Page 21 of Worth the Trouble

The girls didn’t react. Not until Cecelia got another call immediately after. She frowned at her phone.

“Do you have to get that? It’s okay if you do. Lunch is about over anyway.” Serenity motioned for their waitress to come over with the check.

Cecelia nodded, not taking her focus from the phone. “Yeah. It’s my dad. I’ll be right back.” She paused as she rose from the table. “Don’t pay the bill. It’s on me, remember?”

Wendy waved her off and Cecelia got the distinct feeling that when she came back, the bill would be taken care of. Still, she hurried away and answered the phone.

Before she could say hello, her father boomed through the speaker. “Cecelia? We have a problem.”

She knew that tone. She’d dealt with it on more occasions than she could count. This was the reason her father had hired her to do PR. She was an expert at cleaning up messes, and her father had a job for her. “What do you need?”

Cecelia kicked off her heels the second she entered her hotel room then she leaned against the door and closed her eyes. It was late and she’d missed dinner. Right now, all she wanted to do was decompress.

So, when her phone buzzed in her purse, she groaned and considered shutting the phone off for the rest of the night. When she pulled the device free, she paused.

It wasn’t her father.

It wasn’t even one of the girls from lunch who she’d had to apologize to for ducking out early. They’d been more than understanding and had thanked her for lunch before they all parted ways.

No, the message on her phone was from the one guy she hadn’t expected to hear from.

Jason: Hey.

Cecelia smiled despite herself. She hovered over the keyboard a moment. Then she sent off a message.

Cecelia: Hey, back.

She stared at the screen for a few minutes and when she thought that he wasn’t going to respond, the little dots popped up at the bottom of the screen indicating he was typing.

Jason: What are you doing tonight?

Groaning, she moved farther into her hotel room. There was no sugarcoating how she was feeling even if she wanted to let him off easy.

Cecelia: Nothing. It’s been a day.

She expected him to drop it. After reading her text several times, she grimaced at how she sounded. She was basically brushing him off and telling him she wasn’t interested in seeing him at all. She nearly sent another message, but then there was a knock at her door.

Frowning, she glanced up at the door. Normally, her father would enter without knocking. They each had a key to one another’s hotel room. He wouldn’t bother knocking if he needed to see her, and he was more likely to call her if he needed to relay something.

Cecelia moved across the room to the door and peered out the peephole. Then she gasped and tore the door open to find Jason standing in the hallway. He’d known she was staying here. It wouldn’t take much for him to figure out her room number especially since he knew her name. Before she could ask him what he was doing here, he brushed past her with a wide smile.

She blinked rapidly as he moved toward the small seating area in front of the television. He dropped down on the couch and looked up at her. Then he patted the cushion at his side.

“What—” she tried to ask but he cut her off.

“It’s been a day for me, too. I just wanted to see your pretty face. And maybe watch a movie with you.”

Her mouth was still hanging open and as if against her will, she shuffled toward him. He offered her a throw blanket she’d left on the arm of the couch and she took it before sinking down into the cushions.

Jason leaned back, his arm across the back of the sofa, the remote in his other hand. She stared at him as he turned on the television and found a channel showing a western romance movie.

He glanced at her and a sliver of uncertainty flitted behind his eyes. “If you want me to leave⁠—”

“No.” She blurted it before she had a chance to really decide what she wanted. Maybe it was the shock. Or maybe it was the fact that she knew in her heart that Jason wasn’t going to make demands of her like her father had.

To be fair, her father only asked of her what he’d hired her to do. But after she’d had to spend a good five hours putting out a fire her father had set by cornering two council members outside the diner that morning, she was ready to just close her eyes and relax.

“No,” she tried softer this time. “I’d really like it if you stayed.”