- Aiden -
circled the perimeter of the ballroom three times and didn’t see her anywhere.
And there was no way I could’ve missed her in that yellow dress.
I checked outside the hotel and the smoking area, even though I hadn’t seen her smoke since high school when she hung out with the theatre crowd for a while.
I even loitered outside the women’s bathroom, cracking the door open and calling her name.
Nothing. She was nowhere, and she wasn’t answering her phone.
Ladies and gentlemen, Lucy Ryan has left the building. And that’s when it hit me. She couldn’t have left. I was her ride. She was still around somewhere. Which was worrying.
Sometimes when she had too much to drink, she just disappeared. She always found this to be a strength of hers, the fact that she would cop on to her drunkenness and leave before she made a scene. Unfortunately, this drove me crazy more than I could say because she never gave me warning when she did it.
Plus, it was dangerous. When we were in high school, it was fine to look for an empty bed and “take a nap” as she used to call passing the fuck out. But when we were in college, it used to cause me so much stress. One time I even broke a door down looking for her and ended up looking like a lunatic because she’d just gone on a beer run with some people.
Regardless, I knew I couldn’t check every room in the hotel. Still, she seemed alright when I left her, and the fact that she knew one of the beds had her name on it gave me confidence.
“Hello, sir,” the man at reception said as I approached.
“Hi,” I said, glancing at his name tag. “Barry.”
“How may I help you?”
“I need the room number for one of your guests.”
“I’m afraid I can’t give out that information.”
“It’s fine. She’s a friend.”
“I apologize, sir. Our guests appreciate the lengths we go to in order to insure their privacy.”
“It’s an emergency,” I said.
“If you give me the name, I can connect you by telephone.”
I clenched my jaw. “Lucy Ryan.”
The pinch faced clerk punched some buttons on the phone. I tried to catch the number he dialed but the angle of his fingers made it hard to tell. He held the receiver to his ear until it began to ring. Then he handed it to me.
I waited and waited. With every ring my heart sank in my chest. Damn it, Lucy! Answer the fucking phone!
The clerk kept his eyes on the monitor to his right, pounding the keys too hard in between dramatic pauses like he was checking me in for a transatlantic flight.
I held the phone back across the desk.
“No answer?” he asked. “Would you like to try one more time?”
“No,” I said. “I would like to go check on my date like a normal person.”
“I’m afraid I can’t-”
I pointed across the main hall towards the room where the reception was being held. “You know the Briggs-Thompson wedding going on down the hall?”
“Yes.”
“The one that’s responsible for four hundred of your rooms being booked this weekend?”
“Yes.”
“Well my name is Aiden Briggs and my Dad booked those rooms.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I’d hate to interrupt him right now because you won’t let me go make sure my date isn’t unwell.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is your privacy policy really more important than me going to make sure she’s not dead up there?”
Barry’s face dropped.
I was two seconds away from reaching in my pocket and handing the weasel a hundred bucks to squeal.
“415.”
I felt disgusted having to use my Dad’s clout to get what I wanted, but when it came to finding Lucy in a hurry, there was nothing I wouldn’t do.
Moments later, I was pacing in the elevator like a caged animal. When the door opened, I turned the corner so fast I nearly knocked into an old lady whose hip would’ve shattered if she’d hit the floor.
Fortunately, I was able to keep her from falling. Then I stuck around to make sure she caught the elevator safely, which was good because it gave me a second to calm down before I found the hallway leading to Lucy’s room.
I knocked on the door when I arrived. When there was no answer, I knocked again much louder.
“Lucy, open up. It’s me.” I banged again.
Then I heard the chain being unhooked and saw the door handle point down to the floor.
She opened the door and looked at me.
It was obvious from her face that she’d been resting and when I saw how fragile she looked in the dim light, I felt the volume of my voice decrease exponentially. “What are you doing up here?”
She tilted her head. “This is my room,” she said. “What are you doing up here?”
“Looking for you, obviously.”
She put her bare arm out to the side and flared her fingers. “Well, you found me.”
“Can I come in?”
She took a step back, taking the door with her.
I stepped inside. There was a bottle of champagne half empty on the table and the sheer curtains were drawn so the room was dim with soft evening light.
“You having your own party up here?” I asked.
She shrugged.
I looked from the dent her body had made in the bedspread to her slightly disheveled hair. She looked hot as hell in her lazy state.
“I just needed a break,” she said.
“A break from answering your phone?” I asked, sitting on the end of the bed.
“Sorry,” she said. “I think I fell asleep for a few minutes.”
“Let’s just hope my Dad isn’t doing the same thing in the middle of the dance floor.”
“I thought he could do anything he wants on this, the day of his daughter’s wedding?”
Her Godfather impression was bad when she wasn’t tipsy, but this attempt was a joke. “It’s that you have to grant any request,” I said. “Not that you can do what you want.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s both.”
“Maybe,” I said, admiring the way the yellow dress hung off her hips.
“Champagne?” she asked.
“That would be great,” I said. “God forbid I sober up.”
She smiled and filled the empty glass.
I took it. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” she said, walking over to grab her own glass off the night table. “Is Chelsea okay?”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay in the head or okay as in gone?”
She sat next to me on the bed. “Both.”
“I’m settling for the latter.”
She nodded. “I guess she took the break up pretty hard, huh?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I think she just wanted to make sure I was taking it hard.” I took a sip of champagne.
“And are you?”
“What?”
“Taking it hard?”
I turned to look at her. “No. Are you kidding? Breaking up with her is the second best thing I’ve done in a long time.”
Her dark eyes searched mine. “Second best?”
I nodded.
“What’s the first-”
I put my hand on her bare knee.
She swallowed.
“Are you okay? Really?”
She nodded.
“I know my family is a handful and there are a lot of people here.”
“Yeah.”
“And I owe you an apology for being such a shitty date.”
“You haven’t been a shitty date.”
“Yes I have.”
She sighed.
“I was a dick to you when I picked you up.”
She pursed her lips.
“Then I was punishing you for the fact that my ex girlfriend was- is- a deceitful monster.”
She took a sip of her champagne.
“I’ve done nothing but ignore you all day.”
“You had a lot of responsibilities today. I know it wasn’t personal.”
“It’s not good enough,” I said. “You deserve better.”
Her hair fell to the side so I could see the curve of her shoulders and the length of her smooth neck. “And then I left you by yourself so I could deal with Chelsea. I don’t know why. I guess I was just-”
“Trying to avoid a scene?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But there’s nothing I needed to say to her that I couldn’t have said in front of you.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said. Then she crossed her legs away from me, and my hand fell from her knee.