Page 11 of A Matter of Time
I think I’m in love with my history TA, her latest SOS read.Is that bad? He’s not technically my professor.
Still bad, I wrote back.If he’s in charge of your marks, steer clear. The course is only a few months long, see if he’s still quite so appealing when he doesn’t have any power over you anymore.
She must have had her phone right beside her because she wrote back while I continued to scroll through my other messages.Don’t you ever just want to give into temptation, no matter what your brain says?
I kept my reply to two simple words:No, Billie.
She seemed to get the message, if her string of pouting emojis in reply was any indication.
I got through the rest of my emails, including some new enquiries about my availability for the following month once my time with Barnly Oil had finished, and even after all of that, Bradyn’s meeting still hadn’t ended yet. With a frown, I checked my watch. It was nearly five o’clock already and we were supposed to have left to head back to Houston an hour ago. Maybe I should have gone into the meeting after all so I could keep them all on topic.
The minutes continued to tick by until the door finally opened at nearly six p.m. It would be a three-hour drive back to Houston at a normal speed; at Bradyn’s speed, it would take almost four, plus we hadn’t eaten anything for hours and my stomach protested at the idea of being stuck in the truck with no access to food. The granola bar I carried in my purse for emergencies wasn’t going to cut it.
At least Bradyn looked apologetic as he walked over to me. “I’m so sorry that ran late, but we got a lot done. I shared some of the tips you’ve already given me with the guys here and they want to use them too.”
I glanced over at the other men who had been in the meeting room and they all smiled and nodded in my direction, backing Bradyn up. It pleased me to hear that, but it didn’t solve my more immediate problem.
Bradyn, however, had an answer for that too. “Listen, it’s going to be real late by the time we get back if we head out now. I know a great Mexican place downtown and there’s a nice hotel there too. We could have a relaxing evening and head back first thing in the morning if you don’t have anything you need to be home for. The company’ll pick up the tab, of course, since it’s my fault.”
That did sound a whole lot better than another four hours in the truck that evening, and I didn’t have anything planned in the morning that I couldn’t miss. Although I didn’t have a change of clothes with me, I always carried a spare toothbrush, hairbrush, deodorant and basic makeup, just in case. You could never be too prepared.
“Sounds good to me,” I agreed, and with a grin, Bradyn led the way back to his truck.
The Mexican restaurant he’d suggested turned out to be loud and bright, filled with half-drunk locals enjoying their Friday night, but the food was excellent. We chatted about food, sports and travel, typical small talk. He leaned a little too close to me at times, and I caught him looking at my chest once or twice when he thought I wasn’t paying attention, but as business dinners went, I’d had worse. At least he hadn’t tried to out-and-out proposition me.
Or so I thought, until we arrived at the hotel he’d suggested and he told me to take a seat on the black leather sofa in the sleek, modern lobby while he went to arrange some rooms for us. When he came back over to me, his expression had turned apologetic once again. “I’m so sorry, Tonia, but it looks like they’ve only got one room left.”
He had to be kidding me. The cliched, tired excuse almost made me laugh, if it weren’t so pathetic. “That’s alright,” I said, getting to my feet, and his face lit up for just a second before I finished my sentence. “We’ll just go somewhere else instead. There must be hundreds of hotels in town.”
“I… but… we’re already here,” he stuttered. “And I already took the room. Besides, you must be tired.”
“I’m not tired enough to fall for something so ridiculous.” Without waiting for another excuse, I marched over to the reception desk. “Excuse me, I’d like to book a room for tonight.”
“Of course, ma’am,” the woman behind the desk replied. “Two queens or a king?”
Exactly as I thought, and everything else about the day fell into place in my head. He didn’t always drive that slow. That meeting hadn’t overrun by accident. He’d planned all of this just to try to get me into bed with him, as if being in the same room was all it would take. With my eyebrows raised, I turned back to Bradyn, who had followed me over. “Fully booked, huh?”
His cheeks had turned a rather bright shade of red, the blush spreading down the back of his neck too. “Shit, I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to do. I just think you’re really beautiful and I wanted to take a shot, you know?”
“You know how you take a shot? Youaskme if I’d like to go to dinner. You don’t drive slow and stay in a meeting too long so that we have no choice but to spend the night and then try to get me into a room with you. That’s creepy as hell.”
“I said I’m sorry.” His posture turned defensive as he got more embarrassed, but I didn’t really care.
“And do you think Jason Barnly appreciates you paying for all this on his company card? Or did you at least have the good sense to pay for it yourself?”
His tight lips were all the answer I needed.
“Go on up to your room, Bradyn.” I didn’t have anything else to say to him. “I’ll sort myself out.”
He obviously had no leg left to stand on as he stormed off and I turned back to the woman at the desk, who gave me an all-too-knowing sympathetic look. “Date gone wrong?”
“Something like that.” The ridiculousness of the whole situation only made me feel more tired. Why did I always seem to attract the odd ones? “Can I get the king bed, please?”
She tapped away at her screen while I pulled out my own credit card. Just as I went to hand it over to her, another voice said my name, a familiar voice but one I definitely did not expect to hear in a hotel lobby in Corpus Christi of all places.
“Tonia?”
“Cam?” What in the world would he be doing there? It made absolutely no sense and yet, there he was, rushing up to the desk beside me, relief written across his face.
