Читать книгу What Love Tastes Like - Zuri Day - Страница 16

A million thoughts raced through Tiffany’s mind as she walked over to the sitting area in the master suite. Where is he? Why did he leave? Is it because I didn’t have sex with him? Was I just a temporary diversion in his high-class life? Tiffany remembered the way he had orally loved her, and refused to believe the sensations she felt were simply physical. The connection was deeper, stronger, than an orgasm. Or was it?

Even though she’d already looked, Tiffany walked around the room again. Aside from the hotel’s room service menu, stationery items, and information catalogs, the tables were empty. So was the closet. Used, fluffy white towels were strewn across the marble bathroom floor. Tiffany imagined they were still where Nick had dropped them once he’d toweled off that gorgeous, hard body. She traced a finger along the marble countertop, which still contained the hotel’s designer soaps, lotions, shampoos, and other toiletries. An unused bathrobe hung from a holder on the bathroom door. What happened? Why did he leave? A familiar feeling of abandonment began creeping into Tiffany’s mind, memories from another tall, strong man whom she’d loved from birth, only to have him leave her, time and again. Tiffany fled the room then, trying to flee the unwanted thoughts of a certain absentee male in the process.

She didn’t get far, only to the dining room table. There, in the center, was a single piece of the hotel’s stationery. In her excitement to be with Nick, Tiffany hadn’t even noticed it as she’d passed through the room earlier, on the way to his master suite. Her spirit began to lighten and she almost laughed with relief. Of course Nick wouldn’t abandon her. He was too classy, too much a gentleman; he’d been her knight in shining armor and the only friend she had in Italy. The note would tell her where he was, and how soon he’d return. She bounced over to the table and picked up the piece of paper:

Tiffany: Business emergency, flying back to LA.

Keep suite as long as needed. Take care. Nick.

Tiffany read the note once, twice, and a third time, trying to find a deeper, more personal message between the words of the brief, impersonal one she held in her hand. There was no term of endearment, not even a “dear Tiffany” at the beginning. “Brown sugar,” as he’d called her much of last evening, was nowhere on the paper. There was no mention of the magical hours they’d shared, no reference to the intimacy that had rocked Tiffany’s world off its axis. No thank you for the dinner company or the extra dessert provided by her body in the early morning hours. No, just a clinical explanation of his whereabouts, a charitable gift of a temporary roof over her head, and departing verbiage she might use with a customer, a stranger, or the cashier in the express checkout line: take care. Take care? It was impersonal and dismissive, like cold water poured unexpectedly on a warm dream.

Tiffany slowly crumpled the paper as she walked over to the window and looked out on a picture-perfect day. The sun was shining outside, but the warmth inside had gone. Once again she felt like the frightened young woman who’d slouched on her luggage in the airport, robbed of money and of spirit. She felt rejected, abandoned, easily tossed aside for something more important: business. The feelings of discomfort around Nick that had flittered in between the love and laughter came back full force. How she’d felt when he’d taken control of the situation without conferring with her at all, his domineering and know-it-all attitude with the airport officials and officers (even though he needed to dominate the situation and did seem to know it all), and this, the way he’d been able to leave her so easily without so much as a hug and good-bye. In an instant, clarity dawned, why these acts had made her so uncomfortable, and why they felt so familiar. It was because these actions reminded her of another man and another time, someone Tiffany detested and hadn’t seen in almost five years…her father.