Page 78 of Trying Sophie

“Of course sir. For how many nights.”

I glanced at Sophie, my eyebrow raised in question. We hadn’t talked about spending the night together. Shit, we hadn’t talked about any of this. As of this morning, I’d been under strict orders not to touch her, let alone kiss her. That we were about to fuck was a miracle.

Sophie straightened to her full height and spoke without shame. “One night please.”

“One night it is.” Agnes, the receptionist’s name tag read, smiled knowingly as she clacked away at her keyboard. Looking up from the screen, she said, “We have a standard queen room in the garden wing for €260.”

I would have gladly taken it until she smirked and I realized she was trying to foist a bad room off on us. It probably shared a wall with the laundry room or looked out over the garbage bins. Not good enough.

“What else do you have?”

“Just a second, sir.”

For a full minute, she typed away, studiously ignoring us.

“We have a deluxe king in the main house with a view of the gardens for €650.” Her smile was smug, as if she thought I couldn’t afford the astronomical sum.

Who could blame her though? While both Sophie and I were dressed stylishly, we didn’t necessarily look expensive even though the jeans I wore cost more than the first room she quoted, my jacket double that. But how many people in their mid-twenties could walk into a luxury hotel and plunk down well over 500 quid without batting an eyelash? Trust fund babies and celebrities, that was who. Fuck it all. Sophie did have a trust fund and I was a fucking celebrity.

Even so, when a man in an expertly cut three-piece suit and his wife, who rocked a diamond as big as an egg, walked past it was clear we were much younger than the hotel’s regular clientele. I didn’t care though. I had needs that needed seeing to.

“We’ll take it.”

“No, Declan. That’s too much money,” Sophie gulped, clasping my arm.

“Excuse us a moment.”

Towing her off to the side of the room, I told her, “Where you’re concerned, nothing is too much. I’d pay triple that for a chance to be with you.”

When she shot me a withering glare I realized my mistake: I’d made her sound like a prostitute.

“You know I didn’t mean it like that. I want you Soph, and at the risk of losing my man card, I want our first time together to be special.”

“I do too, but I don’t need an expensive hotel for it to be special. I just need you.”

One of the things I loved about Sophie was even though she came from money, she didn’t require the trappings of wealth to be content. I would be lying if I said it didn’t matter. A few of the lads on my team had struggled with gold diggers when they’d first come into their money. Even now one of them was going through a nasty divorce with a woman he’d knocked up the first year he’d made it big. But Mick’s problems were the least of my concerns right now.

“Look at it this way. The IRFU pays me a sizable sum to put my body on the line every week, and I’d like to use a small fraction of that cash on something to make my body feel good.” I moved in closer and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Let me make your body feel good too.”

Sophie visibly shivered. On a sigh, she said. “You’re a persuasive man, Declan O’Shaughnessy.”

Victory!

I grinned back, happy as I’d ever been. “I know,” I answered, trailing my finger down her cheek before stepping away.

Hand in hand, we returned to reception. “We’ll take it,” I told Agnes.

“That’s wonderful,” she drawled, obviously not meaning it. “I’ll just need a credit card.”

I dropped Sophie’s hand and reached into my back pocket to pull out my wallet. When I slid my platinum American Express toward her, Agnes’s eyes widened in surprise before she glanced up at me, then back to the card in her hand. Setting it on the counter next to her keyboard, she started clacking away again at her computer. In the reflection of her glasses I could see she’d done a Google search and picture after picture of me in my Dublin and Ireland uniforms showed on her screen. When she looked up again to confirm what her computer was telling her, I smiled smugly.

“Of course, Mr. O’Shaughnessy. Let me just see which room we have available for you,” she continued, despite her having already offered me a room I’d agreed to take.

“It turns out our Oscar Suite is available. I’d be happy to offer you that room free of charge if that works for you? After all, it’s not often we’re lucky enough to have a servant of Ireland staying with us.”

That was because most of us actually lived in Dublin. And given that, I could only imagine what Agnes thought about me bringing a woman to a hotel instead of taking her home. Chances were this would be all over the gossip press by morning.

Smiling tightly, I said, “That’d be fine.”

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