One Night Love Affair *COMPLETED*

Chapter Twenty Four - part one

'I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAS gotten into me. Why did I tell Vivian, no, Lana, I will tell her about why I married Meredith? Man I must be drunk!'

James tried to get up and walk towards the cabinet where a pitcher of lemonade was, but the moment he rose, his head started spinning, confirming what he thought - he was drunk.

"Easy there!" Lana jumped and helped James sit back on the sofa. "You might have a glass or two of that fine whiskey too much."

"You're probably right. I wanted to get to the cabinet for a glass of lemonade. I can't tell you about my marriage if I can barely sit."

"Stay where you are, I'll go grab a glass for you."

Before James could inform Lana he was perfectly able to try and get up himself, she was already back with a glass full of lemonade in one hand a pitcher in the other.

"If you'll need a refill."

"Thanks." He drank the entire glass in one go, and Lana immediately refilled it.

"So..."

Even though only moments before James insisted he just had to tell Lana the story behind his marriage, he took another sip of lemonade to avoid starting, what will be a very difficult story to tell. Specially to a person who was at least partly responsible for it all.

"James, it really is OK if you don't want to talk about it. It's none of my business and it's fine by me, if you want to keep it private."

Like she was reading his mind, Lana left the pitcher of lemonade on the table, next to the sofa and moved to sit in an old rocking chair, opposite of the sofa. James slowly exhaled, because he felt like he could breathe again, now that Lana wasn't in such close proximity as before. But now there were those eyes. Those damn eyes of hers, looking at him with such interest and curiosity.

"I said I'll tell you, I'll tell you."

His words came out harsher than he wanted, so he tried to soften them with, what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

"When I met Meredith for the first time, I was in a really bad place. I moved to New York to change my ways, to prove to my father I can be even better business man than he is, but also to prove to myself I can do it. But at the same time, moving to New York meant I left behind all my chances of finding you. You lived in LA and New York is on the other side of America."

Lana shifted on her chair, trying to get rid of the guilt of lying and leaving him after their one night affair.

 "I wasn't exactly blaming you for pulling that disappearing act, but I wanted to find you. With only a name to go on, it was though. I don't know if you did it on purpose, but somehow you managed to avoid all the cameras in the hotel. Not that it has that many. One would think that a five star hotel offers more security than just a handful of lousy cameras. Trust me when I tell you, that when I was done with the manager of the hotel, it got the new, state of the art security system. Not so sure if all the customers are happy with it. There had been few leaks of private moments in the hotel since then. But yet again, it's hotel staff's fault, not mine."

Even though James masked the question in a uncharacteristically bug amount of useless information, it was obvious, he really wanted to know the answer to his question: 'Did she knew about the cameras?'

"I had no idea. In all honesty I wasn't planning on sleeping with you. And I had no idea about what security system was like in that hotel. Me not showing up on the security footage was pure coincidence."

Words came easily from Lana's mouth, but James had hard time believing them. Not that he actually let her know that.

"Well anyway... I moved to New York, took over a firm a friend of mine offered me to run. Life was supposed to be good. But I paid a huge chunk of cash to a private detective back in LA to find you. And days went by, but no one could tell me where you came from or where did you disappear form. I grew frustrated and I wanted to smack someone, or something. The need to break things grew with each passing day, and I did nothing to sooth my frustration. Until one day I got a call from the detective, telling me you disappeared from the face of the Earth. This time there was no helping it. I was standing in my office, where some interior designer decided to put an empty decorative vase on my desk for no apparent reason. It was the only light and highly breakable thing I had in my hand's reach when I just couldn't stand it anymore."

He made a dramatic pause, that left Lana wanting more.

"I picked up the vase and threw it. When it hit the wall, the thing broke into a million tiny pieces."