The Rivals

But my feet froze as I read the text that had come in.

If you wanted to know where I was going, all you had to do was ask.

Oh God. I felt nauseous.

But it couldn’t be from Weston. He didn’t have my cell phone number, as far as I knew. I racked my brain trying to figure out who else could have sent me such a text. Everyone I knew was in my contacts, and this message had come from an unknown number. It had to be Weston. Nothing else made sense. Though, I was so freaked out that I hung on to hope.

My hands were shaky as I hit reply.

Who is this?

I held my breath as the little circles jumped around, waiting for the reply to come through. When it did, my mouth went dry.

You know who it is. Meet me in my room in one hour.

I practically ran back to the hotel. All I wanted to do was hide. In my suite, I looked down at my phone and realized fifteen minutes had passed since the text came in, yet I didn’t remember any of the walk back.

Sitting down on my bed, I read Weston’s text over and over again.

Meet me in my room in one hour.

Was he crazy? I was not going to his room. What was the point? To make it easy for him to torture me about being caught? And how did he even know I was following him? Even if he’d seen me somehow, I could’ve had an appointment in the same building. The entire thing could be a complete coincidence. For all he knew, I’d been walking to an appointment and never even noticed him up ahead on the other side of the street. His damn ego was so big that he just assumed I was following him?

Yeah, that’s what happened. At least that was my story, and I was sticking to it.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it annoyed me that the arrogant bastard thought I’d been following him. He had absolutely no proof of that. Feeling a strong mix of pent-up anger and anxiety, I decided to take a bath to relax. Weston Lockwood was a damn egomaniac, and there was no reason to get myself all worked up over him. He had a lot of nerve barking at me to come to his room.

Turning on the bathwater, I pulled my hair into a ponytail and slipped out of my clothes while the tub filled. A good, long soak would make me forget all about the stupidity of this evening.

Except when I settled into the warm water, I couldn’t relax one bit. I just kept grumbling different rants, over and over, about Weston. Not only was he a cocky jerk for thinking I’d followed him, but now that I’d thought about things, I decided he’d also had a lot of nerve saying those things to me in his office yesterday. The man made a lot of assumptions that weren’t true.

Meet me in my room in one hour.

What did he think was going to happen? That I’d show up and spread my legs because I was so infatuated with him that I’d had to follow him?

I bet that’s exactly what he thought.

And that made me even angrier.

So much so, that I decided to show up at his door—to deliver a piece of my mind, not a piece of my ass. Abruptly getting out of the tub, I splashed water all over the floor. I dried off and threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Grabbing my phone and room card from the counter, I didn’t bother to check the time. I wasn’t the least bit concerned whether I was early or late to his designated meeting time.

In the elevator, I jabbed the buttons on the panel and headed down to the eighth floor. Adrenaline surged through my veins as I raised my hand and rapped my knuckles on his door. I was so pumped up and ready to go that I started to rant before the door even swung all the way open.

“You have a lot of nerve. How dare—”

Oh shit.

This man was definitely not Weston.

He had on a bathrobe and slippers, looked to be in his seventies, and his white eyebrows drew down.

“Can I help you?”

“Umm… I think I might have the wrong room. I was looking for Weston?”

The man shook his head. “Think you got the wrong fella.”

“I’m so sorry to disturb you.”

He shrugged. “No problem. But take it easy on your Weston when you find him.” He smiled. “Most times us men mean well. Sometimes it’s just hard to see with our heads stuck so far up our asses.”

I smiled. “Thanks. And sorry again.”

After the man closed the door, I double-checked the number. This was definitely the one Weston had been in when our rooms were on the same floor. I was sure of it, because it was only two doors down from mine. But perhaps another suite had become available, and he’d moved, too.