Page 19 of Strictly Business

I don’t want to jump the gun or look like I’m desperate, so I force myself not to sit there grinning like some sort of idiot and instead, I look out of the window as we pass by where he would have turned off to get to my street house. Instead, we keep going and about six blocks later, he turns to the left, the opposite side to my place. The posh side. I guess it stands to reason that the owner of a multi-million-dollar company is going to live on the nicer side than someone who has only been out of college for five minutes and until last week, only had temporary jobs.

He pulls off the street, driving down a ramp into an underground parking lot. He parks and we get out of the car, and he leads me to an elevator. We get in and Wyatt leans across me and hits the button for the top floor. I get a whiff of his aftershave, musky and masculine and I relish the scent. It makes me want to grab Wyatt and kiss him so that I can be consumed by that scent. I force myself to behave like a normal human being instead though.

We go up and up and up and eventually, the elevator comes to a stop and the doors ping open. The apartment building is not quite as posh as I imagined it to be at first because the doors of the elevator don’t open into Wyatt’s living room.

They open into a short hallway which Wyatt leads me down and then he opens a door and gestures for me to enter. His open plan living room, dining room and kitchen is massive. The wall opposite where we enter is all glass and he has a beautiful view over the city. The skyline is visible with the darkness inside of the apartment and I can see other high rise apartment blocks, some windows lit up, some not. The twinkling lights look almost like stars from here.

“Lights,” Wyatt says as he closes the door and the lights pop on, dimmed to just a nice, cosy level, but still enough to cause the window to become more like a mirror and now I see myself and Wyatt reflected in it instead of the city scape. “Let me show you the spare bedroom and where the bathroom is.”

Obviously the second part of Wyatt ‘s sentence is aimed at me, and I nod and follow him across the huge lounge area. He opens a door that opens into a long hallway, and he leads me down it. He opens a door and points inside, commenting that the room is the bathroom as he is showing me it. The bathroom is big too, holding a large double shower, a free-standing bath and several storage units. After I have had a peep inside the bathroom and nodded my acknowledgement of the room, Wyatt opens the door opposite it, and gestures for me to go inside of it, which I do.

“This is my spare room,” he says. “Sorry it’s not much.”

The room has a double bed, made up with black bedding that matches the curtains. The walls are white and the floor, like the wardrobe and other furniture, is oak. It’s plenty big enough and I have no idea what Wyatt means when he apologizes for the room not being much. I wonder how big his bedroom is if this one feels like a room he has to apologize for.

“Is this ok for you?” Wyatt asks me.

“Of course, it’s ok for me,” I say. “It’s more than ok. It’s great. Thank you.”

I can feel that tension in the air again, although I think I might be imagining it this time, my imagination running loose now that I’m officially standing inside of a bedroom with Wyatt beside me. Is Wyatt about to get into bed with me? I hope so, but I still don’t believe it’s going to happen.

“Do you want a drink or anything before bed?” Wyatt asks me.

“No thank you,” I say.

“Ok, well if you want anything at any point, help yourself. If you want to brush your teeth, there’s a spare toothbrush in the cabinet above the bathroom sink,” he says. “There are toiletries and everything in the bathroom. Use anything you want to. Oh, and there are towels for you to use right there in the tall cabinet.”

He points to a cabinet set into a corner of the room, and I nod again, letting him know I’m listening and that I understand.

“Thank you,” I say, the talk of a toothbrush and towels suddenly bringing on the grubby feeling I always have at the end of a long day. The fact that Wyatt is giving me directions for where to find stuff tells me he’s not planning on being in here with me. I don’t know if I misread the situation earlier or if the moment just passed but the tension is gone, and I’m going to be spending the night in here alone. In that case, I might as well at least be comfortable. “Actually, I was thinking of taking a bath if that’s ok. I know it’s kind of late, but …”

I tail off and Wyatt smiles.

“I’m a bit of a night owl myself,” he says. “Knock yourself out. I’m going to work out I think.”

“What, you’re going to the gym now?” I ask.

He laughs softly.

“I have a home gym,” he explains.

“Oh, of course,” I laugh. “I won’t bother getting a bath then because you’ll want a shower won’t you and I don’t want to be a nuisance.”

“You’re not a nuisance and my shortest work out is over an hour, so you have plenty of time,” he says.

“Ok,” I say.

I decide I will have that bath after all. Although I would prefer to go along to the gym and be a spectator in there instead. I wonder what Wyatt would do if I went and found his gym and just sat down and started to watch him. I imagine him showing off, flexing his muscles and doing a more intense routine to impress me. Truthfully though, I think he would be more likely to ask me what the hell I am doing there and let’s be honest, it would be a fair question.

I wait in the bedroom until I hear that Wyatt has opened and then closed a door, and I figure he is either in his bedroom or the gym now, and I step out into the hallway and go across to the bathroom. I put the plug in the bath and get the hot water going. I go to the sink and open the cabinet and find a new toothbrush exactly where Wyatt said I would. I use some of his toothpaste and brush my teeth and then I rinse my mouth and look at myself in the mirror. I splash water on my face and use my fingers to wash my make up off. I decide I don’t want to go to bed with wet hair, and I don’t think Wyatt will have a hair dryer and I don’t want to disturb him by asking him for one, and so I go back to my room and find a hair tie in my bag. I go back to the bathroom and pull my hair up into a bun on the top of my head.

I add some cold water to my bath water, but not much. Just enough so that I can bear the heat on my skin. I love a hot bath. I add a dash of Wyatt ‘s bubble bath and then I go back to my room again. I strip off and hang my clothes in the wardrobe, aware that I’m probably going to have to wear them again tomorrow.

I open the bedroom door and glance both ways when I realize that I forgot to bring a towel back to the bedroom with me and I’m going to have to duck across the hallway naked or go and get dressed again and go for a towel. I choose the naked dash.

I look both ways along the hallway again. The coast is clear, and I run across the hallway and back into the bathroom. I giggle to myself about my naked dash as I get into the bath and then I lay back, letting the heat caress my skin. I close my eyes and breath in the scented steam from the bath water. I feel my muscles relax and I embrace the feeling.

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