“Funny. I always thought it was women who wanted to change men, not vice versa.”
“I don’t want to change you. I want to help you discover your full potential.”
Great.
Now I sounded like her school advisor. Or her pimp.
Either way, it was patronizing. I opened the door, then locked it behind us. She strutted toward the bathroom, her ass swaying from side to side. Back to being a sex kitten.
I couldn’t keep up with this woman’s moods and personalities.
“No one asked for your help, Dr. Costello. Go be someone else’s Captain Save-a-Ho.”
She slammed the bathroom door in my face.
“I’m not coming out until you go to bed. We’re not continuing our little mistake,” she announced once she was in the safety of the bathroom.
I plastered my forehead to the door. “What makes you think it was a mistake?”
I was pathetic, even—and especially—in my own eyes.
Why was I bothering?
I had so many other women to choose from back at home.
“I don’t do one-night stands,” she called out from the other side of the door. “Might sound surprising, even old-fashioned to some, but that’s the way I roll.”
“Doesn’t have to be a one-night stand,” I heard myself say. “Unless the gonorrhea thing is true.”
“Just as long as no one finds out about it, right?”
I groaned.
She had me there. Not that I was ashamed, but…
“Your parents won’t approve, either,” I pointed out.
“No,” she agreed. “Which brings me to my previous statement—no hanky-panky. I don’t want to be your dirty little secret.”
“You’re an infuriating woman.” I pressed my fist against the door.
“And you should be used to hearing a ‘no’ every now and then,” she deadpanned.
I heard her brushing her teeth and removing her makeup using that battery-operated thing that gave your face a deep clean.
“And another thing,” she added, knowing full well I was still outside, waiting for her to grace me with her presence. “There better be a pillow barrier between us when I get out.”
“Like hell, sweetheart.” I withdrew from the door, glaring at it like it had personally wronged me. “You want a barrier, make it yourself.”
With that, I went on to rip the swan-shaped towel waiting on our bed next to tomorrow’s itinerary and tossed them along with the red rose petals into the trash.
Mrs. Weiner didn’t deserve anything nice tonight.
The next morning, I cracked one eye open to find Cruz’s triangular, infuriatingly athletic back as he…wait, what the heck was he doing, exactly?
“Cruz?” I hiccupped, gathering my limbs into a sitting position.
My back was hurting from the mountain of pillows I’d arranged between us which dug into my spine, and from the lack of a pillow to put my head on so that I could make said mountain happen.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
He glanced over his shoulder, throwing me an under-the-mustache charming smirk as he stuffed my clothes into trash bags. The worst thing about him was that he made me believe he could be good to me. That was just downright horrible of him.
“What’re you doing?”
“Exactly what it looks like.”
“Articulate it to me. It’s six in the morning.”
“Quarter to nine. And I’m throwing away your clothes.”
“Why?” I demanded, straightening my back alertly. I didn’t have money to replace those clothes, no matter how horrid they were. Didn’t he know people who didn’t have his money valued every little thing they owned?
He didn’t stop what he was doing, carrying on with the same smooth motion as he emptied out my side of the closet.
“Well, because we had a bet, and in that bet, you promised you’d let me get you a whole new wardrobe, and since you’ll be wanting to take those clothes with you back home, you won’t have any room for these ones. Shame, really. But that’s life for you.”
I knew what he was doing, and I didn’t appreciate it. He wanted to help me look good and proper so the people of Fairhope would accept me.
Well, despite my bitterness, I didn’t want to be accepted.
I liked to stick out like a sore thumb, a weed in an otherwise picturesque rose garden, and remind them that this town wasn’t all that.
“Leave my clothes be.”
“A bet’s a bet.”
“I’ll honor the bet, but I still want my clothes.”