Page 50 of Hot Nights in Morocco
“Here.” He hands her a piece of paper.
“Will anyone else be accompanying you?” I ask, tilting my chin in his direction.
“Not this time,” he says, looking shifty suddenly.
Shit. He never does that. I reallyhaveset that boomerang in motion.
“I’ll be on my cell for the next hour if De Niro calls. We’ve been missing each other all day. I’m going back to set. I’ll travel straight from there. I’ll see you both tomorrow.” With that, he turns and stalks back out of the office.
Rachel whistles in relief to the tune of a slamming door. “That man is a whirling dervish. I’m finding it harder and harder to keep up.”
“What hotel is he staying at?” I ask, shuffling a pile of scripts around my desk to make myself look busy.
Rachel studies the piece of paper that Jake gave her. “Hotel Yasmina. Very nice. Very nice, indeed.”
“Never heard of it.” I drop the scripts and gaze unseeingly at my laptop screen.
“I’m not surprised. Regular folks like you and me don’t get to stay at places like Hotel Yasmina. It’s the height of six-star luxury. Thousands of dollars a night. The stuff only celebs and billionaires can afford.”
“Has he stayed there before?” I’m trying hard to keep my burgeoning panic in check, but my heart isn’t listening. It keeps crashing painfully against my rib cage.
“Not for a while, and only when—” Rachel stops and starts chuckling. “Iknewit! Gosh, they’re so predictable. I wonder if the press has gotten wind of it yet?”
“Gotten wind of what?” But I already know what she’s going to say. The answer is written all over her face. As further proof, she holds out Jake’s hotel reservation details for me to see. There, in black and white, is confirmation that I should always take Lucy’s advice when jobs involving Jake Dalton in any capacity come my way.
Number of guests: two.
Number of hotel suites required: one.
Double shit.
There’s no coming back from this.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Charlie, are you okay?” asks Rachel anxiously. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Can I get you a glass of water?”
“I’m fine,” I croak, collapsing backward into my chair. “It’s just the heat.”
Or lack of it.Jake just chucked a bucket of cold water over ours.
I can’t fall apart. Not here. Not now. Somehow, I pack away all the pieces of my broken heart for painful dissection later.
“How can anyone find Cassie Lee attractive?” I explode suddenly, my inner monologue going on the rampage again. “She’s such a first class cow.”
“Only the entire male population,” says Rachel, raising her eyebrows at me. “But they’re mostly a bunch of morons, anyway.”
“But she’s so…vacant.”
“Jake likes his women that way. With so much going on in his life right now, he’s not craving intellectual conversation.”
That’s bullshit. Jake likes brains. He likes conflict. He likes really, really hot sex against the sideboard in his L.A. mansion.
“I need to grab some air,” I tell her, stumbling to my feet.
Outside, the stray dogs seem to sense my despair. They nudge me gently, circling and whining and begging for attention. I scratch their ears absentmindedly. I don’t care what Max requested—there’s no way I’m going down to set to see Jake and Cassie leave together.
Am I?
