’ll see ya, Pinky. Have a happy marriage and all that jazz.” And good riddance.

      “But wait, don’t you want to see a doctor?”

      He shook his head as he turned to go. “Nope.”

      She grabbed his arm. “Derek, what are you going to tell Steve…about tonight?”

      He took in her wide eyes and her parted lips and for a minute he wondered if she knew what kind of man she was marrying. She seemed so innocent. Then he laughed at himself—dressing up in naughty lingerie and coming to the hotel to please Steve was not the act of an innocent. Besides, for all he knew, Steve had changed and would be a faithful husband. On the other hand, sometimes women knew their boyfriends were philanderers and didn’t care, or liked the freedom it afforded them. Steve was probably well on his way to becoming a wealthy man, and money could make people overlook a variety of indiscretions. Either way, it was none of his business. He wet his parched lips. “What do you want me to tell him?”

      She averted her eyes, and he could see the wheels turning in her pretty head. When she glanced back, she looked hopeful. “Nothing?”

      He smirked. Nothing like honesty to get a marriage started off on the right foot. “You got it, Pinkie. Nothing happened. We ran into each other in the lobby as I was leaving.”

      “Okay.” Her smile was tentative as he increased the distance between them.

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