thankful that half the team had already hit the showers.
“Fine. Here it is.” I swallowed. Hard. “I met a gorgeous woman at a party at Crossland McClaren’s house. We hit it off.” We’d had the kind of connection that I thought only existed in movies and shit, but I wasn’t about to say that. “We ended up drinking a little, then wound up alone, playing pool, and I asked her when she was graduating. She said she was a senior. I kissed her.”
And it wasn’t just a kiss—it had been powerful enough to embed itself in my memory. Even four years later, I could still taste the strawberry margarita on her lips, feel her hands in my hair. But maybe it had been the trauma of what happened next that had cemented the details.
Sterling’s forehead puckered. “And that got you traded?”
“Yeah, well, her brother walked in, and it turned out she wasn’t a senior in college. She was a senior in high school. She was seventeen, and I had just turned twenty-two. There. Happy now?” I stared each of them down, daring them to say every negative name I’d called myself when I found out.
“Damn,” Maxim muttered.
“I suddenly feel much better about Sterling dating London,” Caspian said.
“Hey, I never gave a shit, so don’t look at me like that.” Brogan turned toward his locker, dismissing the entire conversation.
I looked at Sterling.
“And she signed you to an endorsement deal with her new company?” he asked, cutting right through the other bullshit.
“Yeah, well, Bristol’s used to getting what she wants, and legally…she has me for the next six months.” As soon as that date was up, I was getting as far away from her as humanly possible.
“Must have been some kiss,” Maxim said with a laugh.
“Oh, fuck off.” I flipped them the bird and then headed to the shower. For two million dollars, I could put up with her bullshit for six months. It wasn’t like we’d be working that closely, anyways. Right?
Damn, the woman had flown out her entire team. There were easily twelve people in here, and every single one of them was staring at me. Awkward.
“Try the green,” Bristol ordered, pointing toward one of the thousand shirts that hung on racks around the hotel penthouse she’d turned into a temporary office.
The seamstress—Angela—nodded, taking the silver one I’d just had on and leaving me bare-chested on a podium in front of one of those three-way mirrors.
Bristol met Angela at the rack and started pulling additional shirts, then matched them with vests, giving me a second to give in and stare like I’d wanted to for the past half-hour.
Gone was the couture evening gown she’d worn to the gala, and she’d ditched the jacket to the pantsuit she’d donned like armor to meet me at the hotel door, leaving her in a pair of black pants that cupped her ass like a wet dream and a sleeveless, blue silk blouse that dipped low enough to make me drool. It reminded me of water, cascading down in ripples across breasts that I had zero business thinking about.
Seriously, stop thinking about them.
“Here you go,” Angela said, offering me the first shirt.
I slipped it over my shoulders, then began buttoning it up, catching Bristol’s heated glance in the mirror. She was looking at the tattoos that stretched across my chest.
“See something you like over there, Duchess?” I asked, sliding the last button home. Putting clothes on around her was definitely safer than taking them off.
Her eyes narrowed as they snapped up to meet mine. “Stop. Calling. Me. That.”
I flashed a quick smile, then took the vest that Angela handed up to me. “I still don’t understand why you’d design a men’s line around me.” Once the vest was on, I started on the tie Bristol had picked out. “I’m not sure most three-piece suit guys are tatted up like this.” I motioned to the ink that crept up my neck.
“I’m not designing three-piece suits for most guys,” Bristol countered, folding her arms across her chest and walking forward on a pair of stilettos that left her towering over two of her male assistants in the background.
Bristol was tall, probably five-nine or so, but even in those five-inch heels, I had a few inches on her. Most of the taller women I knew stuck to flats like their height was something to be diminished, but Bristol owned those fucking legs like she did the rest of her body—with complete confidence.
Had to admit—it was a fucking