About Last Night... Read Online Free PDF Page A

think we can drop the formalities since we're both
    in our underwear?"
    At his sarcastic tone, anger drove out any vestiges of fear that lingered, since she didn't appear to be in imminent danger of
    anything other than dying of humiliation. Still, she forced herself to speak in a calm tone to Steve's best man. "Okay. Derek,
    Steve wouldn't need what?"
    He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then frowned at the streak of pink lipstick. Janine squirmed when he looked to
    her. "He said he wouldn't be needing the room—I suppose the guys were going to party all night." His gaze fell to her shoes
    and one corner of his mouth drew back. "I take it he wasn't expecting you."
    She summoned the dredges of her pride and lifted her chin. "It was supposed to be a surprise."
    "Trust me, it was," he said, then retrieved a pair of wrinkled jeans from the arm of a chair.
    Distracted by the fluid motion of his body performing the simple act of getting dressed, she almost lost her own opportunity
    to don her coat in relative privacy. But she quickly recovered, and by the time he'd pulled on the jeans and a gray University of
    Kentucky sweatshirt, she had buttoned the coat up to her chin and knotted the belt twice. With his back to her, he used the palm
    of his hand and pushed his chin first right, then left, to the tune of two loud pops of his neck bones.
    "You really shouldn't do that," she admonished. "It could … be … danger… ous…" She trailed off when he looked up, his
    lips pursed, his expression perturbed. Janine swallowed. "M-maybe I should call Steve on his cell phone."
    He nodded curtly and walked past her into the bathroom without making eye contact. A few seconds later the muffled sound
    of the sink water splashing on floated out from behind the closed door.
    With her heart in her throat, Janine trotted to the nightstand, then followed the phone cord to the handset that lay under the
    bed. Now she knew why the line had been busy, and with shock realized that smoky voice on the other end when she'd called
    from home had been none other than Derek Stillman's. She bit the inside of her cheek. What a fine mess she'd gotten herself
    into. Steve's surprise was ruined, and she'd never live down this scene. She sat on the floor, her finger hovering over the
    buttons. Maybe she should just call a cab and vamoose, after swearing Derek to secrecy. Assuming she could trust the man. He
    seemed pretty surly for someone who was supposed to be a friend of Steve's.
    Her fingers shook as she punched in the number of her sister's boyfriend's place, but no one answered and Greg didn't
    believe in answering machines. She called twice more, allowing the phone to ring several times, to no avail. Next she called
    her and her sister's apartment, but Marie was either in transit, or still at Greg's—probably indulging in something wonderfully
    wicked. When the machine picked up, she left a quick message for Marie to stay put until she called again.
    Janine hung up and glanced over her shoulder at the closed bathroom door, still tingling over the accidental encounter with
    the unsettling stranger. Talk about crawling into the wrong bed—Goldilocks had officially been unseated. To top it off, Derek
    had shrugged off the sexualized situation with a laugh, while she'd been shaken to her spleen, not just by her unbelievable gaff,
    but by her base response to the man's physique.
    To curtail her line of thinking, she punched in Steve's cell-phone number, willing words to her mouth to explain the awkward
    situation in the best possible light. Steve might get a big kick out of the mix-up and return to the hotel right away. She
    brightened, thinking the night had a chance to be salvaged, if they could shuffle the best man to another room, that is. After
    Steve's phone rang three times, he answered over a buzz of background noise. "Hello?"
    "Hi, this is Janine," she said, fighting a twinge of jealousy that Steve was probably out ogling naked women. The