Her jaw dropped. “A hundred and eighty grand for a watch! How is that even possible? Is it a Tardis so you can time travel with it? Does it give you a blowjob while you’re time traveling inside it? And good grief, how can you afford that? Are you the Jeff Bezos of boat salesmen? You sell a boat every minute?”
I stared at her. She really thought I was a boat salesman? Now I was one hundred percent confused. I had no idea what the fuck was actually going on here.
“I like nice things,” I said, because I wasn’t sure what the hell else to say. I’d seen her at the stadium on her social media page. It seemed unlikely that she didn’t know who I actually was.
She snorted. “There is nice, and then there is absurd. That kind of money for a watch is completely and utterly absurd. I could buy a house for that kind of cash.”
“I don’t need your opinion on my lifestyle. I spread my wealth around. I’m not a greedy man.”
That didn’t seem to soften her. She just rolled her eyes. “Great. Good for you. You’re awesome, James, congratulations.”
My jaw twitched. Why was she getting under my skin so damn bad? Because she was. Normally, opinions about my free-spending lifestyle just made me laugh. I had a ton of money and I spent some of it. You only live once. I wasn’t hoarding it in a bank somewhere. I was stimulating the economy, and donating quite a bit to various charities, and I never felt like I had to justify or explain any of that.
Just to Mia.
Maybe she thought I was overextending myself. Or stealing from the boat dealership. But she couldn’t really think I was a boat salesman, could she? I decided I had to feel it out.
“Do you like football?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Pro football. I saw you wearing a team jersey at the stadium on your social media.”
“You stalked me on social media?” She looked outraged at the very idea.
“I wouldn’t call it that. You left without a word and stole my wallet and my ring. I was trying to see if you’d given me a real name.”
“I didn’t steal your stuff! Get that through your stupid thick head!”
“You didn’t have an issue with my thick head in December.”
“That’s disgusting.”
I actually laughed at that. She couldn’t pretend to be modest after I’d heard her beg for more. “Anyway. Do you like football?”
“I don’t know anything about football. And clearly I know nothing about you because you did not seem like the type of man to keep me trapped in his hotel suite in my underwear.” Her nostrils flared a little as she used her hands to punctuate each word. “I’m going to get fired.”
There was no way I could actually keep her there. That was, in fact, kidnapping and I was pretty sure the league would frown on that. But I wasn’t quite ready to let her walk out of here. She hadn’t admitted to anything. “Relax. I’ll talk to your boss, tell her we needed extra attention in our suite.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That makes me sound like a sex worker. And with all due respect to sex workers, I don’t think the hotel is going to cosign on that kind of thing. Besides, I have a second job I have to get to.”
“What, counting cards in the casino?”
“You’re hilarious. I didn’t notice that the first night we met. I guess you were hiding certain parts of your personality from me.”
“Oh, that’s ironic coming from you. I admire the way you got me to whip out my wallet so you could count my cash.”
“I didn’t get you to whip out anything!” she said, her voice shrill.
I raised my eyebrows at her. “Not true. You got me to whip out several things. And you were very efficient, I might add.” That word was burned in my memory banks. She’d said it casually, maybe even teasingly, but it was like taking a punch to the nuts. That word could suck my dick. I hated it now. It pissed me off in all the ways a man could be pissed off.
There was a knock on the door. “Hey, Beckett, we need to talk.” It was Miles.
I opened the door about a foot.
What I wasn’t prepared for was for Mia to use the opportunity to jump on my back like a spider monkey, wrapping her arms around my neck.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I demanded, stumbling an inch forward before regaining my balance. I was used to taking hits designed to knock me off my feet. A woman with no experience on the field and about half my weight wasn’t going to be able to take me down. But what I didn’t understand was what she was trying to accomplish.
“Let me go!” she yelled.
Miles’ jaw had dropped and his eyebrows were damn near the suite ceiling. I imagined that was probably what my own face looked like.
“You’re the one hanging on me!” I said, unable to believe what was actually happening. But it was. And I could feel the soft press of Mia’s tits against my back and the warm heat of her pussy even through my golf shirt.
Her towel must have fallen off in her leap onto me.
I tried to turn but I couldn’t see her. I just succeeded in accidentally knocking her into the doorframe. “Sorry,” I said, automatically. Because she might be a thief, but I didn’t want to hurt her.
“You all need Jesus,” Miles said. “That’s all I’m going to say. That, and Train and Sydney are getting married. Beckett, you need to put on a suit and be respectable for thirty minutes.”
That was definitely news. “Damn. They moved fast. Yeah, tell Train I’ll be there. No worries.” I choked a little when Mia’s arm tightened around my neck. She was sliding down my back and using my throat to hang on so she didn’t fall off. I used my right arm to give her ass an adjustment so she was further up my back. “Miles, this is Mia, the woman I told you about. Mia, this is my buddy, Miles.”
“Sure.” He looked like I had lost my damn mind, which maybe I had.
“I met her in December when I was in town for the boat convention, remember?”
Now the corner of his mouth turned up. “Right. Of course. Makes perfect sense. Nice to meet you, Mia.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” she said, and slid all the way down off of my back. “Got it.”
“Got what?” I turned and realized what her plan had been. She’d gone for her uniform over my shoulder and it was now in her kleptomaniac hands.
She quickly shoved it behind her back so I couldn’t take it away from her. Her cheeks were flushed from the exertion and her freckles were visible again. I was instantly aware that if I moved too much to the right or left, Williams would see her in her bra and panties and I did not want that. I frowned at her and stepped forward out of the room, closing the door behind me.
“You didn’t see anything, did you?” I asked him.
“I saw more nonsense than I wanted to, I can tell you that. What the hell is going on? Keep your kink in your own room.”
“No, I mean, you didn’t see her, see her, did you?” That was very important to me. I didn’t want my taking her uniform to result in her feeling exposed in front of strangers.
I wasn’t a stranger. She could be in her underwear all day long with me, as far as I was concerned. She seemed to feel the same way. She didn’t appear overly concerned with my seeing her half-naked. That ship had clearly sailed.