Walk of Shame (Love Unexpectedly 4)
Not Jason’s hands.
I freeze, because I know those hands. I know their strong confidence, know their tentative tenderness.
I take a breath and turn.
Because of those hands, I know who’s behind me, but it’s still a shock to see Andrew Mulroney here. In a club.
The strobe lights prevent me from seeing his face clearly, but he’s definitely not smiling.
“A moment, Georgiana?”
Jason steps forward. “Hey, man. I saw her first.”
Andrew cuts the bigger man with a glare. “No, man. You fucking didn’t.”
“Hey, guys—” I say uneasily.
“Shut up, Georgiana,” Andrew growls.
Then his fingers wrap around my wrist and he’s dragging me through the crowd with a masculine authority that, frankly, isn’t all that different from Jason’s caveman routine, but I like it a hell of a lot more.
The bouncer tries to stop us as we approach the side door. “If you go out, you don’t come back in.”
“Thank God,” Andrew mutters.
A moment later I’m blasted by cold air. It’s chillier than usual, even for early November, and my dress is, well, pretty much nothing.
Andrew releases my wrist and, glancing down at my dress, curses. “It looks even smaller out here,” he mutters. He shrugs out of his jacket and without preamble drapes it around me and pulls me close, wrapping his arms around me and holding me captive.
“How’d you find me?” I ask, squirming to get away. He doesn’t relax his grip.
“I tried Hailey, but she didn’t answer. So I’ve been going from club to godforsaken club for fucking hours trying to find you.”
“Andrew, that’s nuts, you could have just—”
“Shut up, Georgiana Frances Watkins. Just shut up for one damn minute, because I have a couple of things to tell you.”
“Let me guess,” I say, pulling away more forcefully. “You’re here to tell me that I’m ridiculous. That I’ve been childish for not picking up your phone calls so that you can lecture me. That I’m overly emotional, that if I’d just calm down and listen to reason—”
“That if you’d just calm down and listen to reason, you’d see that I’m trying to win you back!” he interrupts with a shout.
I blink in surprise at the outburst, and the conversations around us dwindle to a murmur as people start to catch a whiff of the scene playing out in front of them.
I cross my arms and look at him. “And you’re pissed about it, huh?” I say, refusing to make this easy for him. “You’re angry because I’ve forced you to mess up your schedule, that I’m not doing as I’m supposed to, that this isn’t tidy.”
“Yes, a bit,” he growls.
I scoff to hide the hurt and take a step back.
“No. Damn it. Damn it, just wait a minute while I—”
“While you think?” I ask gently. Because as mad as I am, as convinced as I am that we don
’t have a future, I do understand this man. I understand that in his way he does care; he just doesn’t know how to process anything that can’t be, well…processed.
“Go home, Andrew,” I whisper, stepping toward him and brushing my lips to his cheek.
“Wait, Georgie—” His fingers find my shoulders. “Give me a sec, I have a speech.”