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Still, Hawk’s eyes narrowed. Without a doubt, he’d understood her intended dig, and he didn’t like it. But then his expression turned intense and sensual, before changing again to a perplexing flash of tenderness.
Beneath her sleeveless brown sheath, Pia felt a frisson of awareness, her breasts and abdomen tightening. Surely she was mistaken about that fleeting look that appeared almost tender?
Was he feeling sorry for her? Was he looking down at her, the naive virgin whom he’d left after one night? The thought made her spine stiffen.
“Pia.”
As her name fell from his chiseled lips—the first time she’d heard it from him in three years—she was swamped by thoughts of a night of blistering sex between her white embroidered sheets.
Damn him. She rallied her resolve.
“What an unexpected…pleasure,” Hawk said, his lips quirking, as if he, too, knew how to play at a game of hidden meaning.
Before she could reply, a waiter stopped beside them and presented them with a platter of canapés with baba ghanoush purée.
Staring down at the appetizers, Pia’s first thought was that she and Belinda had spent an entire afternoon choosing the hors d’oeuvres for today.
Then, as another thought quickly followed, she decided to go for broke.
“Thank you,” she acknowledged the waiter.
Turning back to the duke, she smiled sweetly. “It’s a pleasure to savor. Bon appétit.”
Without pausing a beat, she plastered his face with a fistful of eggplant.
Then she turned on her heel and stalked toward the hotel kitchen.
Dimly, she recorded the astonished gazes of the hedge fund manage
r and a few nearby guests before she slapped open the kitchen’s swinging doors. If her professional reputation hadn’t already been ruined, it was surely going down in flames now. But it was worth it.
Hawk accepted the cloth napkin from the waiter who came scurrying over.
“Thank you,” he said with appropriate aristocratic sang-froid.
He carefully wiped baba ghanoush from his face.
Oliver Smithson eyed him. “Well…”
Hawk wiped his lips against each other. “Delicious, though a bit on the tart side.”
Both the appetizer and the petite bombshell who’d delivered it.
The hedge fund manager laughed uneasily and cast a look around them. “If I’d known the Wentworth wedding would be this exciting, I’d have shorted it.”
“Really?” Hawk drawled. “This is one stock that I’m betting won’t fall in price. In fact, isn’t notoriety the route to fame and fortune these days? Perhaps the bride will have the last laugh yet.”
Hawk knew he had to do what he could to dampen today’s firestorm. Despite the affront to his person, he thought of the pixie wedding planner who moments ago had stormed away.
He also wondered where his friend Sawyer Langsford, Earl of Melton, had gone, because right now he could use some help in putting out the blazes that were burning. He was sure Melton could be recruited despite being one of Dillingham’s groomsmen. Sawyer was a distant relative and acquaintance of the groom’s, but he was an even better friend of Easterbridge’s.
Hawk realized that Smithson was looking at him curiously, obviously debating what, if anything, to say at an awkward moment.
“Excuse me, won’t you?” he asked, and then without waiting for an answer, stepped in the direction in which Pia had gone.
He supposed he shouldn’t be so dismissive of a valuable business contact, but he had a more pressing matter to attend to.
He flattened his hand against the swinging kitchen door and pushed his way inside.
