"I'll be in my office if you need anything. The housekeeper will help you."
"She already did."
Fuck, right. Of course, she did.
"Again, I'm sorry."
Turning, I rush out of the guest house and walk toward the office, but my mind is racing. Her hair in my hands. The feel of her backside pressed against me. The way her wet body looked in the mirror, so thin, so fragile. The way her hip bones protruded like her ribs against her perfect flesh. I'm torn between being turned on and mortified.
I've never so much as touched Hanna before outside of a cordial hug when we greet each other. Not that I haven't wanted to. Fuck, I've definitely wanted to. I am a living, breathing man after all, and she's a goddess. Those long legs, the lush curve of her ass, and the bright blue and gold of her different colored eyes.
But Hanna Thurber is not my type. She's too...I don't know...graceful. Fragile. Regal. Like a princess I would only break if I had a chance to play with her. She wouldn't like my style at all. Plus, she's Zara's best friend, and that's just weird.
In my office, I try to focus on work instead of Hanna, and it takes opening up the email from Ellis to do it. I stare at it for I don't know how long. It's an email consisting of twenty words, and it's enough to shatter my day. Like a ball thrown through the glass of a fish tank, everything I've been holding in for the past three years is pouring out, and there's no way to repair it now. I can't push it back in and forget this email ever came.
Why would he send me this? Does he want to reach out? Want me to hire him?
It's business. Nothing more. I don't mean anything to Ellis anymore. Our friendship is over, and he probably doesn't even think twice about me. I'm the one sitting here dwelling on it, picking at the scab of our broken relationship.
Next to me my phone is vibrating itself to death, and I know there are a hundred emails waiting to be answered. Press releases to approve with PR, budgets to sign, business plans to update, and contracts to look over for the fifteenth time. If I fuck this up, miss one thing, screw up one part of this deal, I will have to live with it forever. How many of these did my dad do? And he never fucked them up. If I can't handle it, then I am the screwed-up Wilde. The worst of Wilde Aviation’s CEOs. A poor man's Alistair Wilde.
There are probably a hundred other business consultants like Ellis I could hire. Ones without baggage from the past. Consultants that haven't seen me naked and how horribly I behave in bed with a woman. And so much more.
And yet, my curiosity has the better of me here. If I hire Ellis, we can finally bury the hatchet, put Amsterdam behind us, form a new relationship built firmly in business. He is the best at what he does. I know that. I know him well enough to know Ellis doesn't fail. He is perfection personified.
Next thing I know, I'm hitting reply to his email. Then I stare at the blank cursor wondering how the hell I'm going to respond to this.
My hands won't stop shaking. Even after getting dressed and heading toward the house, I can't stop thinking about how it felt to have Nash grab me so violently. My head nearly snapped with the way he stopped me in my tracks. Then he saw me naked.
Not just saw me naked, he looked at me. Like he couldn't stop looking. And I covered myself, but I almost felt more naked the more I tried to hide my body.
I wanted to tell Zara about it immediately, but it didn't feel quite right. She'd yell at him, maybe even be mad at me for whatever reason, and I can't ruin this opportunity to be here right now. I need this.
Yesterday, I packed my bags and told my mother I was going to stay with a friend. Even when she bombarded me with questions, threw a fit about missing my auditions, played every card in her deck from gas lighting to guilt tripping, I still managed to get on the helicopter with Zara. It took a lot of reminding myself I am twenty-nine, a grown woman.