Kiss And Makeup

Chloe watched the flight attendant sashay down the aisle and disappear behind the first-class curtain before she swiveled to face her last-namesake.

“This is your fault, you know.”

He smiled apologetically. “I did set my weather machine to blizzard before I left Seattle.”

“You’re the one who rejected business class and deigned to sit with the common folk. No one would have assumed we were married if you and your Gucci suit had just stayed where you belong in the land of complimentary champagne and leg room.”

“Hey, statistically, the seats in the back of the plane are safer than the first seven rows. And how did you know this suit is Gucci?”

Chloe ignored him and his designer suit, unaware that she was nibbling at her right thumbnail.

Her mother would not be pleased when she found out Chloe wouldn’t be arriving until the day of the wedding. It was customary for the bride’s family to present a united front at the rehearsal dinner. Especially if a certain daughter’s absence would be duly noted and gossiped about.

She took a deep breath. Ben’s fortune cookies were right. Dwelling on the disaster wouldn’t change anything. Accepting that fact didn’t change her mood, though. “So your last name’s Masterson, huh?”

He nodded.

Crossing her arms, Chloe thunked her head against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Fucking Neil Diamond,” she said.

* * *

ASITTURNEDOUT, issuing another voucher did not “just take a second”. The conspiracy theorist in her was convinced Boobzilla had purposefully slowed the process to make sure Ben was miles away by the time Chloe entered the terminal. Not, Chloe was embarrassed to admit, that she hadn’t looked for him at the baggage claim when she finally made it there twenty minutes later, voucher in hand.

After grabbing her suitcase, she’d braved the icy roads in a crowded shuttle and was currently occupying the coveted “next in line” position in one of seven queues in the lobby of the Value Inn. Being this close to a shower and a bed had gone a long way toward taming her impatience. At least until the family of six ahead of her was told there was no room at the inn.

Chloe did a quick mental tally. Judging by the number of weary travelers still clogging the reception area, there were going to be a lot more disappointed people heading out into the snow tonight in search of shelter.

Chloe’s grip tightened on the strap of her purse.

Please don’t make me one of them.

When the balding desk clerk smiled at her, she stepped up to the counter.

“Welcome to the Value Inn. How can I help you tonight?” His voice was shockingly pleasant for a man dealing with a bunch of crabby, stranded nomads.

“Hi. Do you have a room for me?” They had to have a room left. She wasn’t picky. She’d even settle for access to a sink and a cot in the hallway.

“Let me check what I’ve got. What’s your name?”

“Chloe Masterson.”

The clickety-clack sound of his typing stretched her nerves taut, reminding her of a countdown clock on a bomb. “Here we go. And that’s for one night, correct?”

“Yes.” The word came out like a sigh, heavy on the s, and Chloe’s shoulders dropped to their normal position. She hadn’t realized how tense she’d been.

“Okay, we’ve got you in room 224. Do you want a swipe key?”

Chloe raised her eyebrows. “I’ll probably need one to get in the room.”

Her sarcasm was lost on him. Nonplussed, he ran a plastic key through the card reader and handed it over with a smile. “Your room is on the second floor. Turn right when you exit the elevator.”

Chloe paused in the act of unzipping her purse. “You don’t need my credit card? Or my voucher?” She pulled the crumpled slip of paper from her coat pocket and held it out to him. “Because I went through a lot to get this.”

“That won’t be necessary. Your bill will be issued when you check out in the morning.”

Unbelievable. “Oh, okay.” Cursing Boobzilla’s name, she shoved it back in her pocket. “Great. Thanks, then.”

“Enjoy your stay.”

She’d no sooner stepped away from the counter when the inevitable happened.

“Excuse me, folks,” the clerk announced to the crowd. “I’m afraid we are all out of rooms for tonight.”

Finally, something had gone right for her today. She hurried away from the outraged mob and into the elevator. The door slid closed behind her, and she was in such a good mood that she didn’t even mind that the Muzak version of “Song Sung Blue” was playing during the short trip.

The room was as easy to find as Mr. Sunshine had made it sound, and she shoved the card in the door, ready for a shower and a bed, in that order.

Instead, she opened the door to find a hot guy pulling a white T-shirt over the most spectacularly muscled back Chloe had had the privilege to see this side of a movie screen.

Oh, yum.

The forgotten door banged shut behind her.

He turned and she caught a glimpse of six-pack abs before the white cotton swallowed them up. Then she raised her eyes to his face.

Her suitcase slipped from her fingers and landed with a muted thud on the carpet. They stared at each other for an infinite moment—both the longest and shortest seconds of her life.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.

A full-fledged grin spread across Ben’s face. “Honey, you’re home!”

* * *

“I SHOULDHAVEKNOWN! The second that clerk didn’t want my credit card or the stupid voucher I should have known.” She stomped into the room like she owned the place, abandoning her suitcase where it had fallen, and then her purse and coat beside it. “Why does today suck so much?” she asked before flopping onto his bed, her feet still flat on the floor as she stared up at the ceiling.

Ben was pretty sure she wasn’t talking to him. Which was fine. He was content just to look at her. To be honest, he’d hung around the baggage claim area for ten minutes after he’d grabbed his luggage, just in case she showed.

Ben had to admit, the pinup-girl-with-an-edge thing Chloe had going on—like some twenty-first-century Bettie Page—was working for him in a big way. Goth-rockers were not usually his type. As a general rule, he dated women who were soft and positive, not really the adjectives that came to mind when he stared at the pissed-off pixie glowering up at him.

“Your airplane girlfriend kept me in voucher limbo for so long that my suitcase was the lone bag circling the conveyer belt by the time I got to baggage claim. Then I almost missed the shuttle, and now this? There’s not even a comforter on this bed.”

“Oh. I took it off. Have you seen what happens when they shine a black light on hotel quilts?”

“That is gross and disturbing. But it’s still weird you got rid of it.”

What was he going to do with her?

He’d only struck up a conversation with Chloe on the plane to pass some time. And then she’d hit him with those liquid-lined, green-and-gold eyes and a bad attitude and he’d been all in. Kinda made him wish he didn’t have so much work to get done tonight.

But if his meeting in Buffalo went the right way, he was going to be the new account director at Carson and McLeod. And a promotion meant a raise, and a raise meant the cabin on the lake would be his.

Still, he couldn’t just throw her out. She wasn’t plastic pretty, like the cookie-cutter blonde flight attendant she’d just alluded to. Chloe was sharp and smart-mouthed and real. She gave as good as she got, and he liked that about her. He also liked that, sprawled across his bed sheets in something as innocuous as a black T-shirt and jeans, she somehow managed to look provocative as hell. His body hummed with testosterone-fueled appreciation.

Jesus, Masterson. Get a grip!

You’d think he hadn’t been laid in years, when it had actually only been—a depressing calculation revealed that it had been almost a year since his rebound fling after he and Melanie had imploded. He’d been so focused on work that he hadn’t noticed how long it had been. Which was pathetic on many levels.

“What the hell am I going to do?” Chloe fumed. “They don’t have any other rooms.”

“You can stay here.” The words were out before his brain had registered the consequences, but he didn’t regret them. It wasn’t even the testosterone talking. By all accounts, Chloe had had a rough day. She deserved a win. For once, work could wait.

Those amazing green eyes widened in surprise as she bolted upright on the bed. “What?”

“I mean, you’re already here. I’m sure all of the airport hotels are in the same boat, so there’s no sense heading back out into the snow. Besides, we’re married, right?”

Her death glare was adorable. And just a front. She was considering it. She had a horrible poker face.

Chloe managed to hold out for seventeen seconds before she exhaled contemptuously. “If you snore, I will smother you in your sleep. Just so you’re warned.”

Ben did his best to tamp down the wattage of his smile. It was cute that she still thought she was keeping up her tough-girl facade.

“Excellent choice, Masterson.” He grabbed his wallet from inside his suitcase. “You settle in here, and I’ll go see if I can get us a cot and some food.” Ben headed for the door. “If I’m not back by midnight, check the ice machine for my corpse.”

Chloe might be having a really bad day, but his was turning out pretty well.

2

BENMAYHAVEneutralized the no-shelter problem for her, but he couldn’t help her with the Dragon Queen—her mother. She was going to have to slay that beast herself.

Chloe cast a covert glance at her purse, which was sitting on the floor where she’d abandoned it, about four feet away. Just do it, she lectured herself. Woman up and stop putting off the inevitable.

She heaved herself off the bed to retrieve her purse, grabbing her coat off the floor, as well. After she’d wasted a couple more seconds arranging her coat on the back of the desk chair and applying some ChapStick, there were no more stalling tactics left in her arsenal. With a resigned breath, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed the number she’d been dreading calling since the moment she’d realized she’d be spending the night in Chicago.

“Hello.” The frigidity of the word let Chloe know that caller ID had already announced her identity.

She exhaled. “Hey, Mom.”

“‘Hey, Mom’? You’re calling me during the rehearsal dinner where everyone is staring at the gaping hole where the bride’s sister is supposed to sit and all you have to say is ‘Hey, Mom’?” Fiona Masterson’s voice was eerily calm. Which meant her mother was furious. “Everyone is wondering where you are.”

She had no doubt that was true. Her sister’s big day might be the main event, but more than a few of the attendees were waiting with gossipy glee to see the sideshow—Chloe’s return.

“My flight got canceled. There’s a really bad storm here in Chicago. I’m really sorry.” Chloe paced the short length of the hotel room.

“This is why we wanted to buy you the first class ticket that would have gotten you here days ago, if you’ll recall. To avoid just such a situation. You know winter weather is completely unpredictable. Never mind the fact that you’ve missed your sister’s stagette, her bridal shower, her lingerie party, the family brunch, the luncheon for out-of-town guests, the—”

“I told you I couldn’t get that much time off work. I’m really sorry I missed...all those things, but it’s not as if I’m a bridesmaid or anything.” Thank God.

Some people might have felt slighted by the oversight, but Chloe had been all kinds of relieved. Standing up at the altar in front of all those people... Just the thought of it was enough to give her PTSD. “And I’ll be there for the wedding. I promise. Even if I have to hitchhike, I’ll be there.”

Her mother sighed, and Chloe hoped she’d sounded much less melodramatic when Ben had called her out for the same thing on the plane earlier.

“So help me, Chloe Marie, if you do not arrive in time for your sister’s wedding...”

“Mom, I gotta go. I’ll be there tomorrow around ten.”

Chloe disconnected the call and sat heavily on the side of the bed.

What was it about talking to her mother that made her feel like she was sixteen years old again? She’d moved across the country to escape the phenomenon. Yet all it took was a phone call to bring back all the feelings of being less than.

The tears caught her by surprise. They were followed closely by sobs that made her shoulders lurch. The more she cursed and fought the show of weakness, the more torrentially it manifested itself. After a while, she just gave in.

The sound of the door opening couldn’t have startled her more if it had been a gunshot.

Shit. She wiped desperately at her puffy, tear-swollen face, trying to erase the evidence of her breakdown. The man had the worst timing of anyone she’d ever met.

“Chloe? You should have seen the lineup for the restaurant. It’s a madhouse down there, so I had to improvise. Also, I added my name to the cot waiting list. Which is hilarious because— Hey, what’s wrong?”

“I’m fine,” she lied, willing him to turn around and give her a minute so she could pull it together.

He came closer. Chloe kept her eyes down and her body still, but he wasn’t deterred by her attempts to ignore him. She hiccupped as he set an ice bucket on the nightstand and then sat on the bed beside her.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She shot him a watery smile, with every intention of leaving it at that. But when she saw the genuine concern on his face, felt the warmth of the reassuring hand he’d placed on her back, she spilled her guts.

“It’s just, today has sucked,” she said with a sniffle. “I’m talking monumental amounts of suckage, and I’m tired, and moody, and people have really been getting on my nerves. All I want is to go home, but I’m stuck sharing a hotel room with a complete stranger who must think I’m mentally unbalanced. And you’ve been really nice to me anyway. And now I’m crying again. I hate crying,” she finished on a shaky sob.

Ben reached past her to the nightstand and snagged a tissue, handing it to her.

“You see? You barely know me, you have every reason to believe I’m deranged, and still you have the decency to hand me a Kleenex.”

“It’s really not that big a deal.”

“Yes, it is, Ben. You’re nice. And you’re tall. You’re very tall.” She wiped her nose with the tissue. “How tall are you, anyway?”

“Six-three.”

“That is very tall.” Chloe shook her head, looking down at her hands. She picked resolutely at the flaking black nail polish on her right thumbnail. She must have been chewing on it—she did that when she was stressed.

She expected him to bail then, distance himself from his sobbing lunatic of a roommate with some teasing remark about how tall guys are known for their big wangs or something equally ridiculous. She’d laugh, and he’d laugh, and they’d get back to the superficial banter that befitted two strangers stuck in a hotel room together.

But he didn’t.

He just sat beside her, respecting the silence. And her thoughts slipped out. “Honestly, Ben. How is it possible for one person to mess up her life so monumentally?”

“Hey, I’m sure it’s not as bad as it seems right now.” He rubbed her back, his big hand hot against her T-shirt. “You’ll figure it out. You’ll fix it.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes with a vengeance. They burned like acid. “No. I won’t. And do you know why?”

Ben shook his head.

“Me, neither! I mean, do you see this? Do you see my hair?” She grabbed a handful and held it in his direction.

“Yeah...”

“I did this for them!” she exclaimed, dropping the strands back into place. “I colored it boring old brown so they wouldn’t be embarrassed by me, but it didn’t work! I’m not even at the wedding yet, and I’ve already disappointed them. Nothing I try ever works, Ben. I don’t know what to do.” She’d never said that to anyone before and admitting the truth hurt so badly she thought her ribs might crack.

Chloe dropped her face into her hands. Ben’s arms came around her, pulling her close, tucking her cheek to his chest. She gave in and greedily took what he was offering. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she leaned into him and let herself cry.

She wasn’t sure if it was minutes or hours, but he held her until she had no more tears.

“You know what, Chloe?” His voice was soft and deep, breaking the silence she’d been measuring with the rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek. “Maybe there’s nothing to do. I mean, I realize I just met you, but you seem okay to me.”

That tiny reassurance allowed Chloe to muster enough gumption to reach up and wipe the wet tracks from her face. She couldn’t quite bring herself to lift her head off his shoulder, though.

“And they’ll see it. One day, they’ll see it. You just gotta give them some time.”

Her lip trembled, and she bit it, fighting the sadness. “They’ve had twenty-six years, Ben.”

She felt him exhale. “It’s a really hard thing, you know, not taking the people we love for granted.” She looked up at him then and he smiled, a sad-but-reassuring little half smile that made her believe there was a chance that the despair she felt in that moment might not be insurmountable.

Chloe pulled away with a final sniff. She was trying desperately to hold onto that moment of comfort even as the embarrassment of her epic cry-fest in front of a virtual stranger began seeping in at the edges.

She exhaled shakily. “Sorry I got mascara and snot on your fancy shirt.”

“It’s just a T-shirt,” he averred as he pulled the black-smeared wet patch away from his chest. He even managed not to look horrified.

“Yeah, but I bet it cost, like, fifty bucks.”

“Seventy-five,” he corrected. “But I’ll accept it as punishment for being douchebaggy enough to have spent that much money on a plain white T-shirt in the first place.”

Chloe’s chuckle was waterlogged.

“C’mere,” he said, tucking his thumb in the hem of his shirt. She leaned ever so slightly forward and let him rub the cotton-covered pad of his thumb under her right eye, then her left. She’d be surprised if she had any makeup on at all at this point. Some warrior, she thought, choking in battle and crying off her armor.

“There,” he said, showing her the black smudges on the fabric. “All cleaned up.”

She frowned, letting him know she wasn’t buying his bullshit.

“Okay, you should probably go wash your face before we have dinner,” he admitted. “Unless the raccoon look is a thing now.”

Grateful for the reprieve, Chloe headed for the bathroom, pulling her suitcase into the tiny room with her. She groaned when she caught sight of herself in the mirror.

Apparently in addition to being an all-around good guy and world-class hugger, Ben Masterson was also the King of Understatement. She looked like a comic-book villain whose face was melting off. Chloe shut the door and set her suitcase on the toilet, rifling through it for her toiletries case.

A couple of swipes of a makeup remover pad later, her cheeks were clear of black streaks, and her eyes were bare, if a little puffier than they had been this morning. She’d have liked to take all her makeup off and start again, but snotting all over Ben had been all the weakness she could handle. No way was she going to be bare-faced in front of him. She didn’t even start the makeup videos on her YouTube channel that way.

“Hurry up in there, Chloe. I’m starving!”

“Almost done! Don’t eat everything!” She ran a brush through her hair, topped up her deodorant, and rooted around in her suitcase in search of her pajamas.

* * *

WELL, TONIGHTHAD certainly not been the typical room-service-and-work type of night that tended to dominate his business trips.

Chuckling to himself, Ben pulled off his T-shirt, wiping his shoulder with it before folding it up and placing it in the dirty laundry bag he kept in his suitcase. He’d say one thing about Chloe Masterson, she was the antithesis of boring.

A woman who couldn’t decide whether to smile at him or punch him in the face. A woman who was super tough one moment, and vulnerable the next. A woman who had no idea her expressive face betrayed her, even in her most badass moments.

He tugged the white button-down he’d worn on the plane back on—she’d walked in on him before he’d gotten around to changing out of his suit pants, so it wasn’t like he’d be overdressed—but he left the hem untucked and the buttons at his throat open anyway.

She was such a nice change from the women who’d inundated his world lately. As he’d moved up the corporate ladder, everything had gotten more proper and refined. So serious. He’d met a lot of very pretty women with very pretty plans for their future. The few dates he’d been on in the past year had felt more like job interviews, and they’d fizzled accordingly.

But Chloe didn’t look at him as if he was a steak on display at a butcher shop. She wasn’t angling for marriage, sizing up his earning potential or evaluating his parenting qualities. Which was good, because marriage was not high on his list of priorities anymore. She was the kind of woman who understood that a date should be fun and flirty, two people trying each other on. No expectations, just opportunity.

Not that this was a date.

In fact, he wasn’t sure what this was, but he kind of liked it. Tonight he got to hang out with a flawed, stressed-out, hot-then-cold-then-hot-again woman with a kick-ass body, a pierced nose and a star tattoo on her right arm. And he couldn’t wait.

He moved her abandoned phone to the nightstand so he could prop the pillow upright against the headboard, and sat down against it. He’d just stretched his long legs out in front of him when he heard the bathroom door open.

She appeared from around the corner a moment later.

Ben let his gaze slip from her berry lips down to her bare shoulders, then to her arms—that star tattoo was going to be the death of him, he was sure of it—lingering a moment on the way she filled out her tank top before sliding past her black boxer shorts to take in her truly spectacular thighs, her shapely calves and the shiny black polish on her toenai—

“Oh, my God, are you walking on hotel carpeting in bare feet?” he asked, lunging forward. “Do you have any idea how gross hotel carpet is?”

He was half expecting another sardonic smile, but apparently the panic in his voice had registered, because her eyes widened in response to his alarm.

“How gross?” she asked, scrunching up her nose in preparation.

“My grandma was a nurse, and she once had this patient who ended up with cellulitis from walking barefoot on hotel carpeting—”

“Are you kidding me?”

“—and he didn’t get it checked right away, so by the time he went to the emergency room his whole leg was full of pus—”

“Ew, ew, ew!” She was hopping from foot to foot by this point.

“—and he had to stay in the hospital for three days so they could give him antibiotics intravenously.”

“Okay, enough, enough!” She jumped onto the bed beside him, scrambling into a sitting position and staring down at her feet. “Oh, God! My feet are itchy. Is itchy a symptom of cellulitis?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes went wide.

“Well, probably.” He didn’t remember all the details of the story...just the gross ones. “Do they feel swollen? Like there’s a bunch of pus accumulating under your skin, getting ready to erupt and—”

Chloe recovered enough to sock him in the arm. “Shut up with the gory details, wouldja?”

Ben rubbed his arm where her punch had landed. Chloe crawled over to the end of the bed. She braced one hand on the very edge of the mattress and reached toward her coat, which was hanging on the back of a chair that was just out of reach. Her fingertips brushed the thick material, but she didn’t quite get purchase on it. He watched in fascination as she set herself up for another attempt.