Chapter 218

She was gone.

The sheets beside him were rumpled but cold. No note. No trace of her except the faint scent of lavender lingering on his skin.

He frowned. He wasn’t the kind of man who chased girls the morning after. They usually chased him. They stayed until he was done. But something about Elena, the way she’d looked at him, the way she’d kissed him, itched under his skin.

Jade’s voice crackled through the phone. “Ryan? You there?”

“Yeah.” He dragged a hand down his face. “I’m here.”

Jade sighed, clearly giving up on prying. “I have postponed the meeting after lunch. Please be on time.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He grabbed his discarded pants, fishing out his wallet. “I’ll be there.”

He hung up, tossing the phone onto the bed.

“Just a girl,” he muttered. “Just one night.” He chuckled darkly, shaking his head.

He headed for the shower, turning the water as cold as it would go, letting the cold water chase away the sleep and the hangover.

Later the entire day, no matter how many emails he checked, no matter how many calls he took that morning, her face kept flickering in his mind. She was the distraction he didn’t need.

He had meetings lined up back to back, two contracts on the verge of collapse, and a dozen more people waiting to get a piece of his time. Still, for the first time in years, he couldn’t shake the ghost of a stranger who had disappeared before sunrise.

That afternoon, Elena met up with her friends at a café downtown, the sunlight too bright for her aching head.

“Elena!” Avonlea’s voice pierced the buzz of the café as she spotted her friend slipping into a seat at their usual booth. “Where the hell did you disappear last night?”

“You’re alive,” James said dramatically, sliding into the seat beside her. “We thought you died. Or got kidnapped. Or ran off with a cartel lord.”

“Or got married in Vegas,” Sofia chimed in with a smirk. “Honestly, I would’ve respected that.”

Elena, now wearing an oversized hoodie to hide the marks on her neck and down to her body, pulled her sunglasses down lower on her nose and groaned. “Can we not do this today?”

“No way,” Sofia chimed in, sipping her latte.

Avonlea leaned forward, arms crossed. “Where the hell did you go, El? We checked the whole club before we left. But you were nowhere. Vanished.”

“Yeah,” Killian added. “Thought you left with that hot guy at the bar?”

Elena flinched. “I didn’t leave with anyone.”

David snorted. “That’s not what it looked like. One second you were sulking at the bar, the next second…. BOOM! you were lip-locked with the sexiest man in the room.”

Her face turned crimson. “I had a headache. I called my driver and left.”

Avonlea narrowed her eyes. “That’s it?”

Sofia squinted at her. “Is that so?”

They almost shouted at the same time.

Elena nodded, keeping her face neutral, lifting her coffee cup to her lips to hide the heat in her cheeks.

David leaned in with a smirk. “Then why are you blushing like you committed a felony?”

Sofia narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, you look like someone who’s hiding a very hot secret.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she snapped, far too quickly.

“Right,” Avonlea said slowly, then added with a wicked grin, “Nothing at all. Totally believable.”

Killian grinned. “She’s lying. That blush? Dead giveaway.”

“I am not blushing.”

“You are. And it’s adorable,” James teased. “Now spill.”

“I’m not spilling anything because there’s nothing to spill!” Elena snapped.

Sofia giggled. “Was he good?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elena muttered.

They teased her for another ten minutes before the conversation shifted toward other gossip, but Elena barely heard a word of it. She stared down at her coffee, her fingers tracing circles around the rim of the cup.

Her mind was far, far away. Back in that room. Back with him.

She’d only known him for a few hours. A stranger. A dangerous, gorgeous stranger. She had no idea who he really was. No name, no number. Nothing but a memory.

She had crossed a line that shouldn’t have been crossed and no matter how badly she wanted to see him again, just one more glance, one more touch, she knew it had to end before it began. She would carry the memory in silence and he would forget her name before the day ended.

At least, that’s what she told herself.

But fate?

Fate had a funny way of not being done with you. Even when you thought you’d slipped away.