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But I couldn’t have him.
I pulled away, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
“Hunter, you—you know we can’t.”
He reached out, his fingers trailing along my chin, and I almost took it back immediately.
His eyes were regretful. “I know.”
“I’m sorry—”
“It’s fine.”
And then there was nothing we could do but leave.
I retreated to the guesthouse and lay on top of the flannel quilt of my bed, trying to persuade myself that the heat refusing to leave my body was only the humid Virginia night air. But I knew it wasn’t true.
TEN
The scent of lilacs drifted through the air along with the clink of raised champagne glasses, and I wondered how long I could hide in the fancy white gazebo behind the honeysuckle bushes.
I’d been so wrapped up in my personal drama, I’d almost forgotten about my mother’s big matchmaking plans. I might have managed to wriggle out of this event early on in the game, when she wasn’t as desperate and her focus wasn’t as tight, except for two things:
Norcross Hope, the charity, bought schoolbooks for impoverished kids, a cause that was really dear to my dad’s heart, and I couldn’t let him down, and;
Knox was also affiliated with Norcross Hope, and so attending this shindig was technically part of my job.
“Are you really wearing that?” Oh crap, my mom had found me. “Allison, darling, you know green absolutely washes you out.”
“Does it?” I said. “Ah, well.”
“I think she looksh—looks lovely,” my dad said. He avoided my mom’s dagger eyes by taking another swig of champagne. Was this his fifth? We were way too early in the evening for that. I wished he didn’t have to drink to get through events with my mother. Though honestly, I couldn’t blame him. And come to think of it, maybe he had the right idea…
“She looks washed out, and you know it,” my mother snapped. “Allison, on the phone we specifically discussed the color palettes that most favor—”
“Oh look, I see a handsome successful man, bye!” I interrupted, and sped off to find another, better, hiding place. I eventually chose the nook behind the catering crew, but decided to first stop by the cash bar and tip the bartender fifty small to make sure Daddy got his drinks watered down for the rest of the night.
“Bribing someone to slip arsenic in Chuck’s drink?”
Hunter’s honey voice slid luxuriously through the scented air. Suddenly my dress felt very tight, and the night very, very hot.
I turned to survey him. Oh, big mistake. He was looking good enough to eat, his classic cut tuxedo hugging the perfect lines of his muscular body, a slight five o’clock shadow adding just a hint of danger and bad boy appeal to the grin he was sending my way.
“As if I’d be that obvious,” I said, trying to act unaffected. “Why, did you already bribe someone?”
“Nah,” he said. He leaned closer. “I’d offer to buy you a drink, but given the way this conversation started, I’m not sure you’d take me up on it.”
My hand raised itself of its own volition, trailing down the front of his shirt. “Given the way this conversation went last night, I’m pretty sure I would.”
He grinned at me, our eyes locking. For a moment, we were the only people in the world.
And then—
“Hunter!” A booming voice rang out as a man in a blue business suit came up and slapped him jovially on the back. He didn’t seem to see me at all. “Good to see you! Got some questions about the board meeting coming up, know you won’t mind taking a minute to answer them—”
With a pained look at me, Hunter allowed himself to be led away. Now was not the time for him to brush off any of his supporters within the company; he couldn’t afford to lose any foothold he had.
And right behind him, where they had heard every word we had said to each other: the Douchebros. My stomach clenched and I willed myself not to blush tomato red.
Harry and his little posse strutted up to me like roosters with brand-new tail feathers. I braced myself. But not, as it turned out, hard enough.
“Well, what do we have here, bro?” Harry asked the Douchebro closest to him.
“I think it’s the case of Nancy Drew and the Secret Slutbag, bro,” the second said.
“Bro, you are totally right.”
Their weird verbal tic almost distracted me from what they were actually saying. “What—what are you talking about?”
“‘The way the conversation went last night,’” Harry mimicked in a falsetto voice. “You got some brass ones, Ally Bally Fee Fi Fo Fally. I mean, it’s one thing to f**k your way up the ladder, but flaunting it like that, in a public place? Tsk, tsk.”
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