Page 26 of Guarded Hearts
From the minute the door to the ballroom in the hotel clicked closed, I sensed the tension emanating from Alyssa across the room. Her spine was ramrod straight, and she didn’t turn at the sound of the door. She was fiddling with her phone, and when she threw it into her bag, she still didn’t meet my gaze.
The weight that had been hovering over my chest earlier landed. I ran a hand down my face.
Regret.
The room stank of it, like a terrible cologne sprayed over and over. She regretted sleeping with me again. Last night, she’d told me not to come here with regrets, and I hadn’t. I’d been prepared to move forward, offer some suggestions about what last night had meant or could mean. Instead, I was on a slippery slope, unsure of where to place my next step to keep us on stable ground. Avoidance, maybe? I winced. Not my favorite strategy.
“Mia’s not coming,” I said, leading with something easy, an icebreaker.
“I know. She texted me.” She nodded toward her phone.
“Are we okay to practice?” My gut twisted. We were back to where we’d been after the last time we slept together, uncertain, stilted.
“Uh, yeah.” She dragged her hair into a ponytail and turned her back.
“Alyssa?” Head on. I wasn’t going to avoid this. Couldn’t do it. I’d go insane trying to sidestep the truth, whatever it turned out to be.
She half turned, not making eye contact but clearly listening.
“If you regret last night, say it. If I need someone else to help with the dance, tell me.” I crossed my arms and stared at her.
She dropped her hair from where it had sat, perched on top of her head, the elastic still looped around her wrist. When she faced me, she tugged on her bottom lip with her fingers. She met my gaze, and her brown eyes were filled with uncertainty. “We should have kept things between us professional. That’s my fault. I shouldn’t have said anything to you about how I was feeling. I knew better, but I was drunk, and well, you’re—you know—you.”
“Professional?” I couldn’t help the disbelief in my voice. Last night, she’d said she thought we were becoming friends, then we’d had sex, and now she wanted to scale our relationship back toprofessional. “What is going on?”
“I don’t regret last night, but it was a mistake. I need this job,reallyneed this job, and I didn’t think things through.”
I’d been keeping my distance, uncertainty making me cautious, as though I could keep the sting from her words by being far enough away. “I don’t understand.” Now, I stood in front of her, staring down, trying to read her, but she was focused on her feet.
“If I lose this job, I’ll end up bankrupt.” She met my gaze, a hint of pleading in her brown depths. “I don’t know what your contract says, but mine specified no, you know,relationshipswith other staff members.”
The urge to touch her, comfort her was overwhelming, and I tucked my hands into my pockets, hunching my shoulders. “I don’t know if that’s in my contract. I wouldn’t have cared when I signed.” I’d still been too riddled with grief over Zoya. Another relationship? I would have laughed at Laura if she’d even mentioned it. Well, maybe I wouldn’t have laughed out loud. Laura wasn’t the kind of woman who could take a joke or share a confidence.
“As payment for helping with the wedding dance, Mia’s putting in a good word with Sarah Telling for her tour. Rehearsals start right after Mia’s wedding. If I get fired, I don’t just lose this job. Ten years of hard work goes down with it. That’s how long it’s taken me to get here.Ten years.”
Each word was like glue, closing off our attraction, making it impossible to argue with her.
Could we sleep together and keep it from Mia? Was it fair to ask Alyssa? To put Mia in such a difficult position if she found out?
I couldn’t do that to either of them.
“Do you have your contract?” I was no expert, but maybe another set of eyes on the wording might give them some clarity, a loophole.
She dug around in her bag and handed me her phone, unlocked. “It’s right there. I highlighted and screenshotted the words as a reminder to myself.” A wry smile touched her lips. “’Cause you’re so close right now, and you smell so good, and I don’t want to be good. My thoughts are all bad. Very,verybad.”
Unlike the various arena rooms we’d practiced in, the ballroom had many exits and entrances. Anyone could walk in on us at any moment. Dirty thoughts had been on my mind all morning, and the reminder of what I’d hoped we’d be doing right now caused a hollow sensation in my gut.
I tried to block out her proximity and focused on the highlighted section.Any person caught in violation of any portion of the contract will be immediately terminated.“Did you know about this last night?”
“Sort of? I hadn’t read it in a while. And like you, I didn’t really care when I signed the contract.”
I frowned, trying to piece together how she’d gone from having sex with me to reviewing her contract in this kind of detail. Hadn’t occurred to me to check. Of course, I wasn’t worried about being fired and had saved enough money that even if I was, I’d be able to live on my savings for a while. “Why did you look this up?”
She sighed. “Jazz told Mia last night that she thought you and I were sleeping together. Mia, thinking she knew what was going on, told Jazz she was wrong.” She let out an unsteady laugh and pursed her lips. “Maybe Jazz saw me falling all over you. I am not discreet when I’m drunk, and I was wound pretty tight when I started drinking.” Sheswallowed and broke eye contact to take back her phone. “And she knows about all the bets I had with Amy that first night.”
All the bets.
I knew about two. Did I dare ask if there’d been a third? She’d said she’d turned down Amy’s third suggestion, but I’d wondered later when she’d avoided me. “Was having sex with me one of those bets?”
