Down Under With Dad’s Best Friend by Flora Ferrari

Chapter Nine

Sean

I drop Candace off at her hotel with deep regret, telling the taxi to carry on to the more upscale hotel where I’m staying. Should I have left her there? It doesn’t feel right. A woman like that, an angel on earth, shouldn’t be slumming it. She should be in a suite, the penthouse, the most luxurious place available.

I think about it the whole way to my hotel. I think about it even as I’m getting out and paying the driver – I could easily stop, take it all back, tell him to turn around, and take me to where we dropped her off. I could run inside and find her, and tell her not to stay there tonight. To stay with me.

I think about it while I walk into my hotel and ride the elevator up to my suite, and close the door behind me. I think about how I could take her in my arms and whisk her away, bring her here where we could be alone.

I think about kissing her up against the door, kissing her so deep she no longer has any doubts about who she belongs to. In my head, I pull her body close against mine, feel the curve of her hips under my hands, reach for the zipper of that vintage dress. I let it pool on the floor, stripping her down, running my hands over her naked body. I want to devour her, to lift her up and throw her on the bed and take her, until she’s screaming my name and begging me for more.

Goddamnit.

I slump on the side of the bed, sitting with my head in my hands. Why am I feeling like this? Women don’t have this effect on me. They try to throw themselves at me all the time, as soon as they get a whiff of my expensive cologne or a look at my finely-tailored suits. None of them have me fantasizing so fast and so out of control that I can feel myself getting hard without her even being here.

None of them have me wishing I had the chance to bring them back with me.

And the worst part is that it’s the worst possible woman to make me feel like this. My best friend’s daughter. I should feel like a dog for having these thoughts about her, but I can’t even do that. I want her too much. I can’t feel guilty about it. She’s perfect.

I groan, laying back on the bed and covering my eyes. This is such a mess. Both of us are only here for a week, and then we’re going back to completely different places. Even if I do have a link to her – in the form of her father – it’s not something I could ever use to get close to her. He wouldn’t allow it. And by the time I do get home, I’ve got no way of knowing whether I’d ever get to see her again after this.

Even worse – what if I do see her again, but it’s in five or ten years when she’s already taken up with another man, married him, had his children?

The thought alone makes my insides boil with rage. No. I can’t let that happen. She can’t be with another man. She needs to belong to me. I will make her mine, even if it kills me. It’s the only way I can stay sane, with these thoughts of her flying around in my head.

I’ve lived long enough to know that when I want something, that feeling doesn’t go away. It sits and it festers. And I can’t bear to let that happen this time. I need her to be mine, and I need her now.

But what am I supposed to do? Because I’m an idiot, and I didn’t think this far ahead. I gave her my number, instead of taking hers. I don’t know what hotel room number she’s staying in. I don’t even properly know which hotel is hers, because she got out in a square that is surrounded by them and I didn’t see her go inside. All I know is they were all cheap.

Hope isn’t lost. I do at least know where she got out of the car. I can start there. I could call every single hotel in Melbourne if I needed to, and there are only a few to go through. I can ask them for her room number, or at least to connect me. I don’t know what I’ll say yet, but I have to say something.

And if they won’t give me her details, or if she’s out every time I call because she’s busy exploring the city, then there are other ways. I could ask her Dad for her phone number. Come up with some kind of excuse. Maybe mention that I saw her, even, and that I think I should have offered to take her out to dinner so she’s not alone here.

No, I don’t know. The way I feel about her, it feels like Bill would hear it in my voice. The desperation. The need for her. He’s known me for a long time, and even if he’s never known me to fall for a woman, he knows what I’m like when I desire something.

It’s just that I’ve never desired anything, or anyone, as much as her before.

And so I sit in indecision, for maybe the first time in my life unsure about what I should do.

Should I call every hotel until I find her?

Should I go to her father for help?

Should I drop everything and wander the streets of Melbourne, or stand outside those hotels, until by some chance I see her?

Or should I stop indulging in these fantasies, go about my week, and wait for her to call me – counting on fate, that by now surely binds us together to make it happen?

All I know is, I’ve got a long and maybe sleepless night ahead of me, and I don’t know how to make it better without seeing her face again.