Rowan

The Goldsmith bar is dead for a Thursday night, a stroke of luck that should work in my favor. I suppose no one wants to venture out in the middle of a three-day torrential downpour streak besides me; a woman on a mission.

The air is thick and damp, the windows beaded with rain. Thunder rolls outside, rumbling over the chic lounge music. And in the midst of it all is Keir Montgomery, dangerous glint in his eyes and all.

I waited an hour before he finally showed up. For a moment, I thought maybe he was staying home with the rest of the Burberry trench coat-wearing DCers. And I almost left until something told me not to.

Spinning my glass between my thumb and forefinger, I glance away, removing my stare from his suited shoulders and facing the bartender instead. From the corner of my eye, I observe as he moves closer to me, my intentional disregard luring him in like a magnet.

A moment later, his broad-shouldered physique fills my periphery as he stands beside the empty bar stool on my left. He’s taller than he looks in pictures. And his cologne is intoxicating. Cedar? Musk? Cash? I draw in a lungful, imagining the way it might emanate off his bare skin, warm and sensual.

If my mother were inside my head, she’d tell me “Good girls don’t think those kinds of thoughts.”

If she only knew …

I lift my crystal tumbler to my lips, pretending I don’t notice him when every fiber of my body is reeling. I’m practically sending out sonar shockwaves over here, but my exterior is a crafted shade of calm.

“Excuse me,” his voice is carried through music and followed by the invasion of his old-moneyed scent into my lungs all over again.

“Yes?” Glancing up, I meet his gaze, blinking once as I stare at him through dark, painted lashes.

I pretend not to notice the swarm of Secret Service agents flanking his sides and now mine. I pretend his familiar face doesn’t register and that I haven’t seen his obsidian hair or crystalline blues in hundreds of photos before. I pretend not to know he’s the youngest son of the President of the United States. I pretend he’s just any other guy in any other bar in any other city.

And then I pretend I didn’t come here looking for him.

“Is this seat taken?” He asks the question as if the answer doesn’t matter, as if he has no problem taking exactly what he wants even if it belongs to someone else.

My heart flutters for a fraction of a second, and my eyes flick from his wickedly handsome smirk to the seat and back.

“All yours,” I say, taking my time and swiveling my stool until I’m no longer facing him. Fighting a smile, I brace myself for the inevitable pat I’m going to feel on my shoulder any moment now.

And then I wait.

The bartender hunches over, resting on his elbows as he yells above the music. Keir orders a drink. Top shelf whiskey. Neat.

The restless stir of impatience floods my center, but I refuse to let it ruin my strategy.

All I need is one night with him. One night to feel alive. One night to feel desired again. One night to rebel against everything I ever thought I was, everything I pretend to be because I’m not allowed to be anything else.

All I need is one night of meaningless sex with DC’s most eligible bachelor.

I observe from the corner of my eye as the man fixes Keir’s drink at warp speed, delivers it on the house, and then stops short in front of me.

“Would you like another, miss?” he asks, thick brows lifted as he points to my empty glass.

“Please.” I slide it his way. He swipes it from the counter and shuffles down a few spots.

Rapping my fingertips against the counter, I wait for my refill, finish half, and contemplate my Plan B because I don’t have all night. If Keir didn’t just infiltrate my space for the sake of hitting on me, I’ll have to take a different approach. Gathering my black satin clutch, I unsnap the top and pretend to check my phone. When I’m sure he’s watching, I slide my bag under my left arm and gracefully slide off the stool. If he thinks I don’t recognize him or that I don’t care who he is, it should pique his curiosity.

Striding across the dark-as-midnight Goldsmith, I duck into the ladies’ room to buy some time. Touching up my lipstick, powdering my nose, and dabbing gardenia perfume onto the backs of my wrists, I check the time on my phone then wait an entire extra minute before reemerging.

Keir has a reputation in this city. He’s a womanizer with a healthy appetite for casual liaisons, which means there’s absolutely no chance I could possibly get attached should we … agree to enjoy one another.

I’ve done my research. I know where he frequents: Goldsmith being his signature hang out followed by Greenbrier on Mortimer. I know his modus operandi. I know what turns him on, and I know what makes him run for the hills.

It’s now or never.

Either this is going to happen. Or it isn’t.

And I really, really want this to happen. I need this to happen for reasons no one could possibly begin to understand. I need his hands in my hair. His lips pressed hard against mine. My body pinned beneath his. I need him driving himself into me again and again, so hard I forget my name.

Forget where I am.

Forget why my heart still hurts . . .

Giving myself a final once-over in the mirror, I tuck a blonde wave over my right shoulder and pull the door wide.

And he’s right there, practically filling the doorway, wearing his signature devil-may-care smirk.

Almost instantly, my lips draw up in the corners and our eyes meet.

“I was wondering when you were going to make your move,” I say.

“You’re a distraction.” His eyes are wild, trained on me.

I lift a brow. “I beg your pardon?”

“I came here for a drink. Was supposed to meet someone,” he says. “And then I saw you.”

I try to contain the frivolous satisfaction building deep in my chest before it radiates from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.

“Bold,” I say, pushing past him as if I’m not entertained by any of this. If my plan is going to work, he has to chase me. Men don’t like to be pursued, especially men like Keir.

Men are hunters by nature and hunters choose their prey, not the other way around.

“Maybe I didn’t want you to get away.” He reaches for me, clamping his hand around my wrist and steering me to a dark corner as a group of women in tight dresses push past us with wide, staring eyes. He doesn’t so much as blink in their direction. “Not before I had my chance.”

“What makes you think you have a chance?” I try not to snicker, though I love the direction we’re headed.

His gaze holds mine. I allow his aftershave to drown my senses as my hands ache to touch the body of a man they’ve never known.

“Keir,” he says.

“I know,” I say. “I’m Rowan.”

“I know.”

It takes everything I have to keep my jaw from coming unhinged.

He knows me?

“You’re an Aldridge,” he says. His stare is magnetic, unapologetic. “Your parents worked on my father’s last campaign. You were away in college. They showed me pictures. A man doesn’t forget a face like that.”

That had to have been four years ago. Maybe more?

“You want to get out of here?” he asks.

The background blurs, and I exhale. I can’t take my eyes off him, those dreamy blues, that strong jaw, that weighted stare …

“It’s loud,” he adds, “and I want to talk to you.”

“Why?” I fight a smirk.

“Does it matter?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“Come with me.” He slips his hand into mine and nods at one of his agents. In an instant, we’re dashing out the back door, hopping over rain puddles, and getting into a black SUV.

His hand rests on my knee as we ride, and I focus on the swish of the windshield wipers.

Everything’s happening so fast.

I figured there’d be a little more song, a little more dance. A little more push, a little more pull.

I suppose he didn’t get his reputation by wooing and taking his sweet time.

The city lights are a blur outside the passenger windows, and within minutes, the SUV stops in front of a brick building called The Hightower. I’ve probably passed this building a thousand times before, never realizing he lived here. His personal address was the only thing I couldn’t dig up on him.

One of the agents leaves the front seat and gets the door. Keir climbs out first, then he takes my hand, leading me beneath a black awning.

None of this feels real, but I remind myself this is what I came for.

He pulls me close against him, the heat from our bodies mixing as we rush through the rain to get inside. Once we’ve made it, he leads me toward a lobby elevator, his agents flanking our sides. As we rise, Keir glances down at me, his lips lifting in one corner and a wicked little dimple flashing. My heart flutters. He says nothing, only exhales.

“Don’t be nervous,” he says, voice low.

“What makes you think I’m nervous?”

His breath is warm against my cheek, and his thumb caresses the inside of my wrist with slow, deliberate strokes. He hasn’t taken his hands, or his eyes, off me since we left the bar.

The elevator doors part, and his agents lead us to an apartment door at the end of a hall. He swipes his key card and the lock beeps. The men wait outside, and we disappear into a dark apartment with a twinkling view of Washington, DC.

It’s romantic.

But I didn’t seek Keir because I wanted hearts and flowers and moonlit cityscapes.

I have an agenda, and I’m sticking to it. I won’t let a little dreamy ambience throw me off my game.

“Drink?” he asks, moving toward a cart against the wall. This man wastes zero time.

“Please.” I place my clutch on a kitchen island and make my way toward the floor to ceiling windows in the living room. I’ve never seen the city from these heights before. Everything seems smaller, less significant. Down below, hundreds of thousands of people are doing hundreds of thousands of things, but up here, it’s just the two of us and we’re a world away from it all.

Keir gently brushes my shoulder a moment later, a drink in his hand, which I accept.

“Thank you.” I take a sip, tasting rum and sugared lime, and my eyes rest on his.

“Do you always go home with men you don’t know?” he asks.

His question catches me off guard, and I’m not sure whether to laugh or be offended. “All the time. Like, almost every night.”

I keep a straight face, hiding my twitching mouth with my drink.

“What made you decide to get in the car with me?” he asks.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does,” he says, brows narrowed.

“Because I wanted to, Keir,” I say. “That’s why.”

“I always got the impression you were a good girl. I mean, with your parents being who they are and all . . .”

“Can we not talk about them tonight?” Really don’t want them to put a damper on this soon-to-be magical evening, and discussing my parents is the quickest way to snuff out my sex drive in record time.

“Fine … What do you want to talk about?” he asks.

I pull another sip and let it linger on my tongue, anticipating the burn, and it feels like a metaphor for my love life.

“Anything but them.” If my father and mother knew I was running around downtown DC in a little black dress and fuck-me heels, tossing back drinks like I’d done it a hundred times before, they’d have a coronary and a conniption fit, respectively. World-renowned parenting experts, their enviable success has been propelled by their highly conservative political affiliations. Together, they’ve built a multi-million-dollar empire, complete with workshops, handbooks, textbooks, talk shows, and an endorsement from Oprah Winfrey herself. Our picture-perfect family is their brand, and as the oldest Aldridge daughter, I’m the official brand ambassador.

I have to be perfect, at least in the public eye.

During the week, I’m a buttoned-up, philanthropic good girl, and once upon a time I was a buttoned-up, philanthropic good girl. Now she’s just a role I play, an outfit I wear, a skin I step into and remove the second no one’s looking.

Keir studies me, and I can’t help but wonder if he puts every girl he takes home under this kind of a microscope. Maybe he’s more persnickety than I originally assumed?

“What were you doing at Goldsmith by yourself?” he throws another question at me.

I lift a shoulder to my ear and offer a coy smile. “It looked like a nice place to have a drink and get out of the rain. What about you? You stood someone up tonight.”

“I did.” His teeth graze his lower lip, as if he’s biding his time until he can finally devour me. “He’ll get over it.”

I realize now that I haven’t thought about Hunter once since we walked in here. Keir is distracting, exactly as I’d hoped.

I know enough about Keir to know he isn’t a lover, not in the literal sense of the word. He isn’t a serial monogamist. He isn’t a relationship guy or the kind who brings flowers and takes his sweetheart on a picnic date.

He’s the guy you screw when you’re trying to get over the one who broke your heart. He’s the guy that makes you forget the other guy, the one that pushes you forward when you find yourself treading the same dark and lonely waters that once nearly drowned you.

Keir isn’t Hunter, this much I know. And at this point, it may be the only thing that matters.

Hunter is an aspiring career politician with presidential aspirations, hoping to become one of the youngest senators ever to be elected in his home state of Maryland. His gentle charisma, old-fashioned manners, and disarming smile makes him feel like a safe choice.

Politically.

And romantically.

I should’ve listened when he warned me not to fall in love with him, but I stupidly assumed it was just one of those things guys said early on when they’re scared and trying to pretend they’re not falling just as hard as you are.

Examining Keir under the glow of the moonlight, I fight a smile.

“What?” he asks, mouth twisted. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

“What way?” My nose wrinkles.

“Like I remind you of someone.”

I roll my eyes, fighting a smile. “I’m thinking about how much you don’t remind me of someone.”

His eyes light. “I hope that’s a good thing.”

“It’s a very good thing.”