Page 10 of About Last Night

She summoned the dredges of her pride and lifted her chin. "It was supposed to be a surprise."

"Trust me, it was." He retrieved a pair of wrinkled jeans from the arm of a chair.

Distracted by the fluid motion of his body performing the simple act of getting dressed, she almost lost her own opportunity to don her coat in relative privacy. But she quicklyrecovered, and by the time he'd pulled on the jeans and a gray University of Kentucky sweatshirt, she had buttoned the coat up to her chin and knotted the belt twice. With his back to her, he used the palm of his hand and pushed his chin first right, then left, to the tune of two loud pops of his neck bones.

"You really shouldn't do that," she admonished. "It could... be... danger... ous..." She trailed off when he looked up, his lips pursed, his expression perturbed. Janine swallowed. "M-maybe I should call Steve on his cell."

He nodded curtly and walked past her into the bathroom without making eye contact. A few seconds later the muffled sound of the sink water splashing floated out from behind the closed door.

With her heart in her throat, Janine trotted to the nightstand, then followed the phone cord to the handset that lay under the bed. Now she knew why the line had been busy, and with shock realized that smoky voice on the other end when she'd called from home had been Derek Stillman's. She bit the inside of her cheek. What a fine mess she'd gotten herself into. Steve's surprise was ruined, and she'd never live down this scene.

She sat on the floor, her finger hovering over the number buttons. She called Marie's phone, but it rolled to voice mail. No doubt her sister was indulging in something wonderfully wicked. She didn't want to alarm Marie, so she didn't leave a message.

Maybe she should just call a cab and vamoose, after swearing Derek to secrecy. Assuming she could trust the man. He seemed pretty surly for someone who was supposed to be a friend of Steve's.

Janine glanced over her shoulder at the closed bathroom door, still tingling over the accidental encounter with the unsettling stranger. Talk about crawling into the wrong bed—Goldilocks had officially been unseated. To top it off, Derek hadshrugged off the sexualized situation with a laugh, while she'd been shaken to her spleen, not just by her unbelievable gaffe, but by her base response to the man.

To curtail her line of thinking, she punched in Steve's phone number, willing words to her mouth to explain the awkward situation in the best possible light. Steve might get a big kick out of the mix-up and return to the hotel right away. She brightened, thinking the night had a chance to be salvaged, if they could shuffle the Best Man to another room. After Steve's phone rang three times, he answered over a buzz of background noise. "Hello?"

"Hi, this is Janine," she said, fighting a twinge of jealousy that Steve was probably out ogling naked women. The fact that she'd been ogling his friend didn't count because she hadn't gone looking for it, and besides, Derek hadn't been naked. Completely. And she hadn't tipped him.

The background noise cleared suddenly, then he said, "Janine, look over your shoulder."

Perplexed, she did, and scowled when she saw Derek standing in the room, talking into a phone.

"Steve left his phone in the bathroom," he said, his voice sounding in her ear. His mouth was pulled back in a flat smile.

She replaced the hotel handset with a bang. "That's not funny."

He set aside the phone. "Not as funny as the fact that you can't recognize the voice of the man you're going to marry."

Annoyed, she flailed to her feet and was rewarded with a head rush, plus a stabbing pain in her heel that indicated she had burst the blister there. "You sound like him," she insisted. But to tell the truth, Derek's voice was deeper and his speech slower, more relaxed.

Derek's jaw tightened, but when he spoke, his voice was casual. "I'm nothing like Steve."

An odd thing to say for someone who was supposed to be Steve's friend, but he was right. Steve was gregarious, carefree. Derek carried himself as if the weight of the world yoked those wide shoulders, and she wondered fleetingly if he had a wife, children, pets.

"Do you know where Steve went?"

He shook his head and shoved his feet into tan-colored loafers. "No, sorry."

She frowned as he strapped on his watch, then stuffed a wallet into the pocket of his jeans. When he picked up a small suitcase and a computer bag, then headed toward the door, her stomach lurched. "Where are you going?"

He nodded toward the door with nonchalance. "To get another room."

Humiliated or not, she couldn't help feeling panicky at the thought of Derek leaving. What must he think of her? What would he tell Steve? "But I... I thought you said the hotel was out of rooms."

Derek shrugged. "There has to be an empty bed somewhere in this place, and no offense, but I feel lousy, and I need to get some sleep."

"I'llleave," she said quickly, walking toward the door. "I'll call Uber from the lobby."

He held out a hand like a stop sign and laughed without mirth. "Oh, no. Steve would never forgive me. The place is all yours." He put his hand on the doorknob.

"But—"

"It was, um—" he swept her figure head to toe, and for the first time, genuine amusement lit his dark eyes "—interestingmeeting you, Janine." Then he opened the door and strode out.

Chapter 4

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