And he’d learned the hard way that being a betting man was a bad idea all around.
Ruined pride still ran deep, and Bellamy got all the way through the terrible, silent ride back to the resort before hers crumbled. She mumbled a goodnight to Shane the second his truck rolled to a stop in front of the now-quiet resort, and he refused to answer her or even meet her eyes, the coward. At least Derek had been able to deliver the stupid “it’s not you” line with a little bit of feeling.
Shane had delivered it like a lie.
Bellamy made fast work of the trip to her room, flashing her key card over the door to the suite and tiptoeing into the darkened main room. Jenna and Holly were passed out cold on the couch, with the remnants of the guacamole she’d made in a big bowl next to a near-empty bag of tortilla chips and an old romcom on the TV, volume down low. Normally, this would crack a smile over Bellamy’s face, even after a crappy date, but tonight, she just couldn’t muster it.
She bit down on the tears that threatened to fall, refusing to give them the time of day—or night, as it were—as she went into her bathroom and started running hot water into the luxurious, claw-footed tub. Peeling off her clothes, she pinned her hair into a loose knot on top of her head and sank into the blanket of bubbles that rose up to meet her.
Yes, it had been impulsive to head off to Carrington Ridge with Shane in the first place, and no, she didn’t know if she’d have actually had sex with him right under the stars after knowing him for all of two days. But still. Getting the “it’s not you” speech before she even got to make that decision had caught her completely off guard. And it stung. Hard.
Bellamy sank into the water up to her chin and cried.
11
“If you don’t spill the details about last night, I’m going to explode!”
Holly held out a steaming mug of coffee, which Bellamy took with a grateful grunt as she padded from the common area to the kitchenette, wearing her bathrobe and a face full of determination to forget all about her night with Shane.
“Good morning to you, too.”
“Fine, yes. Good morning. I need details.” Holly followed, hot on her heels, as Bellamy rooted through the fridge to unearth a tiny carton of half and half.
“Sorry to disappoint, but there aren’t any.” She shrugged, much to Holly’s exasperation. No way was Bellamy going to admit being within nanoseconds of reaching the summit of Mount Oh-My-God while getting her fully-clothed grind on. Especially since the guy in question had put the brakes on the whole shebang by uttering the three worst words in the English language.
Nope. Bellamy was in no mood to re-live the craptastic events of her night. How many times could a girl hear “it’s not you” before the she got the message loud and clear that it was, in fact, very much her?
Jenna trudged in from her room, bleary-eyed, just in time to watch Bellamy’s dodge-and-deflect. “Oh, hey B.” Jenna yawned and stretched. “Could you please tell her about your wilderness hike with Mr. Fix-It before she erupts? Spontaneous human combustion is so messy.”
Was it too late to go back to bed? “I hate him. How about that?” Bellamy asked sweetly, downing half her cup of coffee in one swallow. “Ugh, this stuff is awful,” she grimaced at the horrible mix of bitter and burnt invading her tastebuds. Damn. Room service couldn’t even get coffee right.
“Wait, you can’t hate him. How can you hate him? I thought he was a good kisser,” Holly pouted.
“I can, and I do.” And yes. He’s a fan-freaking-tastic kisser. Not that I’ll be making that mistake again. “Is that my phone?” Bellamy furrowed her brow, searching for the source of the all-too-familiar annoying beep.
“It sounds like it.” Jenna scooped the iPhone up from where Bellamy had tossed it on the counter the night before and flipped it to her.
Holly planted her hands on her hips and stood in the doorway of the kitchenette like a bulldog in fuzzy slippers. “You’re seriously going to shut me down on the dirt?”
Bellamy pressed her lips into a tight line. “There’s no dirt. I’m dirtless, dirt-free, utterly devoid of dirt of any kind. Clean as a whistle.” She tried to keep her face neutral as she flicked her phone to life.
Wait. How could there possibly be eleven unread texts and four voicemails on her phone leftover from a Saturday while she was on vacation? Nobody liked her that much.
“Hey, was there some kind of weird crisis last night that I don’t know about? I have a ton of…” Realization hit Bellamy when she saw the caller history screen, making her heart take a swan dive toward her freshly pedicured toes. How was every single one of these messages from her boss? She dropped her head into her hands and wondered if nine o’clock was too early to drink.
“What?” Jenna asked with a furrowed brow.
“Bosszilla is on the warpath.”
Bellamy pressed the phone to her ear. She had a sinking feeling that unless she figured out how to alter the time-space continuum to manage being in two places at once, she was definitely going to have to head home and figure out a way to come back for her car on Friday. Her boss was bound to flip into the stratosphere at the idea of Bellamy waiting in the mountains for her car to be fixed.
“Seriously? That bitch needs a hobby,” Holly said, thankfully letting Bellamy slide in the gossip department.
Jenna gave up a humorless smile and nursed her coffee, leaning against the narrow counter dividing the kitchenette from the common room. “I think making Bellamy’s life a living hell is her hobby.”
“Well, she’s getting really good at it,” Holly quipped.
Bellamy jerked the phone away from her ear, her boss’s recorded voice so grating and awful that the harping would be perfectly audible even if she laid the thing on the counter.
“Bellamy, I understand you’re away until Tuesday.” The words dripped with so much disdain that Bellamy cringed. God forbid she try to have a life on her days off. “But I absolutely need that Anderson contract on my desk first thing when you get back to the office.”
Bellamy swallowed. The Anderson contract, a.k.a. the Doorstop, was sitting, half-done, on Bellamy’s laptop at work, and her boss had told her she had at least a week to finish the research. How was she possibly going to pull this off?
The voicemail droned on. “Oh, and another thing. We’ve moved up the deadline for the research on the project you’ve been working on with Cooper, and I’m going to need all of those figures no later than mid-week.”
The message continued until the time limit for voicemail cut off, but far be it for a little thing like that to stop ol’ Bosszilla. She’d just called back and left her litany in installments. By the time Bellamy got to Mission Impossible, The Final Chapter, she was exhausted just from listening. Meeting these new deadlines would be difficult even if she was back in the city. There was no way she could pull it off while being stranded in the mountains with no car and her laptop locked in her desk a hundred miles away.
“I don’t think I can handle this.” She propped her elbows on the counter and dropped her head into her hands. “You know, when I finished my MBA two years ago, this is definitely not what I had in mind.”