Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 67320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 269(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 269(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
Inside the oversized bedroom, I found myself pacing back and forth. Nothing about Micah added up. I’d seen the cocaine strewn around the hotel room and noticed that he had suffered from some of the symptoms. He was the top male model in the world but acted insecure and unsure of himself. He certainly kept me on my toes by acting sweet some of the time but then added in a huge batch of arrogance and asshole-ism to make me doubt he was capable of true emotion. Then there was the huge elephant in the room…the way his Daddy comment had affected me.
This kid had me in so much fucking trouble.
I heard him step out of the bathroom but didn’t bother to turn around. Actually, I didn’t trust myself to turn around.
“So, uh, what are the plans for tomorrow?”
I stared at my pathetic sofa bed that wasn’t nearly capable of holding someone my size and tried to figure out what he was getting at. He knew his itinerary; why bother asking me? And, just like that, a thought crossed my mind. A wicked thought—something that might very well end up getting me fired. I had a feeling that Samantha’s godson was firmly lodged in the no-touch zone where I was concerned.
Taking in a deep breath, I turned around to face him. Unlike his threat from earlier, he was wearing a pair of loose-fitting pajama pants…that fucking accented every line of his perfect body. Holy motherfucking, son-of-a-bitch, shit. He looked good enough to eat. The magazines didn’t do his body justice.
“We’ll get up at five in the morning, do your morning work-out, clean up, and then go downstairs for breakfast. Your first appointment is at nine, so that should give us plenty of time. After your nine o’clock appointment, I’ll tell you the schedule for the remainder of your day.” There…he should slap my face for that bit of heavy-handed bossiness. Being bossy was something I was used to, but the list of ‘to-dos’ that I’d just thrown at Micah had been said simply to get my mind focused back where it needed to be, instead of how fucking good Micah looked. He’d probably be pissed at my bossiness—I would have been.
Instead, he answered, “Sounds good. Do I need to call downstairs for a wake-up call?”
I stared. He looked totally sincere and innocent. “No, I’ll handle it.”
“Thank you.” He yawned and made his way toward the bed. “Do you want me to sleep on the couch? I’m smaller than you, so it would be much more comfortable for me.”
“Get into the bed. Now.”
He immediately obeyed. No sass. No backtalk. No eye rolling. I couldn’t remember a time that I hadn’t gotten a full-blown eye roll from Arizona whenever I asked him to do anything. Considering it even deeper, I had to admit that Ari’s reaction to me and Eli was the same. Odd. No, not odd. The facts were right in front of me, but I’d chosen to ignore them. My son was in love. Fuck. He was in love, had been attacked and they’d tried to abduct him, and I’d sent him on a cruise with the man that he clearly loved and hated at the same time.
“Uh…you okay? You got a weird look on your face,” Micah said, interrupting my thoughts of my son. Ari was so much like Micah, yet so different.
Unable to stop myself, I walked over to the edge of the bed and stared down at him. I wanted to like him. Hell, I even had a secret fantasy of him being mine. Yeah, I knew that was fucked up, but it was what it was. Sometimes, the facts hurt…like now. Even if I probably didn’t want to know the answer, I still had to ask the question. “How long have you been using cocaine, Micah?”
Since neither of us had turned the lights off yet, I could easily see the shocked expression on his face. He looked up at me, mouth gaped wide open, beautiful eyes blinking in confusion. There was no faking that expression. “What? Cocaine? I don’t use cocaine! There’s plenty of shit you can say about me, but drug use is not one of them! Why the fuck would you even ask me that?”
Even outraged, he was sexy. “You were flying on cocaine when I got to the party, Micah. Trust me, I recognize the symptoms.”
“The fuck you say! I was not! Listen to me, jackass, you don’t have to like me, but don’t talk shit about me. I’ve never used drugs in my entire life. I’m a professional and as fucking boring as shit. Don’t dare try to take that away from me just because you don’t like me.”
I pondered his explosive response and the sincere expression on his face. On top of that, if he’d sniffed a line or two of cocaine, he wouldn’t have handled it nearly as well as he did. The effects of the drug had already worn off him before we’d even returned to our hotel. A quick recovery time like that usually only happened when the drug was ingested orally, not snorted or injected.