Read Did Someone Order Room Service?: HarperImpulse Contemporary Romance Novella (Do Not Disturb, Book 2) for Free Online Page A

you?’
    When she looked up she saw Lucy staring at her from the staff room doorway and perhaps sitting with her head in her hands wasn’t the best way to deflect attention and pretend everything was normal. It did, however, seem to help calm her racing brain.
    ‘I’ve become my mother,’ she said.
    Lucy pulled a puzzled face.
    ‘You mean you’re off round the world to follow some boy band? Or are you planning on doing the festival season next year, sleeping in a tent and drinking mead?’ Her voice was jokey. Because of course the idea of Layla Jones doing something like that was so out of character that it really was a joke.
    ‘For Pete’s sake, you’re missing the point!’ she wailed. ‘I’ve
slept
with him.’
    This time it seemed to penetrate. Lucy’s mouth fell open.
    ‘Him? You don’t mean Matt Stanton?’
    Disbelief dominated her expression and Layla felt the teeniest hint of offense. Was it really THAT hard to believe?
    ‘Yes. After we talked before, I went up to check the suite, see if there was anything he needed.’ How easily
that
lie tripped off her tongue, as if she was trying to convince herself as much as Lucy that it really hadn’t been quite that premeditated. ‘And my head was spinning with all that stuff you said about being boring and never acting on impulse…’ she threw up her hands ‘…one thing led to another.’ She clapped both hands over her eyes. ‘What have I done?’
    ‘Was he good?’
    The bottom fell out of her stomach just from thinking about it.
Good
really didn’t have a hope in hell of covering it. And the fact that deep down there was a part of her that was exhilarated by what she’d done only added to her horror at herself. In a single afternoon, she’d betrayed every single belief she’d lived by for the last twenty-odd years. She looked between her fingers at Lucy.
    ‘That’s totally irrelevant.’
    ‘Actually, it isn’t. There’s a world of distance between a one-night-stand that’s pants and one that’s good.’
    ‘Technically it’s not even a one-night-stand. More a couple-of-hours-stand. If there is such a thing.’
    ‘Good for you.’
    ‘Good? How can it be good? I could be sacked on the spot.’
    ‘Why? Did you get caught?’
    ‘No but-‘
    ‘Did you take precautions?’
    ‘Of course I did! I’m not a total idiot.’
    Lucy shrugged.
    ‘Then don’t worry about it. Layla, you are not the first woman in the world to have a one-off quickie. This isn’t the Dark Ages. It really is not such a big deal.’ She pulled out her mobile phone and began to casually check her texts, clearly so unfazed by the revelation that she was bored with it already. ‘Chill out, will you,’ she added.
    Layla stared at her.
    ‘I’m a slut.’
    ‘You’re a woman who makes her own choices.’ Lucy said, then returned to the only thing about the situation that really seemed to be of interest. ‘So was he?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Good?’
    Oh for crying out loud.
    ****
    It never happened.
    She’d repeated that mantra over and over throughout the restless, sleep-deprived night in the hope that soon her brain might actually start to believe it. She regretted telling Lucy about it now. It became a whole lot harder to deny something to yourself once you’d let someone else in on it.
    The following morning she took deliberately shallow, calming breaths as she crossed the marble floor of the lobby to the reception desk to check for messages. It was perfectly simple.
Business as usual
was the approach here. All she needed to do was get through his stay here without coming into contact with him. That and avoid watching tennis on TV ever again so she wouldn’t see him and be reminded of the most insane decision she’d ever made.
    She absently picked up a tabloid newspaper left on one of the lobby tables as she passed and glanced casually at its front cover, a colour photo depicting Matt Stanton and his perfect abs frolicking in the surf at some swanky beach resort