CHAPTER SEVEN
Becca
A deep rumbling in my stomach woke me up, so I hurriedly got myself presentable and then made my way towards the smell of salty bacon and eggs that wafted up from the dining room downstairs. Strangely, when I was back home, I never cared much for breakfast and often wouldn’t eat my first meal until lunchtime at work, but whenever I was on vacation, I never missed breakfast.
My hands slid along the smooth banister as I headed down the stairs, and I once again smiled up at the pictures on the wall as I rushed to hit the breakfast buffet with vigor before sitting down to start my day. Like always, the food impressed, even though I chose the less fancy French toast and bacon instead of having the chef make me an omelet. Fellow diners enjoyed their food around me, content with their delicious meals.
As I finished the last of my bacon, I looked up and saw Zane sitting at a table in the corner by the front facing window. The morning light shone on his face, and I could see he looked far away as he absentmindedly fed himself. His hair fell in his eyes in a way that told me he hadn’t bothered to cut it in a while, and instead of sitting upright, he sat slouched and frowning. He looked depressed, and although part of me wondered if he deserved it for how awful he’d been to that maid the day I arrived, I was too good a person to take any joy in someone looking sad after losing his mother.
Something inside me stirred, and after a little while, I realized it was guilt. I felt terrible about what I had said the day before. Sure, Zane Gilford wasn’t the best guy on the planet. Far from it, and I knew that from firsthand experience. But I had taken a lot of the anger I was feeling about my own personal problems out on him, and I didn’t think he had exactly deserved that, especially since he had just gone through the death of his mother.
I’d always strived to be a woman who kept her emotions controlled instead of letting them overflow onto other people. Usually, I did it with ease. I pressed a smile onto my face when I needed to, and I kept people at arm’s length so there was no opportunity for emotions and feelings to get in the way.
Cringing, I replayed yesterday in my mind. After I’d realized the owner of the inn had been Zane’s mother, I still responded to his attempt to speak to me by hurling insults in his face. I shouldn’t have been so hard on him, even if he had deserved it a little bit because of how he’d acted.
But had he really done anything worse than hit on me on that bridge? Had he really deserved all that wrath, even with what had happened between us in the past? Wasn’t the past just that, the past?
I tried to think of how I might have acted in the immediate aftermath of my mother passing away, and the thought brought tears to my eyes faster than I could even consider how I might act out over the situation. They were heavy questions to be debating so early in the day, but it wasn’t like me to avoid them if they cropped up.
If his mother had been alive, it might have been a different story, but something made me feel like I needed to go over and apologize to him for my behavior. Maybe I felt like I owed it to his mother’s memory. Surely a woman like that couldn’t have raised a complete asshole.
The bus boy cleared my emptied plate, which I took as a sign it was time to go over to speak to Zane, so I stood up and straightened my sweater and jeans before taking a deep breath and turning toward where he sat. It felt like a long walk across the not so big dining room, and the entire way I tried planning out the words I would say to him. I didn’t want to be too stern about anything and upset him, but I also didn’t want my apology to just let him off the hook for being an asshole to his staff or me all that time ago.
Finally, I stopped near him, and I realized I didn’t fully know what to say to Zane Gilford on a lot of subjects. I silently stood next to him and said in a tone barely more than a whisper, “Excuse me.”
He responded by staring up at me blankly. There wasn’t that typical cocky smile of his or even the grimace I’d seen him wear in the past two days. Hell, there wasn’t even anger. Worse, there was nothing even resembling a real expression on his face, and somehow that made me sadder.
An uncomfortable silence hung between us until I said, “I…I just wanted to apologize for what I said yesterday. It was way out of line.”
He narrowed his eyes as he continued to look up at me, but I felt like I needed to say more. “I was so sorry to hear about your mother. She was a very nice lady. I only had the chance to speak to her once on a visit here last year, but she loved this place and took such tender loving care of everything about it, and it showed. I shouldn’t have said those things about you and this place. You were right. I didn’t know what I was saying.”
To my relief, he gave me a small smile but continued to say nothing, only offering a nod. After a second, I had a sense he didn’t want to talk and I’d said what was on my mind, so I returned his smile and said, “Well, I won’t bother you anymore. I just wanted to say I was sorry about what I said and your mother’s passing. She really was wonderful, and I know the staff all loved her very much. I’m happy to see you’re keeping the place basically the same. She gave this place a lot of charm, and it hasn’t faded, not even a little bit.”
I wrung my hands for a moment before nodding and turning to walk away, but as I did, I heard him say, “She really did love this place. It’s so strange to think of it existing without her.”
Looking back at him, I sensed a sadness in his words and wondered if he wanted to talk about it. “It’s a beautiful legacy of her life.”
“Her favorite time was breakfast. It sounds strange, but it was. I was never much of an early riser as a kid, but she was always so jazzed to come down here and talk with all the guests. It’s not my specialty, but breakfast is a nice time I guess. I’ve even tried talking to guests a few times, and they don’t irritate me as much as the staff does, to be honest. Breakfast time is when I think of her the most. It was the one meal we’d share together whenever I came here.”
I smiled to myself and turned back around. Maybe I had been wrong about Zane. Maybe there was still that side to him, a tender side that I’d known back in California. After all, someone who talked about their mother that way couldn’t be the worst person on the planet.
I knew he wasn’t that anyway. A jerk with commitment issues, sure, but not the worst guy on the planet. Hell, not even the worst guy I had ever encountered. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t the horrible jackass I thought he was after all those years.
“Part of her will always be here as long as it’s called The Gilford House Inn. Besides, who she was is infused in so much of this place. The colors alone make me think of her. She was wearing pink the day I met her, and she looked like part of the inn had sprung to life. I’m sure you really miss her.”
He nodded and said in a soft voice, “I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot, Becca.”
And then he flashed me that exceptionally sexy smile I knew never failed to charm whoever received it. He was flirting with me. Damnit, I didn’t like that one bit. He was using his mother’s death as a way to hit on me. I didn’t appreciate someone being so manipulative. How could it be that we had just been talking about his deceased mother and her favorite time of the day being breakfast, and then he slid into flirting so suddenly? I didn’t have any dead parents, but I had a feeling if I did I wouldn’t be trying to make a move on someone immediately after recalling fond memories of them.
Angry, my tone switched from sweet to serious in a flash as I answered, “Well, maybe you shouldn’t berate your workers like you did with that poor woman. Maybe you wouldn’t dislike them so much and they wouldn’t hate you in return if you treated them with respect.”
At the very least, maybe I could convince him to start treating the people who worked for him like people instead of animals to be pushed around. Zane grimaced and arched one of his eyebrows, clearly not liking how I’d changed the conversation.
“Well, maybe I can make it up to you with dinner. Tonight, say seven?”
God, he was slick! Too slick for my taste now.
I’d been wrong. There wasn’t a decent side to him. Guys like Zane Gilford were a dime a dozen, especially in a city like New York, and I found myself repulsed by him.
How could someone be so slimy? His mother was barely in the grave, and he was using her death as a ploy to get me to go on a date with him. It was disgusting. It reminded me how when we were together, though it was only for a very brief time, he had a knack for getting me to do what he wanted. When I was younger, I’d had real trouble telling people, especially guys, no and would do whatever they wanted if they were slick enough.
And Zane had been the slickest of all.
I put on my best sweet smile and said, “You can make it up to the woman you barked at by treating her like she deserves. Even better, treat her better than she deserves since she has to deal with a boss like you. Have a good day, Zane.”
Without waiting for him to get the last word in, I turned on my heels and walked away to go to my room, feeling pretty damn good about myself after putting him in his place. As I crossed the dining room, I became aware of the fact that a few of the staff wore large smiles and were directing them at me. I turned the corner towards the stairs and caught the eye of the front desk clerk, who smiled and gave me a big wink as I passed.
Clearly, they’d been waiting for someone to finally put the bossman in place. Glad to help, folks.
When I got to my room and closed the door, I couldn’t help but smile too. It meant a lot to me that the staff had so clearly appreciated what I said and I had truly enjoyed giving Zane a piece of my mind. I hoped he hadn’t seen any of them smiling, though, or there would certainly be hell to pay for them.
Flush from my mini-victory, I sat down at the small desk where I had my laptop, but I couldn’t help my mind wandering to the first time I’d been with Zane. The first time I’d thought I’d been victorious with him.
Lying back, I closed my eyes as Zane slowly ran his fingers along the inside of my thigh, gently drumming them over my skin and driving me out of my mind. The noise from the party going on right outside the room we’d snuck off to faded into nothingness as his touch became everything in the world to me.
He leaned over me, and his warm breath danced over my neck as I kept my eyes shut, afraid if I opened them that I’d realize what I was doing and that I should run away. Zane Gilford was exactly the type of man I’d always avoided, and for good reason.
Everything about him made me want to surrender. His stunning looks. His incredible mouth. His beautiful body…
I knew all of this and still let myself be led into this room to be with him.
“Any chance you’re a screamer?” he whispered in a deep voice before dragging his tongue across my collarbone. “Not that I have a problem with that, but all those people out there are going to know I’m fucking you if you yell out.”
Opening my eyes, I looked down my body and saw him grin wickedly up at me as he slid his hand up under my skirt. My eyes rolled back in my head with the first touch of his fingers to my drenched pussy.
“No…I’m not…not a screamer…” I moaned out as he slid a single finger inside me.
“Good. I won’t hold back then,” he said in a voice that sounded like this amused him.
I heard the sound of his zipper opening and then he was inside me, filling me up more than I expected. My breath caught in my chest with the first thrust of his cock, and then his mouth crushed against mine in a kiss that made my head swim.
He pumped into me, his hard body invading my much softer body, and grunted in my ear, “Fuck, you feel so good.”
I scratched my nails down his back, feeling his muscles through his dress shirt and wishing I could touch his skin I imagined would feel so incredibly smooth against my palms. He pushed his hips forward, his cock plunging into my body with long strokes, and groaned, “God, I wish you were out of these clothes.”
He sunk his fingers into my hips and changed up his movements to short stabs into my pussy that told me he was nearly finished. Something about knowing that made my body kick into overdrive, and I arched my back to feel him press against my needy clit. I wanted to come from this rendezvous and enjoy it to the fullest because a woman like me never did things like this.
One night stands weren’t part of my life. At least not until this moment in this dark room at the end of the hallway at a friend’s house with Zane Gilford, a man who had pursued me from the minute he laid eyes on me hours ago.
“Oh, baby…that’s it, baby,” he moaned before stilling inside me.
My brain sent my body the message that if I didn’t come in the next few seconds, he’d probably slide out of me since I didn’t have the feeling he was the type of guy who thought much about a woman’s orgasm. A second later, I wrapped my legs around his waist and pressed my heels into his back as my release tore through me.
Never before had I come that hard. I bucked against him with abandon, not caring how wild I appeared because I assumed I’d never see him again. The feeling was exquisite in its recklessness, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t care.
I opened my eyes and saw Zane smiling down at me. “Damn, you are so fucking sexy.”
As satisfaction settled into me, I chuckled at his comment. “Do you even know my name, Zane?”
His face twisted in a momentary grimace, a sure sign he didn’t remember my name, even after talking to me for more than an hour. But after a few seconds, he smirked and said, “It’s Becca. From now on, in fact, you’re Becca, the first woman I’ve ever been with who made me want more.”
“More, huh?” I said, stifling a full laugh at his attempt to still seduce me.
“Some women have it. Some don’t. You do.”
He slid his still hard cock out of my body and rolled off me, so I quickly pulled up my panties and straightened my skirt. Looking over, I saw him lying there, his pants still open and his cock out like he was in his natural element.
“You’re quite the sweet talker. I thought guys like you stopped that kind of thing after you got what you wanted.”
I stood up and buttoned my blouse before looking down at him. Smiling up at me, he said, “Guys like me? You mean guys who enjoy fucking beautiful women? And who’s to say I don’t want that again?”
“One night stands and fucking in someone’s spare bedroom while a party is going on a few feet away isn’t my usual style. I doubt you’d be interested in what I want, so I think we should just chalk this up to a good time and leave it at that.”
Zane lifted himself up onto his elbows and let his gaze slide up my body until it met mine. “You don’t know who I am, so maybe I would want what you want. At the very least, I want what we just did again.”
Feeling suddenly awkward and vulnerable, I forced a smile and shook my head. “Thanks, Zane. It was great. I better get going now.”
He didn’t try to stop me. Instead, he merely lay there, his legs splayed open like the incredibly sexual creature he naturally was. The complete opposite of me, Becca Fox, a serious woman who preferred control to wild sex with a man she just met.