Read Your Room or Mine? for Free Online Page B

Making a sharp exit, backing out of what he’d started before it went any further. She looked at the dark head on the pillow. All she knew of him was what he’d told her and she’d accepted it all without question. For the first time she saw a new parallel with Joe. Was there some other girl somewhere, thinking Oliver was away on a work trip, waiting for him to call her, trusting him? He’d told her he didn’t do relationships, had sounded so convincing, but no doubt Joe said exactly the same thing to all his conquests.
    She needed to get out of here. Right now, before he woke up.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Oliver came to life slowly. Bright sunshine slanted onto the empty pillow next to him.
    Not his hotel room. Not his bed. He leaned up on an elbow and rubbed his scratchy eyes. Not enough sleep.
    The events of the previous night trickled back into his consciousness, driving out his usual first waking desire for caffeine, and he glanced immediately around the room.
    For her.
    No clothes anywhere. No cosmetics, no bags. No sign that he’d shared this room with anyone except for the crumpled bedclothes and the hot rerun that flashed into his mind. His stomach give a slow flip which he insisted to himself was due to hunger, nothing more. It was breakfast time, after all. He threw the covers back and checked the ensuite. There was no question about it – she was gone.
    Unless.
    Her package deal included dinner, bed and breakfast, didn’t it? Maybe she’d decided to make the most of the thrown-in breakfast buffet on her way out. He dressed at speed and headed for the dining room, his shoes whispering on the deep nap of the carpet.
    Not that he needed to see her this morning of course. All that needed to be said had been said the previous evening. They were both crystal clear about where they stood. It was simply a matter of politeness, right? Checking she was fine, saying a perfunctory goodbye before she checked out.
    Down in the ornate dining room, no longer intimately candlelit and instead now flooded with sunlight from the high windows and reset for breakfast, he pointedly filled a glass with freshly squeezed orange juice from the buffet, while in reality he scanned the room for her.
    Right up to the moment he realised she wasn’t there he had been utterly certain that she would be. As his mood took a stupid inexplicable nosedive, he discarded the orange juice and left the room.
    He approached the high marble desk in the morning-busy lobby poised to question the receptionist.
    â€˜Can I help you, Mr Forbes?’ She remembered him from check-in yesterday. And he knew immediately from the over-attentive smile she gave him that with a few carefully-chosen sentences he could persuade her to give him the information he wanted. Izzy’s last name might be a start.
    He hesitated.
    Ground rules, not second thoughts.
    Her words of the previous night came back to him and he bit back the question that lurked in his mouth. If she’d wanted to be found she would have told him her name or left him a note. She would have joined him for breakfast. She wouldn’t have made her excuses and left halfway through the night.
    And why the hell was he feeling so piqued anyway? Just because she had robbed him of the chance to be in control, to be the one who did the backing-off?
    He thought of the reason she’d been staying here. Some kind of waste-of-space boyfriend had let her down.
    â€˜Mr Forbes?’
    â€˜Can I order a newspaper?’ he said randomly.
    He took a breath.
    What was he thinking? Like he needed or wanted a woman in his life. Like he had time or headspace for that kind of distraction.
    Let it go
. Let her have got her own back for whatever wrong had been done to her. She’d done him a favour here, why the hell was he questioning it? One glorious night and he didn’t even have the dirty work of backing out to do.
    He realised suddenly that the Receptionist had asked him three