Cover to Covers (4 page)

But the thought of looking up at her empty eyes was enough to turn Tyler off. Instead of giving her a reply, he simply flipped her over on the bed. After shoving her underwear down to her knees, he lifted her hips into the air. With his other hand he pushed his pants down over his crotch. Before his pants had even hit the floor, he forced his way deep inside her.

“Give a girl some warning,” Hadley balked as she gr
asped the bedspread.

Tyler pushed into her flesh again, harder than before.

“That’s it, baby.” Hadley backed her hips firmly into his. “You know I like it when you go deep.”

Tyler block
ed out her voice, and instead of trying to please her, he went after what he wanted. He drove into her as fast and as deep as he could go, grunting as his hips pounded her, thrusting with all of his might, hoping to lose himself in the sensation. He was relieved when the wonderful tingle that started in the depths of his groin began to climb, burning his flesh along the way. Grimacing, he slammed his hips harder into her.

“Oh yeah,” Hadley moaned beneath him.

Clasping her waist with both hands, he arched back and brutally rammed into her. The movement sent Hadley over the edge and she threw her head back with delight.

“Yes,” she screamed into the bedroom.

Feeling his climax barreling upward, Tyler dove into her until his muscles tightened and the overwhelming cascade of release burst within him. When his body finally calmed, he pulled out and collapsed on the bed next to Hadley.

She
tried to nuzzle against him, but Tyler rolled over on his side. Her hands slipped under his shirt and caressed his back, but he ignored her.

“You haven’t been like that since…I can’t remember when.
Maybe if you’d screwed me like that before, I wouldn’t have needed all those boyfriends.”

He sat up
in the bed. “Jesus, Hadley. You think for once we could have a conversation without bringing up the other men you have slept with.”

She
popped up next to him. “Sometimes I think that was the only way I could get you to pay attention to me. Your mind was always somewhere else during our marriage, Tyler. No matter what I did, how I dressed, you were never thinking of me. What did you expect me do to?”

His
brief respite from Monique was over, and once again her endearing features and kissable lips drifted back to the forefront of his thoughts. He ran his hand over his face.

“Shit
.”

“What?” Hadley
stretched out her arms to him.

He pushed her away, and then he stopped when her slender
arm rested against him. He needed to forget again. Tyler rose quickly from the bed, ripped his shirt from his shoulders, and snatched up his tie from the floor. When he came back to the bed, Hadley was grinning.

“You want to tie me up this time?”

He never uttered a word as he bound her hands together above her wrists.

“I always loved it when you tied me up.” She rose to her knees on the bed. “What do you want me to do?”

He placed his hand against her shoulder and shoved her back on the bed. Hadley fell backwards onto the gold bedspread. Before she could right herself, he hoisted her legs over his shoulders.

“
You’ve never been like this,” she exclaimed as he hiked her hips higher in the air, jamming her head into the bedspread.

He was not even all the way hard when he entered her again, but he did not care. Taking his ex to bed had never been about pleasure, but forgetting, and he planned on thrusting into her as many times as it took to force the image of
Monique out of his head for good.

***

The veil of night was covering the twelfth floor windows of his suite when Tyler awoke from his brief nap. He heard the water in the shower running and remembered Hadley. In the afterglow of sex with his ex, he realized that it had been a mistake. In the restaurant, he had not considered the consequences of his actions. All he had wanted was to forget about Monique, and Chris Donovan’s possessive grip on her body. But the hours he had spent with Hadley had not helped. Throwing the sheets aside, he sat up on the edge of the bed.

“You want to tell me what that was all about?” Hadley
badgered from the wide bathroom entrance.

He
ran his hands through his wavy hair. “What was about?”

She wrapped the oversized, white bath towel closer to her body. “Acting like a jackrabbit on Viagra.” She came up to the bed. “I know we’ve had our fun in the past, but honestly, Tyler, it’s never been like that.”

He stood from the bed and walked to the bathroom. “I thought that was what you wanted.”

She
followed him to the doorway. “I wanted passion, tenderness, a bit of cuddling. You gave me raw, unfeeling sex, and will probably leave me sore as hell tomorrow.”

He went to the shower and flipped the faucet to cold. “I didn’t hear you complaining.”

“And I didn’t hear you say anything at all. I mean a girl likes a good pounding every now and then, but four times? Even when we were dating you were only good for two times in one night, tops.”

He stepped into the jet stream of icy-cold water, hoping the painful blast would awaken him from the lethargy quickly taking over his body.

“Are you listening to me, Tyler?”

“No, Hadley. I’m not listening, so
grab your shit and get out of my room.”

She came to the open shower entrance. “What do you mean
, get out? After what we did, you could send me away just like that?”

He leaned his strong arms against the shower wall. “Yeah, just like that. We’re still getting divorced. One afternoon in the sack isn’t going to change anything.”

“You’re a real bastard, Tyler Moore.”

He wiped his hand over his wet face. “That’s why you’re divorcing me, isn’t it?”

“For a while you had me thinking that Monique Delome was some long lost love, but now I know you’ve never loved anyone. How could a sadistic asshole like you even have a heart?”

“I love you, too, Hadley
,” he hurled back with a contemptuous sneer. “Now get the hell out of my room, and the next time Fred Bishop sends you divorce papers, sign them, or I will cut you off without a penny.”

“You would, wouldn’t you? You would cut me and Tessa off without any means of support.”

He shook his head, teeming with annoyance. “Now Tessa finally comes into play, eh? Well, you got by before I came along, and you’ll get by long after I am gone. Your kind always does.”

She went to slap him, but Tyler simply deflected the blow with his hand. “Get out, Hadley.”

Growling like a rabid dog, she backed away and then bolted from the bathroom.

He waited for the slam of the suite door, and when it finally came, he
reclined against the shower wall.

“She’s right, I am a grade ‘A’ bastard.”

Closing his eyes as the cold water slowly revived him, he let his thoughts stray once more to Monique. He figured if an afternoon of vigorous sex with Hadley had not dispelled the woman from his mind, perhaps nothing would.

H
e recalled the first time he had met her. Dragged to a party by some long forgotten friend, Tyler had quickly grown bored with the college crowd gathered in the upper end, Highland Park home. He was about to leave when he observed her standing by a stone fireplace, gazing up at a Jackson Pollack painting. He remembered how out of place she had appeared. In her faded blue jeans and pale yellow sweater, he had thought her refreshingly innocent, but when he spoke to her, Tyler had been surprised to find a sharp mind behind that lovely face. At first, Monique had refused his suggestion to get away from the noisy party, but after a little cajoling, she had relented and followed him in her beat up blue Pinto to a coffee shop. They had talked until dawn, and when he finally escorted her back to her dorm, Tyler knew he had found someone special.

On t
heir first date, he had been afraid to kiss her, but by the second, he could not get enough of kissing her. On their third date, he knew he was falling for her, but during their few months together, had never told her of his feelings. Tyler had thought himself weak for harboring such emotions, now he realized he had been a fool to let her go. 

Monique could not have reappeared at a worse time in his life. Fighting with Hadley, struggling to keep his business successful, as well as fending off the insidious advance of middle age, Tyler figured this was some kind of punishment for years of emotionless affairs and assorted one-night stands. Somewhere down the line he must have pissed off the gods of sex.

Satisfied that his shower had done all that it could to lift him from his doldrums, he flipped off the tap and retrieved an extra wide bath towel from a glass shelf next to the shower stall. After hastily drying off, he wrapped the towel about his waist and went to the phone by the bed. Lifting the receiver, he hit “0” and waited. After two rings, a lilting female voice thanked him for choosing the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

“This is Mr. Moore in suite 1201. I need to speak with Missy at the front desk
.”

Missy’s perky voice
quickly came on the line. “Mr. Moore, how can I help you?”

“Missy, can you get me tickets to this romance con
vention that everyone in the hotel seems to be going to?”

“Ah…
.yes, I can call the booking department for you.”

“Charge the tickets to my room and I’ll pick them up at the front desk in the morning.” He paused
as a thought struck him. “Where is this thing, by the way?”

“The Dallas Convention Center
,” Missy stated. “Would you like me to arrange for transportation to the facility?”

“Yes, have a car and driver waiting for me at ten in the morning.
” He envisioned Monique’s seductive eyes. “I need to arrive in style.”

Chapter 3

When the black Town
Car from the hotel pulled up outside of the gleaming modern steel entrance of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, Tyler surveyed the throngs of women heading to the row of glass doors. Many were dressed casually in shorts or light summer frocks to beat the torrid temperatures, and most were carrying a variety of colored canvas bags.

“Are you a writer?” the young
driver asked Tyler, after parking the car.

Tyler contained
a smug grin. “No, I came to see one.”

The driver nodded to the steady flow of women passing
in front of the car. “Looks like you’re not alone.”

The driver climbed out and came around to the rear passenger side door. As soon as Tyler stepped from the car, the sweltering morning heat made his gray tailored suit feel absolutely stifling.

“When should I return to pick you up, Mr. Moore?”

Tyler slipped his gray suit jacket from around his shoulders. “I’m not sure.”

The driver removed a white business card from the embroidered pocket of his short-sleeved shirt. “This is the number for the car service at the hotel; you can call them when you’re ready.”

Tyler took the card and placed it in his trouser pocket. “You ever been to one of these things?”
He motioned to the convention center doors.

“No, sir. My mom goes all the time, though. She’s a romance fanatic.” He shut the
rear door. “Watch your back in there. My mom’s told me these ladies can get pretty feisty when they’re trying to get to their favorite author.”

Tyler flung his jacket over his shoulder.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”

The young man jogged around to the front driver’s side door as the endless line of woman continued
winding their way toward the convention center. Tyler fell in step behind a trio of middle-aged women in flowery summer dresses and flip-flops. When they reached the entrance, he opened one of the glass doors for them and waited as each of the women gave him a polite nod before stepping inside.

“Excuse me,
” he said to the last woman coming through the door. “Where do I get one of those?” He pointed to the red badge hanging about her neck.

The
heavyset lady with a heart-shaped face gestured to a row of booths at the far end of a long lobby. “You need to check in at registration to get an ID badge before you can enter the exhibit hall.”

Tyler thanked her and when he entered the air-conditioned lobby with its patterned gray and taupe floor, he made his way to the booths with a bright red banner reading, “Registration” hanging from the ceiling above.
An attractive older attendant with curly gray hair was sitting behind one of the booths and he strolled right up to her.

“I was told I needed to check in to get an ID badge,” he d
eclared, flashing his well-rehearsed, engaging grin.

T
he woman’s sallow complexion brightened as he stood before her. “Of course,” she mustered with a feeble smile. “Do you have your ticket?”

Tyler pulled the ticket
that Missy had gotten for him from his jacket pocket. “I am particularly interested in seeing Monique Delome. Do you know where she will be?” He handed the woman his ticket.