She took a deep breath. “I was there looking for you, and you thought I was looking for Ian.”
Zach’s brain hitched. His defenses went up.
“It was an honest mistake, really,” she said. “The women watching from the sidelines said you’d probably be at the club. Since I couldn’t find another way to connect with you, I took the chance.”
“Whoa, whoa. Back up.” He leaned away. “Are you telling me you slept with me because you thought I was Ian?”
“No. Yes.” She huffed. “Not…exactly.”
“Not…exactly?” Zach took a sledgehammer to the chest. Pain erupted beneath his ribs. Anger immediately followed. “Are you serious right now?”
“Look, I can understand you’d be a little miffed over the mix-up, but you were the one posing as Ian. You were the one scrawling Ian’s name on their bodies. Your crew member told me Zach had a cut on his forehead. It was totally reasonable for me to think you were Ian, not Zach. Everyone else did.”
“Fuck me.” Zach pressed an elbow to the table and covered his eyes with his hand. This was a real killer. He was stunned at just how disappointed he was. How hurt he was.
“Then I saw Ian on Good Morning Los Angeles the next day,” Tessa said, her voice tainted with frustration. “Imagine my surprise when I realized he wasn’t the man I’d spent the night with.”
He dropped his hand against the table and met her angry gaze with one of his own. “Well, excuse me. Sorry to disappoint you, sugar. You didn’t sleep with a star.”
“Stop. You know that doesn’t matter to me. In fact, I slept with you in spite of believing you were a television star, not because of it.”
“Really.” He narrowed his eyes on her. “Because I remember you agreeing with me on several of Ian’s less-than-complimentary characteristics. Which really meant you thought th
ose belonged to me.”
She sighed, like she was so over this conversation. “Whatever I heard or thought I knew was negated by what I learned while we were together.”
Negated?
“And you’re right. I owe you an apology for forming an opinion of you based on the limited information I had.”
He sat back and shook his head. This was a very different version of the woman he’d been with the other night. And knowing she’d thought she’d slept with Ian made it impossible for him to pull this from the fire. “Whatever. It’s over.”
He slid to the edge of the booth.
Tessa grabbed his arm. “We still need to talk.”
“The hell we do.” He pulled away and stood. His gaze caught on the manila envelope beneath her purse, and his stomach went cold. He glanced around for the exit.
“Zach.” The steel in her tone sent a chill down his spine. “This is important.”
He exhaled in a slow, controlled stream through his teeth. The muscles along his shoulders constricted with tension. He was already annoyed. And yeah, his ego was bruised. Even stranger, his feelings were really hurt. But those were minor when compared to the unease crawling up his spine over that damned manila envelope sitting on the table like a ticking time bomb.
He glanced back at her. “Look, there’s nothing to—”
“Please.” She reached for his hand, and her pretty blue eyes begged him. They were just begging for the wrong thing. “I’ll make it as quick and as painless as possible. You’ll never have to see me again, and you can forget all about this. Please just hear me out.”
Fuck. She’d gotten under his skin. If she hadn’t, Zach would have walked out and never looked back.
He faced the table again, teeth clenched. He was pissed. Pissed because he’d been thinking about her for days when she’d thought she’d fucked Ian. Pissed she hadn’t made this date to see him, she’d made it to get business done. And the only reason he even considered listening to what she had to say was because he didn’t want that damned manila envelope to come back and bite him in the ass. “Five minutes.”
“We have someone in common,” she said. “My best friend and one of your hookups.”
Oh, hell. “Who?”
“Corinne Westerly.”
Corinne Westerly. He rolled the name around in his head a few times. Corinne, Corinne, Corinne. He shook his head. “I don’t recognize the name.”