Page 3 of Claim to Fame

“Who’s it from?” Angie asked, turning back to Ethan.

Ethan stood, buttoning his suit jacket and sliding the key card into his pocket. “A gentleman never kisses and tells.”

Angie cackled.

At the end of the bar, Hannah slid off her stool. The tall brunette hid behind oversized sunglasses and a baseball cap, but he’d know the upturned end of her nose, the width of her hips, accentuated by her fitted pencil skirt, and the plush round of her backside anywhere. She disappeared into the hall without a second look in his direction and his blood rushed in his ears.

She was the real reason he kept coming back to this hotel bar. Uncomplicated, funny, sexy as hell. Best of all, no expectations, no obligations, no way to disappoint each other.

“When are you going to settle down?”

Ethan glanced back at Angie. He’d almost forgotten she was still there. “Now you sound like my mother.”

“Come on, isn’t that what your whole speech was about? Wanting the wholesome life—a wife, the picket fence, and two-point-five kids?”

“How do you have point five of a kid?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

Ethan sighed. “I don’t know, Ang. Maybe.”

What he didn’t say was yes, of course, he wanted all that. He’d wanted it since he was sixteen and his high school girlfriend got pregnant—and then promptly refused to marry him. But now, staring down the barrel of forty-five, it was time for him to admit to himself that maybe he wasn’t the kind of guy women settled down with. And if lately he wondered what it would be like, if he found his mind drifting to Hannah more than it should, well, that was hardly the point.

Angie grasped his forearm. “You’ll think about the dragon shifters?”

He pulled a few bills from his wallet and dropped them on the table. “Send me the book. I’ll do it.”

Hannah was already in the elevator when he emerged from the bar into the hotel lobby, and he slid into the car just before the doors closed. Inside, she stood beside him as though they were any two people riding in an elevator together. As though they hadn’t done this exact same dance eight times over the last three years.

“You grew a beard,” she said, looking straight ahead at their reflection in the shiny metal of the elevator doors as they began to rise. “I like it.”

He ran his hand over the scruff on his jaw. “You changed your hair.” Last time he’d seen her it had been shorter, falling around her shoulders. Now it hung down to the middle of her back, the ends curled in a way he imagined had taken a long time to get just right. “Looks good.”

“I’m glad you approve,” she teased.

The elevator doors slid open on the seventh floor and she walked out ahead of him, shooting him a conspiratorial look over her shoulder. He let his eyes skate down the length of her body, taking time to appreciate the way her ass swayed as she walked. “Oh, I very much approve.”

She tossed her head back and laughed, the sound washing over him as they moved through the maze of hallways leading to her room. At the door to room 714, she paused, reaching for her purse.

“You were meeting that same woman last time I saw you,” Hannah said, her face turned down towards her purse so he couldn’t catch her expression. “Should I be jealous?”

“Are you? Jealous?”

She didn’t answer, but her shoulders stiffened. He shouldn’t be so delighted by her response, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d spent the six months since the last time they saw each other trying to convince himself he wasn’t completely obsessed with this woman—after all, that was hardly part of the friends-with-benefits arrangement they had going. To think she felt even a fraction of the possessiveness towards him that he felt towards her was intoxicating.

Ethan moved behind her, coming close enough to smell the soft floral notes of her shampoo without actually touching her. He inhaled deeply, reveling in the familiar scent as it sparked a chain reaction of need through his body.

“She’s just an old friend,” he said.

Hannah nodded and continued to search through her purse, but her shoulders noticeably relaxed.

Removing the keycard from his pocket, he slid his arm around her side and held the card to the reader on the door. “Allow me.”

She pushed open the door and turned to face him, taking hold of the lapels of his suit jacket and walking backwards as she led him into her hotel room. “Oh, believe me, I’ll allow you to do a great many things before the night is over.”

As the door closed behind them with a soft snick, she took off her sunglasses and hat, tossing them on the side table in the entryway. Ethan snaked his arm around her lower back, pulling her hips against his and kissing her. She tasted like the citrus seltzers she favored, and though he couldn’t stand the stuff, mixed with the sweetness of her lips, her floral scent, and the plush give of her body against his, it was the best damn thing he’d tasted in months. She began to move away and he nipped at her lower lip, prompting her delighted giggle as she smoothed the lapels she’d held tightly in her fists only a moment before.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she said, her eyes fixed on his chest.

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