So why did it feel like she’d just walked out on him?
He searched for her picture in his phone, and his stomach sunk when it illuminated. Fuck, she was lush, those butt cheeks perfection itself and round as melons and just as juicy. He almost wanted to fucking lick his phone screen. What in the hell was up with him? This was not Luke Preston!
He’d probably been a good boy for too damned long after this damned murder attempt. He’d been way too good lately. Sober and monogamous and shit. Yeah, that was it. He felt some of his depression lift as he assured himself that as soon as he got home and threw a party or two, he would feel like himself again.
Pretty soon, he’d be asking, “Peyton who?”
And he’d be golden.
Chapter Five
Peyton’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when she saw Luke Alexander on the plane on her way back to Chicago.
In an underwear advertisement, no less! The picture was a tasteful black-and-white and his perfect, familiar body shone more beautifully than ever, his gaze serious and seductive as he looked straight into the camera lens. Peyton’s heart flipped when she got a peek of the bulging male package barely held within the confinements of that underwear, and then she furiously slammed the magazine shut.
“This and that.” “Nothing that important.” The man was a model! What the hell?
She’d known he had a “familiar movie star look” about him and couldn’t believe she hadn’t pressed for more.
Oh, God! To think that she’d opened up to him and shown him a part of Peyton Lane that no one else knew while he’d merely shown her what he’d wanted her to see made her heart wring inside her chest. What a bastard. Was his name really Luke Alexander? He must have found her naïveté so funny, a supposed “woman of the world,” partner in a global investment firm, and yet he’d fed her his lies and she’d eaten them all like a silly, ignorant…
No. There was no point in these negative thoughts. He hadn’t wanted her to know too much about him? That was fine. It didn’t even matter. It was over now and in the past. She had been honest and forthright with him, which was important to her, and the “affair” was now over. The affair.
It had been so good, so beautiful, so tender and erotic at the same time, and well…so unexpected. And yet as much as she tried to shake it out of her head, the mere possibility of this wonderful weekend having been a joke to him and an Oscar-worthy act on his part made her seethe inside like she had never, ever seethed before.
No matter how many times she told herself during the flight that it didn’t matter, suddenly it did. Because Luke was in a fucking magazine, for crying out loud. And what was she supposed to do now that she’d seen it? Throw it away?
But then if she kept it…she didn’t want to be staring at him and remember that she’d had him once. Damn him!
“Hmm, nice,” Deena, her assistant, said when Peyton flung the magazine over her desk as soon as they reached her office the next day.
“Oh! That’s Luke Preston,” said another assistant as she walked over to study the magazine. “He slept with my sister once.”
Peyton’s heart seemed to have stopped beating in her chest. “Preston?”
The woman nodded, coffee mug in hand. “He slept with my sister’s friend, too. They had this huge catfight over him.”
Blankly, Peyton stared at the woman as her mind struggled to comprehend.
“He’s quite the ladies’ man. He’s slept with a lot of girls. Every time I see him he’s got a new one in his arms.”
“You mean he lives here in Chicago?” Oh, she could just die. Of all the places in the world, her one-time fling had to be a famous model from Chicago, no less.
“Peyton!” Deena cried in disbelief. “Of course he lives in Chicago—Luke Preston. Of the Preston and Preston Group? You know, the billionaires.”
“W-what?” She’d been so sold on the idea that he was a lazy and languorous surf boy, she’d never imagined, never even thought about the mega-rich Prestons from Chicago. “You mean he’s from those Prestons? I thought he was a model and a beach bum and that his last name was Alexander!”
Her mind flashed back to the tattoo and the one time she’d asked him about it.
“What does your tattoo mean?”
“I have a tattoo?”
“Come on! Preston. Is that your nickname?”
“Preston? PRESTON? I told the tattoo artist it was Peyton, damn it. Now I’m gonna have to sue their lame asses.”
She’d dropped the topic because she’d assumed it was some sort of nickname and because he’d kissed her and it was only a fling and his pretense to want her name on his beautiful skin had been so sweet and because in the end she figured it didn’t matter what it meant.
Luke had fit so well in the Mayan Riviera, lounging under the sun, tangled between the hotel sheets with her, smiling at her with that sparkle in his eye, her golden angel gone devil in bed…
God. He wasn’t a beach bum. He was a billionaire. From Chicago. “This and that.” “Nothing important.” “Hi, I’m Luke Alexander.” Her ass!
And could someone please tell her what in the world the rebel child of the Preston family, a multimega-gazillionaire, was doing all by himself in a family resort playing with Toad, for heaven’s sake?
“Yeah, the guy models, all right. Merely because he loves the attention and he’s a total rogue and a total playboy with time to spare. But the man doesn’t have to do a whit to live like a king. In fact, he lives in the same building as Gary—on the top three floors.”
The woman nodded toward a man who’d been straining to hear their conversation and who was also an assistant to one of the other partners in the firm. His elbow slipped on the desk and he nearly fell. He straightened immediately with as much dignity as he could muster and nodded.
“I’m sorry,” he said, walking around his desk and heading toward them with short, bouncy steps while he clasped his hands in front of him in an angelic pose. “Excuse me, I was minding my own business, of course, but I couldn’t help but overhear you. Are you talking about my Luke?”
“You’re friends?” Peyton nodded toward the magazine advertisement.
Gary nodded. “He lives in my building. He’s very friendly! One time my dog went up with him on his elevator and the guy was really nice. And so hot I went gayer just sharing the elevator with him. Hey, did you all know he just got shot?”