Flirting With Disaster (Camelot 3)

Brilliant. Just brilliant. It wasn’t what she’d meant to say at all, but she’d opened her mouth and her stupidest thought had come tumbling out.

This sometimes happened when she was anxious. In the interview for Ohio’s Junior Miss competition in high school, one of the judges had asked her what her views were on euthanasia, and she’d said something completely moronic about starving children in China.

Sean grabbed a pen off the desk and used it to write a note on the paper the receptionist had just slid in his direction.

I DIDN’T ASK YOU TO.

Ouch.

Of course he hadn’t. He wouldn’t, seeing as he hated her and all. And since she couldn’t think of anything not-stupid to say—since her eyes stung with tears that she would never shed in front of this man—she was going to spend the night sleeping next to someone whose disdain for her could not possibly be more plain.

A rugged, remote someone who refused to speak to her for mysterious reasons she wasn’t pr

ivy to.

But hey, maybe she wouldn’t have to spend the night in a room with Sean. If all went well, she’d be sleeping with Judah.

The thought cheered her up, and she managed a nod, pushing the receipt in Sean’s direction. Her fingers tapped over his words.

I DIDN’T ASK YOU TO.

Why did that needle her so much? Maybe because he’d written it in all caps, his handwriting bold and confident, right above the total estimated room charge, which was … oh, God.

She turned her back on the counter and took another deep breath. Caleb was going to kill her.

Non, Parisian Katie said. Caleb ees going to kill Sean.

This one was all Granite Man’s fault.

Chapter Four

Whoever had decided to call the room a “suite” was smoking crack.

To be a suite, a hotel room had to contain more than one bedroom with its own door. Sean knew this for a fact. He’d slept in plenty of suites.

The Atrium Suite was big, with two beds and a couch, but that hardly mattered when there was only a six-foot gap between the mattresses.

This was not a suite. It was a problem.

Katie dropped her purse on the couch and peeked in the bathroom. Then she gazed at the exposed brick wall, the orange accent pillows, the art books on the glass coffee table, the strange sculpture on one wall that resembled an animal head made of nuts and bolts and weird, twisted pieces of metal.

She looked at everything but the beds.

“We should talk about the case,” she said. “Compare notes.”

Sean nodded absentmindedly, preoccupied with the fact that he’d be able to hear her breathing in the dark.

Not good.

He walked to the window and drew back the curtain. Behind him, Katie rolled her suitcase over to one of the beds. He watched the traffic inch by on the street below while she transferred her clothes from her suitcase into the dresser, and he tried to think.

If his first speech therapist, Mrs. Guzman, could see him now, she’d have his ass on a platter.

You want to stop stuttering, Sean? If you want it, you gotta talk. You can spend the rest of your life keeping your mouth shut, and maybe you’ll fool some people for a while, but I can guarantee you, when you do try to use your voice, it’s not gonna magically start working. The only way you’re ever gonna get better is to talk.

His first appointment with Mrs. Guzman had changed his life.

The judge who legally emancipated Sean from his mother had assigned him a social worker—a kind, harried woman who had agreed with Sean’s assessment that the only thing he needed from the State of California was a speech therapist.