Page 24 of Undeniable Temptation

This was personal.

It was about intimacy she craved and feelings she could no longer suppress.

The man who had always been unobtainable due to marriage was now single. He was within reach. An unlikely possibility, however, a possibility nonetheless, and she’d just thrown away the opportunity without a backward glance.Hell, she’d facilitated the transition into a new relationship by bowing to Grander’s heavy hand.

“Ryan, wait.” She wasn’t sure where the words came from, the sound shooting across the empty lobby like a reverberating gunshot.

The trio paused, all of them turning to face her from the elevator doors.

She clutched tight to her belongings—her laptop, notepad, and elusive sanity—then shuffled quickly on her toes to make her way toward them.

“What are you still doing awake?” His tone was filled with a comforting concern.

“I’ve got work to do and I needed more breathing space than my tiny hotel room.” Lies, lies, lies. “Are you calling it a night? Do you want me to organize a driver?”

“No, we’re good.” He had the sense to look guilty. “I’m, umm…”

“Too modest to admit you’re a gentleman who won’t let us travel to the sleeper bus on our own.” The newest member to the fake relationship patted Ryan on the chest, her long red nails scratching into the fabric. “He offered to let us crash in his room.”

“Yeah. Such a gentleman.” Leah swallowed over the bile coating the back of her tongue. “I’m sorry, I know we’ve met before but I can’t place the name.” It was another lie. She knew exactly who the femme fatale was as she offered her hand to shake. The ploy was a last ditch effort to dint the woman’s perfect smile.

“Hannah.” The woman’s grip was strong.

“She’s with Slicker,” Felicity offered. “My bass guitarist.”

Yep.Hannah Olsen.A woman with absolutely everything in common with Ryan.

The elevator doors opened, helping to increase the bile production and the painful pound beneath her ribs. There was nothing she could say to stop him from moving on. There was nothing she could do to make these women leave.

Not without her humiliation playing a major role.

“I’ll…ahh…let you get on with it, then.” She stepped back—from him, from her feelings, from an unobtainable future. How had she slipped so far? She was stronger than this. More realistic and practical, too.

Shark week must be approaching. Yeah, that had to be it. She was being undeniably psychotic because the lining of her uterus was instigating a mass evacuation.

“Enjoy the rest of your night.” She waved them away, a merry little cheerio she wanted to end in a middle-finger salute.

“I’ll catch you tomorrow?” Ryan’s gaze held a plea. Maybe even an apology.

She ignored both, pretending this was another booty call like all the others she’d witnessed from Mitch, Blake, Sean, and Mason. “Yeah. Of course.” She nodded and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “I’ll get the next elevator. I think I left my pen on the coffee table.”

She held his focus as the heavy doors closed, sealing his fate. Sealing hers, too.

“Whoa.” She exhaled a shaky breath. “That was intense.” An out of body experience. One minute she was working like a good little band manager, the next she was trying to throw her career under a bus. A big bus. Huge bus.

“Fuck you, uterus.”

Her legs moved without thought as she maintained the pretense and headed back to the sofa. For some reason her chest was still aching like a mofo and her limbs were increasingly heavy. Maybe she was having a heart attack. It would explain a lot.

She sank into the squeaky leather cushions and tried to laugh off the brain fade. Tried and tried and failed. This was a good thing. The obtainable was now back to being beyond the bounds of possibility. There was no more temptation. No more bait to lure in her nonexistent sex life. No more snare to entrap her curiosity.

Ryan was officially back to being out of reach.

Fanfuckingtastic.

So why wasn’t she celebrating? Why wasn’t she doing a happy dance to rival all previous happy dances? Why?

Probably because she felt like she’d just let any chance of happiness slip right through her fingers into the waiting hands of someone more willing to appreciate the prize.

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