I let out a groan. “Fine,” I say.
He grins and playfully pushes me onto the bed. “Relax. I’ll be out soon.”
As he disappears into the bathroom, I roll onto my side with a huff. I’m horny. Maybe I should just join him in there. Hopping up, I grab his jacket to hang it up. But as I’m shaking it out on the hanger, something silky falls out of one of the pockets. A pocket square, maybe.
I bend down to grab it and freeze, my entire body going cold. In my hand is a pair of very small thong panties. And they aren’t mine.
The dinner conversation starts replaying in my mind, and suddenly my chest goes so tight, it’s hard to breathe. Lingerie. Thong. Monica.
A few minutes later Luka gets out of the shower, his torso glistening as he comes toward me with a towel hanging low around his hips. I don’t give him a chance to say anything.
“You’re sleeping on the couch.”
Before he can respond, I push him out of the bedroom along with his suitcase and slam the door.
Luka
Chapter 13
Ihave no idea what the hell just happened. One minute, I’m getting ready to spend all night worshipping my wife’s body and feeding her strawberries, and the next, she’s kicking me out of the bedroom without so much as an explanation.
“Brooklyn! Open the door, please.” I wait a minute and try knocking again.
Nothing.
And still nothing when I call, text, and speak firmly but politely through the door.
After about fifteen minutes of this, I’m all out of patience and done being ignored. I get dressed, head down to the lobby, and hit up the first bar I find on the casino floor. Now I’m sitting at a high-top table by myself, trying to figure out what I did wrong this time.
I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. Every time I think Brooklyn and I are back on track, something happens that derails us again. Is it me? Is it her? Maybe we’re just not compatible and we’re incapable of coexisting peacefully in the long run.
No. That doesn’t feel right even as I think it. Something must have happened. Something triggered her while I was in the shower. I’d be a fool to ignore the fact that she probably resented being forced to have dinner with Monica, but I pulled out all the stops to focus my attention on my wife, not her nemesis. And every time Monica crossed the line, I firmly but gently rejected her advances. Maybe I wasn’t firm enough for Brooklyn’s liking, but after all, Monica is DRM’s biggest model. I’m trying to support her while maintaining a neutral but pleasant working relationship. Apparently that isn’t good enough for my wife.
But what does she expect me to do? Fire Monica? Lose the agency the biggest campaign it’s ever seen, alienating Maxilene in the process? Stefan would shit a brick.
Fuck it.
I take a slug of my drink—a double whiskey neat—and survey the crowd. The bar is packed, but no one is paying attention to me. Good. Every woman in the room is wearing a skintight dress, yet all I can think of is Brooklyn in her pink sheath.
A groan works out of my throat at what I’m missing out on right this minute. She looked so hot at dinner, I could barely stand the wait to get my hands on her. Now all I’ve got is blue balls, a headache, and no clear answers to any of this.
Maybe it’s time to finally move on. Admit to myself that it’s just never going to work. Hell, maybe itisme. Did I really think I could just marry a stranger and live happily ever after?
Yeah. I guess I did. And I’d really thought we were finally getting somewhere. Until I agreed to go on this godforsaken trip to Vegas, and now everything’s in shambles. Again.
Slamming back the rest of my drink, I wave over the cocktail waitress—some young blonde in the hotel’s female uniform of three-inch heels, a one-shoulder white minidress that vaguely resembles a Roman toga, and a thick gold belt.
“Another whiskey neat on your tab, Mr. Zoric?” she asks, batting her lashes at me.
“You know what? Make it a double,” I say. “Please.”
“Coming right up.”
She flashes me a flirty grin and returns a minute later with the whiskey, setting it in front of me with a wink before walking away. That’s when I notice her name—Skylar—and number are scribbled on the bar napkin under the glass. I turn the napkin over with a scowl.
Clearly I assumed too much from that first kiss Brooklyn planted on me after she rolled up on the photo shoot and overheard Monica asking me to take her out for the Maxilene dinner. It was probably just for show. In fact, Brooklyn had specifically mentioned flying out to save my reputation, hadn’t she? Something about a PR nightmare and social media gossip.
God, I’m an idiot. Of course she didn’t come to Vegas to surprise me. She came to act as a buffer between me and Monica. And to protect our—and Danica Rose Management’s—image. Everything I thought was happening between us has all been in my head. Wishful thinking.