She pulled her suitcase off the bed and left it outside the room for the porter to pick up and add to the tour’s luggage on the bus.
Contemplating marriage with Dash was an exercise in futility. He was probably already regretting the kisses they’d shared and the implications he had made. He couldn’t mean all that shit he said.
She walked into the hotel dining room and seeing David at a table by the window, she went toward him. They’d been sharing breakfast since the second day of the tour, sometimes alone and other times joined by their fellow tour members. This morning, he was sitting alone at a table for four.
She slid into the seat opposite him. “Good morning.” She said.
He looked up from the paper he’d been reading. He had it special delivered because he said he couldn’t stand too many days without news from back home.
His usually mobile face remained impassive. “Is it?” he asked.
He was still angry about her choosing to go with Dash instead of him the night before.
“Did you end up going back to the Psiri?” she asked with a tentative smile.
“What’s it to you if I did?” he retorted.
She started at the belligerence in his voice. “I think I’ll order my breakfast.” She said. She signaled for the waiter.
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Tess asked. What was the matter with him this morning?
“Your boyfriend might take offense to you eating breakfast with me.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.” She replied.
“That’s not the way it looked last night.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry if you were disappointed I didn’t have dinner with you last night, but you shouldn’t have taken for granted that you could schedule my time.”
“I realize that now.”
Good. At least that had worked out from last night’s fiasco. She smiled. “No harm done.” She said.
“Not for you. It must be nice having two men fighting for your attention, but personally I think your ploy was juvenile.”
“What ploy?” she demanded, getting irritated by his continued innuendo that she did not understand.
“You should have told me you belonged to someone else. You let me think you were unattached.” David said.
“I am unattached.” She replied. Did all men think in terms of belonging? Perhaps only the strong, arrogant ones. “Furthermore, I belong to myself for heaven’s sake, thank you very much.”
David snorted at that. “Not according to your rich boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she gritted out between clenched teeth.
“Right. That’s why you went with him last night instead of having dinner with me.”
She wasn’t going to admit she’d been virtually kidnapped after making her grand declaration about eating alone. It made her seem feeble and she wasn’t, but she had been outflanked.
“Are you saying that my having dinner with a man automatically makes him my boyfriend?” He was more medieval than Dash, she thought.
“It was a hell of a lot more than dinner from where I stood.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“I was in my room when you returned to the hotel last night.”
“So?”
“I saw him kiss you. Afterward he paid me a visit and told me in very clear terms just whose woman you are.” He said. Anger and wounded pride vibrated in David’s voice.
“He had no right to do that.” Tess said. More importantly though was why had he? She could not wrap her mind around the concept of Dash being so possessive of her all of a sudden.
David’s blue eyes narrowed. “He had his hand on your butt and his tongue down your throat. If he’s not your boyfriend, what does that make you?”
The offensive description of Dash’s passionate good-night kiss shocked her. Up until the night before, David had been an affable and rather mild companion.
“What exactly are you implying?” she asked angrily.
David tossed the paper on the table and stood up. “You let him paw you in a public hallway and you’ve never even given me the green light to kiss you good-night. You figure it out.” He said.
She watched David walk away feeling both grief and anger. It hurt that David was willing to dismiss their friendship so easily, but his implication that she lacked morals really rankled. She was an anachronistic virgin in a world of sexual gluttony, for goodness’ sake. She did not sleep around.
Had Dash been right in his assessment of David’s motives? David had not reacted as a simple friend to the events of last night. Had he been angling to share her bed?
It wouldn’t be the first such relationship to develop in their tour group, but she would have considered herself the least likely candidate for one. She didn’t have any experience with men wanting her.
David certainly seemed offended this morning that she’d allowed Dash to kiss her last night, but she still could not quite believe it was about David wanting her. More likely it was that dog fighting over a bone thing again.
However Dash’s actions weren’t as easy to explain, at least not in a way that didn’t seem too far-fetched.
Dash Black wanting to marry Tess Patchett? Not likely. Yet, that is what he had implied. Then he had gone out of his way to warn David off.
Put together, those two items were enough to prevent relaxed slumber over the next four nights.
“You are really going to do this? This is crazy” Victoria said as she watched Savannah get dressed. “I honestly thought you were joking when you said it yesterday”
Savannah sighed. “Yeah. That’s why I’m doing it now, to get it over with. And I don’t want to think, because if I do, I’m going to start thinking about why this is a bad idea and all the reasons why I shouldn’t do it.” She turned from the mirror and stared at Victoria. “I need to do this babe, I need this job. It’s not like I haven’t tried to get another. I have. And that isn’t working out so well for me. I don’t even have any hope of getting one. I need the money…. I rejected this offer from Matt, I just hope he will still give me the job when I get there. He doesn’t even know I’m coming “