If she knew Zack-and she did-the room was probably a disaster area already, after his being there only one night, and he was probably tripping over his own shoes, pants, shirts, suitcase, and everything else in an attempt to answer her repeated knocking.
When he finally opened the door, however, she was startled not by his messy living habits, but by how incredible he looked half-naked, still dripping from the shower, with only a modest, white towel clutched around his hips.
Oh, yes, there was a reason she’d fallen in love with this man.
More than one, she supposed, but at the moment it was his incredible physique that stood foremost in her mind.
He blinked and ran his fingers through his wet hair.
“Hey,” he said somewhat distractedly, obviously struggling to make sense of her sudden appearance. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you think I’m doing here?” she replied, her grin widening as she took a step into the room and sidled up to him. She pressed herself against his tall, solid frame, uncaring of his dampness soaking into her clothes. “I came to rock your world, big boy.”
At that, his lips curled and a devilish light brightened his blue eyes. “Well, okay, then. Come on in. Don’t mind the mess,” he said, shifting them both so the door could swing closed.
“I never do,” she replied with a chuckle.
What he’d done to the hotel room was nothing compared to the state of his apartment back in Cleveland. If he didn’t have Magda, his housekeeper, come in a couple times a week to clean up, Grace swore the place would be declared uninhabitable. And she put up with that, didn’t she?
All right, so she tended to pick up his socks and wipe down a few surfaces any time she was over, but otherwise she thought she tolerated his Pig-Pen lifestyle fairly well.
Pulling away slightly, she leaned back against the wall running between the bathroom and the rest of the suite. She raked him from head to toe with a hot gaze, using two manicured nails to tug at the towel he was still holding low on his hips.
“I think I’m overdressed,” she murmured saucily.
His lashes fluttered as he returned the head-to-toe scrutiny, causing her nipples to pucker beneath her bra and a warm longing to gather between her legs.
“I should say so,” he replied in a low, suggestive tone. “You need any help remedying that fact?”
“Oh, I think I can handle it,” she teased.
Slipping away from the wall, she continued to face him as she walked backwards into the main area of the room. Step by slow step, while her fingers worked to free the buttons running down the front of her blouse.
Her heel caught on something and she glanced down to find herself standing in one of the leg holes of a pair of discarded BVDs.
“Nice,” she said, shaking her foot and kicking the briefs aside.
As she lifted her head, something in her peripheral vision caught her attention. A movement, a flash of pink.
Focusing her gaze, she turned her head the rest of the way and zeroed in on a woman sitting in the center of the king-size bed, back against the headboard, naked except for a matching lollipop pink bra and panty set.
Grace blinked. The blond-bleach blond with dark roots, not professionally salon blond in keeping up with her natural hair color the way Grace did-shifted nervously, dragging the sheet up to cover what Grace had already had the misfortune to see.
Turning her attention back to Zack, she speared him with a look that should have shriveled his testicles and had him running like a girl.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me?” she asked, her previously sultry tone replaced with icicles sharp enough to kill.
Zack’s pale brows knit. “Huh?”
Oh, he was good. He had the dumb-jock routine down pat.
She cocked her head to the right, indicating the bimbo still snuggled up in his bed. Zack followed her movement with his eyes, and darned if he didn’t go a few shades paler.
Finding herself suddenly the center of his full attention, the woman climbed to her knees and let the sheet drop. “Hi,” she said with a too-sweet smile. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Zack snapped.
Grace knew he was addressing the woman in his bed, but she was the first to answer. “You know, I was just asking myself the same question.”
Fingers flying, she rebuttoned her blouse, then charged for the door, pushing past Zack before he had a chance to stop her.
“Grace, wait.”
With her hand on the knob, she spat back, “Fuck you. Or better yet, let your bimbo do it.”
“Grace!”
She heard him calling her, heard his footsteps pounding down the hall after her, but she didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down. Knowing the elevator would take too long and give him too much opportunity to catch up to her, she raced for the emergency exit and slammed through, filling the stairwell with the sound of her heels clacking down, down, down, around, down, down, down.
She didn’t cry. She wasn’t quite sure why not, because inside her heart was breaking and a voice was screaming so loudly, her brain felt as though it were bouncing off the walls of her skull.
But over that was a burning, melting, red-hot fury and sense of betrayal that seemed to obliterate everything else.
Zack was lucky she didn’t have a gun or knife or any other type of weapon on her person. If she had, she was very afraid he’d be lying in a pool of his own blood by now.
She’d have shot him in his cold, black heart. Stabbed him in the balls and cut off his dirty, stinking, skirt-chasing dick. Bludgeoned him with his own hockey stick.
Finally reaching the twelfth floor, she pushed through the heavy metal door and hurried down the carpeted hallway. She was out of breath from running, but her pulse was jumping under her skin out of pure anger.
She found Dylan’s room and started to pound.
“Ronnie! Ronnie, open up! It’s Grace, we have to go.”
Even knowing she was disturbing them and that it might take them a couple of minutes to get dressed and get to the door, Grace continued to rap.
As the seconds ticked by, everything seemed to come crashing down around her. Her arm grew heavy, slowing her knocks. Her lungs burned, causing her to inhale and exhale rapidly. Her eyes stung and tears finally began to flow.
By the time the door opened to reveal Ronnie and Dylan, both half-undressed and struggling to shrug back into a decent amount of clothes, Grace was sobbing, gasping for breath.
“We have to go,” she told Ronnie brokenly. “I have to go. I have to leave right now.”
“What in heaven’s name happened?” Concern laced her words and filled her gaze as she stepped into the hall, immediately wrapping her arms around Grace.
Grace sagged against her friend for precious seconds. “He’s a lying, cheating bastard. There’s a woman in his room. In his bed! Naked!”
The more details she tried to give, the higher her voice rose, but instead of falling apart-or falling apart any further-they acted to galvanize her, and fury washed through her once again.
“I have to go,” she said again, pulling away from Ronnie and straightening her spine. “I can’t stay here, I have to go home. If you’re not ready to leave, I’ll go by myself and you can find a way back later. Or I’ll call a cab and you can use my car to get home. I don’t care, I just have to go. I have to go. I have to go. I have to go.”
On some level, she realized she was out of control and on the verge of a breakdown, but all she could think was that she couldn’t stay here-in this city, in this building where Zack had cheated on her, betrayed her, ripped her heart from her chest and stomped all over it.
“Okay, okay, give me a minute,” Ronnie replied, still sliding her hands up and down Grace’s arms.
Letting go, Ronnie turned, and Grace was vaguely aware of her speaking with Dylan in hushed tones. Later, Grace knew she would feel horribly guilty about her behavior and about ruining her best friend’s surprise rendezvous with her boyfriend, but right now the only message her brain was processing was the urgent need to run.