“I wasn’t alone. My tailor was there.”
“No.” Oliver’s gaze flicks over him critically. “That thing is off the rack.”
Fin swears, and I laugh again, and so begins our evening.
For all the fancy setting, once the opening speeches are over, the night is quite informal. Guests mill around table settings, chatting and laughing before moving on.
The food is buffet style, but quite upscale. There’s a lobster and oyster bar set on mounds of glittering ice, and another offering smoked salmon, beluga caviar, and a whole host of other things, none of which I find myself hungry for. I’m too nervous to eat.
What am I supposed to say?Hey, I hear you’ve a house for sale. Wanna sell it to me and my hunk over here? I promise I won’t install feature walls or shabby chic the whole damn place.
“Get off!” Matt slaps Fin’s hand away, shielding his plate with his body as Fin chomps on a piece of chicken. Or, according to the server, poussin in jerk seasoning served on a bed of fried plantain. “Watch him,” he warns. “He’s light fingered. He’d steal the eyes out of your head.”
Fin begins to laugh, coughing a little as he swallows the piece of pilfered chicken.
“Serves you right. Choke, you bastard. I’ll write your eulogy.Phineas choked the chicken often enough,” Matt begins in sonorous tones, “but in the end, the chicken got its own back. And that is how he met his sad end.”
“I will be castrated by paper cuts before you read my eulogy,” Fin retorts.
“Sounds like a painful way to go, but you do you,” Matt retorts.
“When my time comes, I plan on being in my own bed with a bellyful of whisky and a maiden’s mouth around my”—he halts briefly, his gaze sliding my way—“nether regions as I disappear into the darkness from whence I came.”
“He came, and he went.” Matt presses his hand to his chest and gives a sorrowful shake of his head.
“You guys are too funny,” I say, chuckling again.
“Yes. They’re hilarious.” An unamused Oliver offers me his hand, and like a good little fake girlfriend, I stand.
“See you guys around.”
“Are you off to have a look at the posh frocks?” Fin asks.
I look to Oliver.Are we?
“Would you like to?”
“Who doesn’t love fashion?”
“Him,” Matt pipes up, nodding toward Fin and his green suit.
“I’d love to look.” If Oliver had mentioned the exhibition much earlier, things might’ve gone much easier for him. “If you don’t mind.”
“Of course I don’t,” he answers like a good boyfriend would.
“We’re pretty good at this,” I say as we walk away. I find my thoughts to have mellowed a little. Blame the dress, the champagne, or the other side of Oliver I see when he’s with his friends.
“It’s not hard.” His fingers tighten on mine. “I like you. A lot.”
“I guess I must be drunk, then.”
“Because you don’t like me?”
I sigh, because I know what’s coming next.There are parts of me you like.And he’d be right, but I can’t afford to think of them. “You’re like Jekyll and Hyde.”
His smile seems out of place, considering what I’ve just said. “Can we talk about this later? The man we’re here to meet is just ahead.”
Oh, hell.
