“Well, go convince them that you’ve recovered from your completely unbelievable illness and I’m going to meet Sara.”

“Fine,” I said, standing to pull up my pants. I watched as she leaned forward, smoothing out her hair in the mirror. “Where is Sara?”

“She’s meeting up with a friend who lives here. A dancer, I think? Some sort of cabaret or stripper thing at Planet Hollywood.”

“Now that sounds interesting,” I said.

She met my reflection with raised brows before continuing. “Anyway, I had a feeling I was being stalked and told her to go on without me.”

“A feeling?”

She shrugged, applying her lipstick. “A hope.”

Snapping the cap back on her makeup, she closed it up in her purse and I followed her to the door, lifting a hand to her face. “I love you anyway,” I said.

“I love you anyway, too,” she said, leaning in to kiss me before slapping my ass, hard.

I could still hear her laughter long after she disappeared through the door.

Four

Max Stella

I watched out the rear window as Bennett’s long, purposeful strides carried him down the sidewalk. He looked back over his shoulder and hailed a taxi as soon as he thought we were out of sight.

Bloody hell. For someone known for being so absolutely unflappable, he was a mess. He hadn’t even kept up that flimsy charade of an illness long enough to see us down the end of the street and ’round the corner.

I turned back in my seat, watching as the lights and tourists roaming the sidewalks passed by in a blur, and let my thoughts move to Sara. She’d said she felt hollow with how much she wanted me, and Christ, just the memory of those words was enough to wreck me all over again. She was so rarely demanding, and even during our busiest weeks when we hardly saw each other, she was the patient one out of the two of us, always insisting we’d make up for lost time on the weekend, or on a Wednesday. For her to tell me she needed more tonight made it almost impossible to deny her. But I could see, in her eyes, the way she’d immediately regretted it, as if by telling me that she knew I’d be torn.

With her eerie sense of timing, my phone buzzed with a text from her: I’m fine, honestly. I’m sorry I distracted you.

I smiled as I typed my reply: Alas, you’re my favorite distraction.

Have fun with the boys tonight, she wrote back.