Until Now. Kayla Perrin
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this.”
She was flustered, and she couldn’t form coherent words. The last thing she wanted was to be heading back to Callie’s place the morning after some sort of scandalous night with Marshall. Her son would wonder where she had been, and what could she tell him?
Lord, this was a nightmare.
“I picked up some breakfast,” Marshall told her. “I didn’t have anything decent in the house. I bought some egg sandwiches from a local deli. A few varieties, since I didn’t know what you liked. I got coffee, too.” He lifted the tray in his hands, in case she somehow hadn’t seen it.
“I’m not hungry.”
“It’s never a good idea to skip breakfast,” Marshall said.
“Thank you for...” She stiffened. For what? “I—I need to get to my son.”
“You can’t take a few minutes to eat breakfast with me?” His eyes narrowed slightly, saying he was more than a little confused as to why she wanted to get out of his house so fast.
She supposed she could understand why he was confused. Most women probably didn’t run screaming from him the morning after a night spent in his bed.
But she wasn’t most women. And clearly, she wasn’t even herself. She had no memory of what had happened at all, which made it much worse.
“I’m sorry,” Tamara said. “I’d rather just leave.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I need to get to my son. This is not how I planned our first night in Cleveland to be.” She was flustered. She stared up at him, her chest rapidly moving with each breath. “But thank you. Thank you for the coffee and the breakfast sandwich.”
“Are you okay?” Marshall asked.
That was a loaded question. How could she be okay? She didn’t know what she’d done with him, but she could only imagine the worst. She didn’t dare ask him, like some fool who ended up in a man’s bed with no recollection of it. Obviously, she’d had too much alcohol and had somehow passed out.
She forced a smile but barely met his gaze. “I’m fine. I’ll take the coffee and sandwich with me for later, if you don’t mind.”
Marshall nodded. “Sure. Though I’m a little disappointed that you want to get away from me so quickly this morning.”
Again, the smile. This time a little devilish. Tamara’s stomach sank.
She’d slept with him. It was obvious now. The look in his eyes, she knew she had.
Oh, God.
Tamara took a coffee from the tray. “I’ll just call for a taxi. No need for you to take me to Callie and Nigel’s place.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll drive you.”
Tamara felt a bout of anxiety. She wanted to escape Marshall, not be confined in a closed space with him. “It’s perfectly fine. You’ve already...done enough.”
“Their house is in Shaker Heights, about a fifteen-minute drive,” he told her. “Honestly, how long will it take a taxi to get here when you call? I’ll just take you.”
Tamara hadn’t thought of that, and certainly it didn’t make sense to sit or stand inside or on the porch for possibly ten minutes or longer for a taxi to arrive. She would love nothing more than to simply flee, start walking anywhere, but she’d caught sight of his sprawling circular driveway when he’d opened the door. Heck, it would probably take her five minutes to get off of his property—where on earth would she walk to?
As much as she wanted to be away from Marshall, taking him up on his offer for a ride seemed the best thing to do.
“As long as you don’t have anything else to do,” Tamara said, resigned to her fate.
“I’m all yours.”
Tamara cringed at the words, wondering if they held special meaning for him. Then she opened the cutout in her coffee lid and sipped it.
“I got it with a little cream and a little sugar,” Marshall explained. “I didn’t know how you would like it.”
“This is fine.” She stepped toward the front door. “I don’t want to rush you, but if you’re ready to leave...”
“Sure.”
Tamara stepped out the door, which was almost flush with the ground, then waited for Marshall to join her. “Hold this for me?” he asked, offering her the bag with the sandwiches and the coffee tray.
Tamara took the items while he closed the door. She checked out the breadth of his shoulders, clad in a T-shirt this morning, and she noted that he was just as sexy in casual wear as he had been in his suit yesterday.
He turned to face her, and she quickly averted her eyes.
He took the coffee and bag from her and then started toward the car with an easy and sexy gait. Tamara followed him to the sleek, black BMW. She didn’t remember being in it last night, but she must have been.
What else had she done?
Marshall opened the passenger door for her, then went around and got in on the driver’s side. Tamara was about to get into the car when she saw a cushion on the seat covered with blond hair.
“What?” Marshall asked, looking up at her.
“Is that dog hair?”
Marshall grabbed the cushion and tossed it into the backseat. “Sorry, yeah.”
Tamara looked around anxiously, half expecting some giant fur ball to be lunging toward her. “You have a dog?”
“It’s a buddy’s dog. He’s gone for the weekend, asked me to check in on him. So I picked Sherlock up this morning and took her to the park so she could run laps with me.”
Tamara still stood there, not getting into the car.
“I already brought Sherlock home,” Marshall said. “What, you don’t like dogs?”
“Not particularly,” Tamara admitted. She had delivered flyers as a teen. More than one dog had chased her or barked savagely at her.
“Well, Sherlock’s at home.” Marshall dusted the leather seat to get any stray dog hairs off. “Will you just get in the car?”
With a sigh, Tamara did just that. Marshall then started the car, and loud hip-hop immediately blared through the speakers. Marshall reached for the volume control and turned it down.
Tamara said nothing, just sipped her coffee as a way of avoiding having to speak. She was desperate to find out what had happened the night before, and also terrified. She knew it was very likely that she had behaved inappropriately, but she was embarrassed to ask.
Perhaps there was a part of her that needed that kind of wild encounter with someone to help make her feel desirable again. It had been a while since she’d been with any man. And as much as it was clearly out of character for her to engage in a one-night stand, obviously, on some level, she’d needed to get it on with someone.
“So,” Marshall began, “did you have a good time yesterday?”
Tamara’s stomach twisted. Was he talking about the wedding? Or afterward? Tamara looked at him briefly and then averted her gaze. “If you mean at the wedding,” she said pointedly, “yes, it was lovely.”
“What do you think I mean?” Marshall asked.
“I—I don’t... I didn’t...” Tamara’s voice trailed off.
“I’m a trained investigator,” Marshall told her. When Tamara glanced at him, she saw that he was giving her a curious look. “It’s obvious there’s something else on your mind.”
Tamara said nothing.