Getting Naughty

She stopped but didn’t turn around.

“I don’t want...to be miserable,” he said. “Just—just so you know.”

She looked at him over her shoulder. “You don’t want to be, but you are, aren’t you? I’m sorry I’m not the one to help you with that after all.”

And then she forced herself to walk unhurriedly to her bedroom, as though she was perfectly, absolutely fine, thank you, because she wasn’t miserable, even if she’d just thrown herself at a guy who did not want her for the three-thousandth time!

She closed her bedroom door supersoftly, then leaned against it and slapped a hand over her mouth to trap the moan that was fighting to get out.

Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Failure. Utter, abject failure.

Well, what had she expected? A half-naked lap dancer who had the indecency to come faster than a speeding bullet wasn’t exactly the woman Prince Charming would set his sights on. And all before the clock ticked over to 9:00 a.m.—giving new meaning to the question “will he still respect me in the morning?”

Well, fuck that. She respected herself.

If Teague wanted to be hung up on a woman with whom he’d never had sex and never would, he was welcome to go on being miserable for the rest of his fucking life. Ha! As if Romy was being all princessy and virginal, anyway, married to Matt, of all men. Maybe Teague needed to think about that before he sloughed off an offer of hot, dirty sex with a woman who actually wanted him!

Well, not her problem. She had plenty of clients at King’s Castle who didn’t judge her for a damn thing! They’d cry with joy if she let them touch her the way she’d let Teague Hamilton touch her! She had one regular who was a billionaire, just like Teague, and he’d begged her a hundred times just for a kiss.

Okay, truthfully, Banjo Snow was a billionaire but he was not “just like Teague.” Banjo was...sleazy. Married, with a mistress on the side, as well as propositioning Frankie every chance he got.

She had other clients, though. Geoff Rhodes, for example. A nice guy who liked her in her clothes as well as out of them, and who happened to be one of the best real estate agents in Bondi so was scouting out premises for the shop she planned to open.

Her shop. That was what she should be thinking about, not some fantasy that was past retirement age. She had a storage locker full of treasures she’d been lovingly collecting for years, she had Matt’s ring to launch the store via a charity auction, and the only reason she didn’t have a boyfriend was because a man was in her top ten list of good things to have but not in the top three or five or even eight! There would be time for men once she knew her business had a chance of making it.

Perspective. That’s what it was all about. A fling with the man of her dreams would have been nice, but it wasn’t essential to her happiness.

She took off her robe and hung it on the clothes rack she used in place of a wardrobe, then flicked through the hangers and chose a cheerful 1950s sundress, printed all over with cherries on a pale blue background. An innocent, nonthreatening dress. She took a few minutes in the bathroom to brush her hair and slap on some makeup, then she came back through the bedroom, opened the door and stepped into the living room with a chirpy “Right, then,” to announce herself to Teague.

But there was no Teague. And his suitcase was gone.

Almost before her brain accepted that he’d left the house, she heard voices outside. She went to the door, concluding that Joe had arrived and Teague must have gone out to put his bag in the trunk. She reached for the handle...and then pulled her hand back. If Teague had intended to come back in and say goodbye, he wouldn’t have closed the door, would he?