Love In London: A Steamy Standalone Instalove Romance Read online

  Now I know I’m in the clear. For all his posturing, his arrogance, he really doesn’t have a clue.

  “It’s incredibly crass to drop a ‘don’t you know who I am.’ Your father should have taught you better manners somewhere along the way.” I roll my shoulders slightly, getting ready for the inevitable. “And hiding behind your Daddy isn’t the manliest way to impress a lady, either. Why don’t you stand on your own two feet, boy?”

  He gets up then, pushing the chair back with a scrape along the floor. The waiter has scurried off into the kitchen, clearly aware that a line is about to be crossed. “I can handle myself just fine,” he says. Then he does something that absolutely makes me see red, pushing me over the edge. He grabs hold of Gabby’s wrist off the table and yanks her up to stand beside him as if he’s about to walk out of the restaurant with her.

  He’s not going to get a chance.

  Fueled on even more by the sound of her terrified gasp, I take the one stride necessary to get into range and then launch my fist full into his face. He doesn’t even have time to react. He just sags backward, hitting the wall and almost bouncing off it, letting go of Gabby as his hand goes to his face. A second hit on the other side, and he drops to the floor, rattling the chair and almost tipping it over.

  “You can’t do that!” one of his friends exclaims. The others are getting to their feet in a rush, thinking they might have a chance at taking me if they all come at me at once.

  “My father’s going to hear about this!” the boy on the floor shouts. “I warned you!”

  “Lord Almsely?” I snort. “You’re going to tell Lord Almsely that you had a run-in with Oswald Patterson, are you?”

  The reaction ripples through them all one by one. They pale, going still. The boys that are still around their table look at one another doubtfully, unspoken words hanging on their lips, questions in their eyes. The one on the floor goes suspiciously quiet, too.

  They glance back at me as one, as if suddenly thinking that they should verify my claim. Could I be Oswald Patterson? They must be thinking. They must be comparing photographs they’ve seen in the paper, trying to mentally gauge whether I really am who I say I am.

  And they know that I’m telling the truth because their eyes drop to the table and there’s a sudden, definitive amount of foot-shuffling.

  “Sounds like you boys had better leave,” Marco says from behind me, where the door into the kitchen sits. I don’t turn to look at him. I stand my ground, stance strong, ready to hit another one of them if I have to – but I know I won’t have to.

  None of them have the guts to take me on, now that they know who I am.

  “By the way,” I say, calmly, as the little snot who started this all picks himself up off the floor. His friends are already shuffling towards the door, trying to look as though it was their idea to go in the first place. “For future reference, that’s how you drop a ‘don’t you know who I am’ without sounding like a little arsehole.”

  It’s a little immature of me, but I do enjoy how his face colors and he sidles past me silently, clearly wanting nothing more than to try to hit me back but too afraid to do it.

  Only when they’ve gone do I let the tension leave my body. I step toward Gabby offering her a hand. “I’m terribly sorry about that,” I tell her. “I promise you, not all English boys are like that. Some of us have actually been raised well.”

  She shudders slightly when she touches my hand, it’s like everything in her calms, her posture relaxing. “I can see that,” she says breathlessly, though she’s trying very hard to sound as settled as possible.

  Chapter Nine

  Gabby

  I can’t breathe.

  That was so impressive, I don’t even know where to start.

  I was so afraid – until Oz showed up. And then I just felt so safe, even knowing he was in the room. While there was still a chance that something might happen, I was tense – but not even so much for myself. I just knew, instinctively, that he wasn’t going to let anything happen to me. That he would rather see himself get hurt than me. I knew that whatever happened I was going to be alright.

  It was him I was worried about.

  But those boys – as soon as they heard his name… they just ran.

  Maybe I need to do a little research. Oz has always just been Oz to us – my dad’s best friend who lives in London. But by the way, those boys reacted, I know that his name must mean so much more here.

  I was already impressed enough by him. And now there’s more?

  “Are you alright?” he asks, quiet and gentle. He’s already spoken with Marco while the waiter picked up the fallen chair from the scuffle. The other couples who were seated at the tables around us have murmured their approval of his actions, though I didn’t exactly see any of them rushing to my aid when it was clear I was being harassed. Still. I suppose they didn’t think it was their place.

  “I’m fine,” I say, but his touch on my shoulder gives me a different idea. I shudder a little. “I just want to get out of here.” I don’t want him to think I’m too recovered. If he does, he might end up not touching me anymore. I don’t want this contact to stop. It’s like the place where his skin touches mine is on fire.

  He responds immediately to my shudder, drawing me in closer and slipping his arm around my shoulders. “I’ll walk you back to the hotel,” he says. He lifts a hand in thanks once again to the waiter – now much more composed once again – and receives a nod in return. The man even smiles gently at me, as if to say that we’ve survived the ordeal together and can now relax.

  The cold of the night air makes me gasp as we step outside. I hadn’t really noticed how long we’d been inside for, evening has come and gone, and it’s fully dark out with a huge drop in temperature compared to earlier. I start to wish I had packed a thicker coat, drawing my thin jacket around myself and shivering.

  “You’re cold?” Oz asks, glancing at me tucked under his arm.

  I nod. “A brisk walk should help,” I say.

  He says nothing but draws his arm away from me. I almost want to complain, but it’s not like I can say out loud that I only want his arm around me more than anything else.

  But then my despair turns to relief – and something more, too. Because he’s not just drawing away from me. He’s taking off his coat.

  Taking it off and putting it around my shoulders.

  “Oh, gosh – you don’t have to…” I start, even though it feels amazing to have the garment fueled by the heat of his body draped around me. My hands go up to the lapels to hold it in place, keeping it close over my shoulders. Instantly, any kind of shiver I might have been feeling is gone. Not just because I have the coat to keep me warm now, but also because a flush is heating me up from the inside.

  It’s almost like having his body wrapped around mine, in a way. And that thought has me turning pink from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.

  “I don’t want you to get cold,” he says, with a certain stoic gruffness, like he won’t hear any argument after this. “I’m used to the temperature here.”

  Walking down the street with him now, with his coat around my shoulders, I can’t help but smile to myself. This is everything I wanted. Too bad it required a run-in with some less than savory characters to make it happen – but I’m just enjoying the moment now. I don’t know if it’s going to get any better than this. It would definitely be hard for it to improve, given that I don’t think Oz is ever going to be interested in what I really want.

  He’s just too much of a gentleman to let anything happen to me – and too good a guy to let me walk down the street cold.

  When we reach the hotel, that same disappointment starts to settle in me again, however. The thought that the night is over. Not just the night, but probably this whole experience. When am I ever going to see him after this?

  It was just by chance that we got to see each other here. Well, a little chance, a little design – after all, if I hadn’t chosen t
o come here myself, then it never could have happened. But I didn’t expect it. That means this is just a bonus. I’ve got to try to keep that in mind. Anything that I’ve shared with Oz today has been a bonus – and so long as I look at it like that, maybe it won’t be so hard to let go.

  When we head inside the warmth of the lobby, I reluctantly slip Oz’s coat from my shoulders and hold it out to him. He takes it without a word and folds it over his arm, but when I look up at him expecting him to say goodbye, he just gestures towards the elevator and waits.

  I turn and press the button, waiting for it to come. “You don’t have to wait with me,” I say, even though I do want him to wait with me but I don’t want him to feel obliged.

  “I’m walking you to your door,” he says. “After what happened earlier, what kind of man would I be to just abandon you in the lobby?”

  A smile curves my lips in spite of myself. “I wouldn’t think any less of you.”

  “Well, you should,” Oz says, scowling. The elevator arrives and we step inside the small space. “What kind of boys are you running around with back at home because they obviously don’t treat you right.”

  That quiets me down. I should be enjoying this ride, the closeness of our bodies, how I could just take half a step and fall right into him. But instead, I’m playing over and over again what he said in my mind.

  Boys. Not men. Boys. He called the group back at the restaurant boys, too, though I could have passed that off as him deliberately insulting them or referring to their mental age. But he didn’t mean that, did he? He meant to call them boys because that’s what they are to him. Practically children.

  And I’m even younger than they are.

  It brings me crashing back to earth. He’s in his late thirties, and I’m only eighteen. He must look at me and just see a kid. It’s not even surprising, given the fact that he’s seen me since I was a young kid. I guess he can’t see how much I’ve grown, or how I’m older now.

  We exit the elevator and walk the short distance down the hall to my door, pausing a little awkwardly in front of it. I hold up my door keycard between us as if it’s a talisman. “This is me,” I say, trying to say it lightly and instead only ending up sounding nervous.

  “Have a good night, Gabby,” Oz says. “I hope your experience of London so far doesn’t put you off too badly.”

  “Not at all,” I say, allowing myself to smile at least at this. “I had a really great time today. I mean it. Even with what happened.”

  Oz smiles back. He hesitates as if searching for the right etiquette, one arm seeming to want to reach out towards me. At last, it lands on the side of my shoulder, sliding down my arm a little with a reassuring squeeze.

  “Enjoy your tours,” he says. “I should let you get some rest. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight,” I reply, almost whispering it, finding my voice failing me at the last moment as I watch him walk back to the elevators.

  Chapter Ten

  Oz

  It doesn’t take me long to get back home, but even so, I find myself looking up in surprise and wondering how I got here. I don’t remember a single step after leaving that hotel lobby. I must have moved completely by muscle memory – which is a little terrifying, given the distance I crossed in the dark.

  I sink down on the couch in my living room, letting my keys clunk onto the table without paying any attention to where I’m leaving them, and drop my head into my hands.

  What a day.

  I don’t know that I ever spared much more than a passing thought to Gabby before today. Gabriella. She was just Dean’s daughter. A figure in his life, but not so much in mine. A part of the background.

  And how can it be that now, she’s the only thing I can even see, despite the fact she’s no longer in front of me?

  I replay the day’s events in my mind’s eye. That first moment seeing her, not knowing it was her. Her beautiful figure in that tight white dress, her hips swaying side to side as she walked, the way it made me want to grab hold of her there and then. And later, when we met in the lobby, I saw that it was her. The initial surprise, the way it was followed by a burst of lust so strong it was like nothing I’ve ever felt before.

  I want her. I’ve wanted her all day. The things I would do to her…

  In my mind’s eye, I can see myself going back there. Marching right up to her hotel room door and knocking. In my imagination, she’s still just as she was, as though only a moment has passed. Maybe even waiting on the other side, knowing that I would come back for her, that I couldn’t possibly walk away.

  And why had I walked away?

  I can see myself pushing her into the room and slamming the door closed behind us, shutting out the rest of the world. Tearing that white dress right off her body, and unveiling it in its full glory. I can only imagine what she looks like based on what I’ve seen on the outside, but damn if I don’t already know she would be the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen.

  In my fantasy, she’s not wearing any underwear, even though I know she must be. I just want to rip that fabric out of the way and have her ready for me, ready to claim. I would take her there and then, not even bothering to make our way over to the bed, unable to move a single step for the delay it would cause…

  Damnit. I shake my head and get up, trying to rouse myself from this intense craziness that seems to have come over me. Why am I feeling like this? I don’t have these types of fantasies – at least I haven’t for a long time, and definitely not this intense. It’s like I can almost taste her with my eyes closed. Or at least, dream of how she would taste. I don’t do this.

  Women don’t turn my head like this. I’ve long since given up on finding the right person who would be a good match for me. I’m not interested in someone who just wants money or power from being by my side. Almost all of the women who ever try to get close to me are so transparent that it makes me sick. I know what they want, and it’s not my sparkling wit or the chance to curl up next to me in sweatpants on a rainy afternoon. They want the glamor, the lifestyle, the things I can provide for them.

  Maybe that’s why I didn’t even bat an eyelash at taking Gabby to an expensive restaurant and ordering everything. Because she didn’t ask. Didn’t expect it. She just thought it would be dinner with her dad’s best friend, a simple meal to welcome her to my country.

  And that’s where the problem lies.

  Of course, she wouldn’t be clingy and annoying like all the others – she doesn’t see me that way. I’m sure she doesn’t. She’s too innocent, too young. Probably just thinks I’m too old for her, more to the point.

  I could change that. Just one night with her, and I could make her see me the way I am. The right man for her. That’s all it would take, and I know she would fall into my arms the way she’s meant to.

  But that fierce determination I feel only has me coming back to that same question: why is it that Gabby makes me feel this way? Makes me want to claim her so badly?

  She must be special. The only woman like her in the whole world. Maybe that’s why she’s the only one for me, my perfect match. Fate has brought us together so we would be in the right place at the right time, and now all we have to do is take that leap into the dance that will bring us together for good.

  Except I just said goodnight to her and walked away instead of making a move, and I didn’t even get her phone number.

  Damnit. How can I be so smooth when it comes to matters of business, and yet forget a thing like that?

  I find myself pacing up and down across the floor, thinking. I could easily contact her. It’s not like I don’t know her father, after all. That’s all it would take – I could just text him or call him and ask what her number is. I could even come up with some excuse as to why I need it – pretend that I was supposed to give her some materials on my alma mater or so on. But it feels wrong. Not only would I be betraying his trust by lying to him, but it’s also… I don’t know. Juvenile. Calling up a girl’s father to ask for her
number. Like I’m still a kid, myself.

  Most of all, I don’t want to remind her that the only way we know each other is through her dad. No, she needs to see me as myself, a separate entity. Only then will she be open to anything I might suggest.

  And I will suggest it. Good god, will I. I just need to find her first.

  I know where she’s going to be this week, the colleges. It probably won’t be hard to track her down. I don’t know what time her tour starts tomorrow or where the meeting point is, but it shouldn’t be difficult to find her. And if it is, I know a person or two on the staff still who might be able to get me the details.

  I’m not letting her get away.

  Tomorrow, I find Gabby – and I make her mine. And this time, nothing is going to stop me.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gabby

  I take a deep breath, staring at the phone in front of me. Am I really going to do this?

  After a hot, long, and restless night, in which I kept waking from dreams of Oz, I woke early knowing exactly what I needed to do. After making sure I was ready for my tour with plenty of time to spare, I sat down on the end of the bed and started searching on my cell phone. Searching for Oz’s name.

  I quickly found his company page, and although there were no direct contact details, I did manage to find his company’s reception number. I called into the office and asked to speak with him, hoping he would be at his desk, but he wasn’t. They said he’d taken the day off, which made me nervous.

  Firstly, because I had no other way to contact him than this. Or ask my dad for his number, which seemed like a completely cringe worthy way to go about it. The last thing I want is for my dad to catch on that I have the hots for him – or for Oz to be reminded that I’m just his best friend’s daughter.