Neck & Neck (30 page)

Even at that, though, the way it had been with Russell and Marti hadn’t been anything like how it had been between him and Gin last night. Marti had never been as passionate, as enthusiastic, as adventurous as Gin. She had drawn the line at a few less conventional positions and actions that Gin had actually instigated herself. Last night had been . . .

He felt his cock twitch just thinking about it. Last night had been like no other night he’d ever experienced. And Gin wasn’t like any woman he had ever met before.

He heard the hair dryer switch off in the bathroom. Twenty minutes ago, a woman had entered that room whom Russell had known only as Amber, a cocktail waitress at a strip club who was surprisingly interesting to talk to and extraordinarily passionate in bed. Now, without even talking to her, he knew so much more about her that he hadn’t known before. What was beginning to bother him, though, was that he knew more about himself, too.

And for the life of him, he had no idea what to make of any of that new knowledge.

 

 

GINNY TOOK ONE LAST LOOK AT HERSELF IN THE bathroom mirror, trying to come up with any other reason for staying in the bathroom a few minutes longer. Russell had been sleeping when she first woke, his body spooning hers from shoulder to toe, his arm draped over her waist, his hand gently cupping her breast. His erection had been pushing forcefully against her fanny, making her instantly aroused, and she’d had to close her eyes and mentally fight back the waves of desire that rocked her. No matter how much she might want him again, there was no way her body would accept him without discomfort.

Good God, what had come over her last night? She had never,
ever
gone to bed with a man so soon after meeting him. And she’d never,
ever
had the kind of sex with any man that she’d enjoyed with Russell last night. Key word there,
enjoyed
. Because Ginny had never enjoyed sex, not really. Not even when she was a teenager, discovering it for the first time. The boys back then had been too eager to satisfy themselves than to bother with her pleasure. And the men since then . . . Well, they’d been too eager to satisfy themselves to bother with her pleasure, too. But Russell had seemed to enjoy the touching and kissing and caressing and tasting even more than Ginny had. He’d seemed to get off on watching her get off more than he’d enjoyed coming himself. She’d just never met a man like him, that was all. Even without the billions.

She wished she could explain away her behavior by having had too much to drink or simply being overcome by the larger-than-life man. But neither of those things was true. Whatever wine or champagne she’d consumed had been with large amounts of food and over the long course of the evening. She’d barely even felt buzzed at any point last night. And instead of being larger-than-life, Russell had seemed more and more down-to-earth with every passing hour. She even forgave him for the Mike Krzyzewski comment, which anyone in the commonwealth of Kentucky—Cards
or
Cats fan—would tell you was a pretty major thing to forgive. She wasn’t sure when it happened, but at some point last night, she realized she’d forgotten all about the fact that he was Russell Mulholland, billionaire and former
People
magazine Sexiest Man Alive. He was just a nice, sexy man whose company she enjoyed. And then, that first time he kissed her in the bar downstairs . . .

Well, she guessed she just forgot who she was, too.

And when he’d suggested they get a room, she hadn’t even hesitated in saying yes. Never in her life had Ginny wanted anything the way she’d wanted Russell in that moment.

When she’d hurriedly called home to tell Hazel not to expect her until morning, she’d hadn’t been sure if her friend had been happy about the news or concerned. All Ginny had told Hazel before going out was that she was meeting a friend for drinks, something that could have meant anything. Hazel had been badgering her for years to find a nice man, start dating, and scratch the itch all normal women feel, but she probably hadn’t meant Ginny should do all that in one night.

Ginny appreciated Hazel’s encouragement, but she’d just never trusted any man enough to let him into her life. Not with herself, and not with her daughter. She’d always thought that someday, after Maisy was grown and on her own, she might, maybe, possibly, perhaps be open to dating. But she’d figured any guy she went out with would be like her. Working-class. A survivor of tough times. Rough around the edges. Not expecting too much in the opposite sex department. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought she would meet a man like Russell.

Never in her wildest dreams had she thought she would
like
a man like Russell. Like him more than she should. Like him in a way where she knew she would remember him for the rest of her life. In a way that made her realize that a working-class, survivor-of-tough-times, rough-around-the-edges guy would never be enough to make her content.

Because he had more than fulfilled his promise to give her one evening unlike any she could imagine. He’d more than fulfilled Ginny, too. Now it was time to tell him good-bye.

Maybe he’d be gone when she came out of the bathroom, she told herself. Maybe he’d awoken while she was in here, and when he’d heard the shower running, had seen it as the perfect opportunity to slip out without having to deal with all that messy morning-after cleanup.

Well,
duh
. Of
course
that was what he’d done. That’s what guys like him always did. They got what they wanted, then they booked. The last thing they wanted to do was talk to a woman after a night like they’d had.

She waited for the ribbon of relief that should have wound through her at the knowledge there wouldn’t be any awkwardness. Waited to feel the gratitude she should have experienced at not having to tell him good-bye. Instead, a spear of distress lanced through her. She really would never see him again. And she really would never forget him.

She gave herself a moment to let that settle in, her body feeling heavier and more unwieldy as it did. Then she cinched the sash of the white cotton robe tighter and, resigned to finding an empty room on the other side, strode slowly out.

Only to find Russell, half-dressed and smiling, sitting on the bed waiting for her, looking even more handsome and charming than he had the night before. Something else wound through her body then, but she dared not try to identify it. She started to move toward him, but his next words stopped her dead in her tracks.

“Good morning, Virginia,” he greeted her. “Or do your friends and family call you something else?”

“Ginny,” she answered automatically, her voice scarcely a whisper. How had he . . . ? When did he . . . ? Why was he . . . ? “I . . . I usually go by Ginny.”

“Ginny then,” he said amiably. “Though I’ve been thinking Gin suits you better. Can I call you Gin?”

She nodded, not sure she trusted herself to say anything. If he knew her first name, he already knew way more about her than she wanted him to. Then the first part of what he said gelled in her fuzzy brain. “Just how long have you been thinking Gin suits me better?”

“Since I saw your driver’s license,” he replied without hesitation.

She swallowed hard against the fear rising from her belly. “And where and when did you see my driver’s license?”

“Just now. When I went through your purse.”

“You went through—”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to know your real name, and you wouldn’t tell me.”

“But I didn’t think . . .”

“It was a good idea for me to know your real name?” he finished for her. “Because I might turn out to be some kind of paranoid psychotic schizophrenic stalker?”

Actually, she hadn’t thought he’d wanted it for any reason other than that it gave him more power over her. But that had been last night, before she’d willingly surrendered every bit of power to him, right around the moment he touched her for the first time.

It occurred to her then that if he’d seen her driver’s license, then he also knew her last name and her home address. Normally, she’d freak out if a guy she’d just met had that much information about her. With Russell, though, the knowledge didn’t strike nearly as much panic as it should. And somehow she knew that had nothing to do with his celebrity and reputation and everything to do with the way he’d made her feel last night. Even before the sex. Especially before the sex.

“I took the liberty of ordering some breakfast from room service,” he said when she contributed nothing further. “Checkout isn’t for another three hours, which gives us plenty of time. To talk,” he finished, his grin growing devilish.

“About what?” she said. “We covered everything last night.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say everything,” he told her.

“Politics, religion, sports, entertainment,” she reminded him. “What’s left?” Then, feigning a
silly me
pose with one hand on her hip and the other tapping her forehead, she quickly added, “Silly me. Fashion. How could we have forgotten that?” She smiled in response to his own. “Probably because that’s just
such
a controversial topic, and we didn’t want to spoil the nice evening we were having.”

“I know what we can talk about,” Russell volunteered.

Afraid to even ask, but certain he wasn’t going to drop the subject—whatever it was—she said, “What’s that?”

He hesitated, but his gaze met hers intently. “Your daughter.”

Something cold and oily settled deep in the pit of her stomach. How had he found out about Maisy? “I never talk about my daughter,” she said adamantly. “Not with anyone.” And although she figured billionaires had ways of finding out anything they wanted to, she still demanded, “How do you know about my daughter?”

He smiled again. “I didn’t. Not until you confirmed it just now. I was only fishing.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. She was such a sucker.

“But I saw you calling someone on my phone last night before I returned to the bar and figured you were calling someone to tell them you wouldn’t be home. And since that wasn’t the sort of thing you were likely to tell a husband or boyfriend, I figured you must have been letting the babysitter know. As for the gender of the child . . . That was just a guess. I figured I had a fifty-fifty chance of being right. And even if I wasn’t, I thought . . . hoped . . . you might slip up and say something like, ‘Oh, no, it’s a son.’ ”

Ginny opened her eyes again, her tension easing not at all. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t want Russell to know about Maisy, other than for the same reason she didn’t want any men to know about Maisy. Because she worried about her daughter’s safety in this age of predators and sexual advertising. But Russell wasn’t any man. He wasn’t a stranger now, and in a way, he hadn’t been the night before. And he was a father himself.

Maybe her desire had nothing to do with Maisy and everything to do with herself. Maybe there was a part of her that still wanted him to see her as Amber, cocktail waitress at a strip club. Not because that made her sexier or more exotic or more attractive, but because Amber could handle men a lot better than Ginny could. And it would be a lot easier for Amber to part ways with a guy like Russell than it would be for Ginny.

“I won’t ask why you didn’t mention her last night,” he continued. “A woman who won’t even tell a man her real name certainly isn’t going to reveal the fact that she has a child waiting for her at home. But this morning . . .” His voice trailed off, and he shrugged. “Well, I just thought maybe things had changed enough between us that you might be more amenable to talking about her. To talking about yourself.”

That caught Ginny off guard. “Have things changed with us since last night?” she asked.

He seemed puzzled by the question. “Don’t you think they have?”

Instead of answering, she turned the tables on him. “Do you?”

He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again, as if he didn’t want to be the one to play his hand first. Too bad, Ginny thought. She wasn’t about to play her own hand first. She had way more to lose than he did. She didn’t even want to up the ante any further.

“I’m a parent myself, you know,” he replied instead.

She nodded. “I know.”

“My son, Max, is fourteen.”

“I know.”

“He lost his mother when he was a baby. He doesn’t remember her.”

Ginny knew that, too, just as everyone else who’d read that
People
magazine article did. But there hadn’t been much else in the story about his son. She’d assumed it was because he didn’t have much time to spend with the boy while trying to run a multibillion dollar corporation. But maybe, like she, he just wanted to protect his child and keep him out of the eye of anyone who might take advantage of him.

So she relented some and told him, “My daughter doesn’t remember her father, either. But that’s because she never knew him.”

“Does he know about her?”

Oh, yeah, Ginny thought. This was another reason she didn’t want to talk about Maisy. Because people started asking questions like that. “Kind of,” she replied.

Russell arched his brows in surprise at that. “Kind of?”

“I told him I was pregnant after I found out.”

“And what did he say?”

She sighed heavily. “He backhanded me across my face a couple of times and told me to get rid of it. I took off before he could do anything more to help that along.”

Russell said nothing in response to that, but his expression grew hard. So Ginny figured, what the hell. She might as well tell him the rest of it. Once he knew, there was no way he’d hang around. Then she wouldn’t have to tell him good-bye. He’d be out of there faster than she could say,
Wrong side of the tracks
.

“It happened when I was fifteen. He and I had both run away from home and were squatting in a house with a bunch of other street kids. After he”—she expelled a shaky breath—“hit me, I knew I couldn’t go back there. But I couldn’t go home, either. I had this stepfather problem, you see, and a mother who had raised denial to an art form.”