Lovely Trigger (Tristan & Danika #3)(26)
Author: R.K. Lilley

His pants were fastened, my skirt straightened, when he spoke again, “Can we agree that we need to talk?  Not in a week, not in a month, but tonight.”

“I’m work—”

“When you’re done.  I can wait.  Obviously.”

I nodded, not looking at him, focused on the pile of fans we’d knocked over onto the floor.

I got to work picking them up and straightening them.   None were damaged, thank God, but not for lack of trying.  We’d knocked every single one of them off the table.

Tristan tried to help me, but I waved him off.

“Go away.  Go look around, or mingle, or something.  I can’t get anything done with you around.”

Instead of offending him, that made him smile.  The man was still perverse.

I got back to work, but I was so distracted that I felt like a basket case for the rest of the night.

Every time I turned around, there he was, looking my way, smiling at my annoyed looks.

What was wrong with him, behaving like no time had passed since we’d been close?  Acting as though we still were close.

It was disarming me, and I needed my arms.

After a time, as I did my usual hurry back and forth through the different exhibits, answering questions, handling sales, placating artists, I noticed that he’d stopped following me around.

Somehow, that was even more distracting.

The event was winding down before I saw him again.

I happened upon him in one of the smaller rooms, alone with some woman.  They were laughing together, and as I very nonchalantly moved in for a closer look, pretending to straighten a picture on the wall, I realized that I recognized her.

She had deep red hair and a pale but luminous complexion.  She was beautiful and very young.

She was a famous singer.  I knew the name of at least three of her songs, so she was very famous.  She was one of those young starlets that were always being linked romantically to other celebrities.

And at the moment, she seemed to be very interested in my ex-husband.

I couldn’t recall them ever being linked in the gossip rags.  Though I liked to pretend I didn’t keep track, I was up to date enough that I thought I would have remembered this connection.

The girl was just so young.  Nineteen, if I was recalling it right.

She wasn’t too young to make him laugh, or to appreciate whatever he was saying enough to laugh herself, and to touch his arm several times, and just in general seem ecstatic to have his attention on her.

I turned around and left.  I didn’t need to see that, or hear it, or ever think about it again.

I couldn’t, however, manage to keep my mouth shut for even a second when he approached me again, several minutes later.

“God, it was bad before you were famous.  You must have to beat them off with a stick now.  Or not, I guess.  There’s plenty of you to go around.”

His expression, which had been smiling, wiped clean, becoming very blank.  “I don’t think we want to go there.  Either of us.”

I rolled my eyes, because it was no competition.  His revolving bedroom door and my locked one were not even in the same category.

“Am I allowed to ask if this is jealousy?”

I bristled.  “No, you’re not.  You do whatever you like.  It’s no business of mine.”

I started to move past him, but he caught my arm, turning me slowly back to him.

“That’s quite an invitation.  Anything I like, huh?  Let’s go back to your hotel room.  Right this second.”

I rolled my eyes, jerked my arm out of his hold, and stormed away.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

TRISTAN

It took her hours to finish up, but I waited patiently.  Better to wait hours here, then days, weeks, months, somewhere else.  And in spite of all that had happened, I had no doubts that it was a very real possibility she would just cut me out again, if I didn’t press the issue now, tonight.

“This can’t be convenient for you,” she told me sassily as I held the door open for her.  Even her walk, limp and all, was sassy.

I felt myself getting hard.

“This isn’t really about convenience, now is it?” I asked her pointedly.

She didn’t answer, just folded her arms across her chest and stared at me.

The gallery shared a parking lot with a Cavendish resort, so I assumed she had a room there for the night, since it was clearly too late for her to make it back to Vegas.

“Let’s go talk in your room,” I said with a smile, watching her face for a reaction that I was way too excited about, considering that I knew it wouldn’t be a positive one.

She gave me a dirty look, and I shoved my hands in my pockets, my c**k twitching restlessly.

“I’m so not taking you there.  No way in hell.”

I tried not to let my grin grow too big.  “I saw an all-night diner on my way here, maybe five minutes away.”

She gave her narrow eyed agreement to let me take her there.

We stared at each other across a tiny table and ordered cheeseburgers.  The table was so narrow that our legs would have touched if I hadn’t spread mine wide, letting hers rest between.

It was surreal, just to get to stare at each other under bright, unforgiving lights.

Of course, Danika didn’t need forgiving lights.  She was perfection, even under the harshest of conditions.  So beautiful that my chest was aching enough that my hand had been rubbing at it for a solid minute before I caught myself and lowered it.  And the entire time, I just kept drinking in the sight of her.

There were so many shocking, drastic changes and painful, wrenching similarities between the girl and the woman.  The girl had been playful, fresh-faced, and beautiful as a freshly bloomed flower.  The woman was quiet and elegant, and so heart-wrenchingly exquisite I would have given up another piece of my soul just to keep looking at her.

I couldn’t believe she’d let me have her again.  Even as I clearly recalled the encounter, how she’d let me inside of her, bare; let me come in her, skin on skin; let me empty myself deep inside of her, I almost felt as though I’d dreamed the whole thing.

That was all we did for the longest time, just stared at each other.  I was hesitant to be the first to start talking.  The faster we talked, the sooner this was over, and I was content to drag this out until dawn.

“Does this place even have good burgers?” she finally asked.  “Because I’m warning you right now, I’m not wasting calories on a bad one.”