“Why would you go grocery shopping when we’ll be back in the city by nightfall? Ooooh, we can hit up Pietro’s for dinner if you want a pizza,” Holly said, leaning against the counter opposite Jenna, who chimed in with bright eyes.
“Oh, hell yes. Pietro’s might make the fact that I have to get up at oh-dark-thirty for work tomorrow at least a little more bearable. We’re already a day behind getting back, what with Mother Nature’s arctic tantrum. Hey, speaking of which, did you get the thing with your car ironed out? I can run you back up here on Saturday if you want. For a nominal bribe, of course.” Jenna winked at her over the rim of her coffee mug before making a face at its contents.
Bellamy pressed her lips together for an altogether different reason than she had a moment before and shifted her weight back and forth in the doorframe of the kitchen.“Yeah. About that.” She hedged for just a second before realizing that it was better to just say what had tumbled around in her mind the whole way back from the garage. “I’m not going home with you guys today.”
“You’re whaaaaa?” Holly was nothing if not eloquent. She pushed off from the counter to gape at Bellamy.
But somewhere between mile marker 46 and the front gates of the resort, her mind had been made up, and backing down wasn’t part of the deal. “I’m not going home with you guys today. I’m going to stay here for the rest of the week until my car is done.” Despite the fact that her words scared the crap out of her, they felt deliciously good as they rolled off her tongue. Well, maybe deliciously good spiced with just a teensy hint of what-the-hell-am-I-doing, but still. At eighty/twenty, she’d take it.
Jenna’s eyebrows lifted so high they were in danger of merging with her hairline. “Are you serious?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I have a lot to think about. I need to figure out this career nightmare, and making another error in judgment isn’t something I can afford, literally or figuratively.” Bellamy winced, but continued. “Look, I know me. If I go back to the city to think it through, it’s bound to cloud my decision. I’ll get maybe two floors up on my way to clean out my desk before the guilt kills me. Then I’ll just end up in HR, groveling for my job back in less time than you can say ‘pretty please with sugar on top.’”
She held up a hand for emphasis. “I’m not saying it’s out of the question for me to stay at the bank on another team, or to go somewhere else as an analyst. But I have a lot of options, and they’re overwhelming as hell. I need to think about my next step in an impartial setting with no added pressure, that’s all.”
“But we already checked out,” Holly said, pausing to chew her lip.
The fact that her two best friends both had jobs to get back to wasn’t lost on Bellamy, even if it did sting a little. “I know, and I know you both need to go home. But don’t worry, I’ll be fine here. It’ll only be for four days, or maybe five, depending on how long my transmission takes.”
Jenna tilted her head, eyes narrowed. “This decision wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with a certain tall, dark and handsome car mechanic, would it?”
“Nope. Not at all.” Bellamy picked some microscopic lint off of her sweater and went across the room to dial down the thermostat. Spending twenty-four hours in that drafty garage must have thrown her system out of whack. The suite was hotter than hell.
“Not even a tiny bit?” Jenna asked, and Bellamy pursed her lips over a smile.
“Not even a tiny bit.”
“So, not even one molecule of you is staying in the hopes that you’ll see Shane again?” Jenna crossed her arms over her chest, firm with teasing disbelief.
“I’m not staying here to be with him on a molecular level or any other level, no.”
Bellamy’s mind flitted back to the backflip her stomach had done when he’d wrapped his arms around her and breathed goodnight into her hair. Okay, so maybe her molecules had had a weak moment. But it was just the one. And she sure as hell wasn’t staying just so she could see him again. She had a career to salvage.
No matter how warm and strong and downright perfect Shane had felt with his arms around her.
Holly sighed, breaking into Bellamy’s thoughts. “That’s it? Not one speck of gossip? Not one iota of dishy goodness? Can you at least tell me if he’s still a good kisser?”
Bellamy’s mouth curved into a catlike grin. “I said I wasn’t staying because of him. I didn’t say I wasn’t going to see him again.” She thought of Shane’s promise to call her later and it sent her grin into overdrive.
“I knew it!” Holly said through a giggle, sliding down from her bar stool to wave a finger at Bellamy, who held up her hands in defeat.
“Yeah, yeah, so sue me. He’s still a good kisser.”
“How good?” Holly pressed. Even Jenna gave a subtle lean in Bellamy’s direction to hear the answer.
Bellamy’s overdrive went into overdrive. “Good. Really, really good.” The breathy, sigh-y thing wasn’t normally her gig, but her vocal cords and her chest were bound and determined to conspire against her in an epic coup against good sense.
Oh, screw it. Good sense had gone out the window days ago.
“I knew you two would hook up again,” Holly said, coming into the main room to plop down on the couch, motioning for Bellamy to do the same.
“See, and here I had my money on you two hating each other forever.” Jenna grinned, abandoning her coffee cup on the counter to curl up in a chair across from Holly. “But the look on your face makes up for my being wrong.”
“There’s no look on my face,” Bellamy said, losing the battle of wills with her smile.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Holly said, shrugging.
“Okay, fine.” Laughing, Bellamy gave in and told them enough to get them up to speed yet still keep her dignity intact. Holly, who tended to turn everything into either a Hallmark movie or a romance novel, sighed happily as Bellamy finished with Shane kissing her goodbye just before Jackson had led her back to the resort.
“I assume you’re going to see him again, since you’re staying here all week?”
Bellamy nodded. At least this part was uncomplicated. “He’s going to call me later, yeah. And I’ll obviously have to see him at least one more time to get my car.”
She glossed over the issue out loud just as well as she did in her head. There really were more important things to consider, like finding a decent meal, making sure she had a place to stay for the rest of the week and trying to pick up the pieces of her career. In that order.
But oh, God, she really wanted to see Shane again. And again and again…
Jenna’s eyes flicked over hers, and Bellamy was grateful when she didn’t push it. “I wish we could stay here with you, although now I’m not quite as worried that you’ll be all by your lonesome. Are you sure you’ll be okay up here for the rest of the week?”
Bellamy nodded, snuggling deeper into the couch cushions. “Yeah. It’ll be good for me.”
“Well, call us if it’s not. I’m not going to have you stuck here if you want to be at home.”
“Okay,” Bellamy said. But what she really wanted was about as far from the city as a girl could get.