“Didn’t want to see you again,” Henry finishes, then points two fingers at me. “I’m sending you the membership card next week. You can’t get hung up on the first Delirium woman who touches your cock. There are plenty more.”
Instantly, the memory of Diana’s honey brown eyes and the way she stared at me earlier, while her breathy voice said,I can come on demand,flit through my mind. And her mouth, the shape of her lips…
Fuck’s sake. What led my thoughtshere?
Like a thorn yanking on a loose thread, it feels as though indulging the memory might causesomethingto unravel.
I push it—her—out of mind.
But it doesn’t work. Diana’s been here, in my head, for the entirety of the meal. It’s infuriating, to say the least. I wouldn’t touch my daughter’s friend.Absolutely not. I don’t want to. She’s little more than half my age, for Christ’s sake. That moment in my office was nothing.Nothing.
But fuck, I’m old enough to recognise a ‘moment’ when it happens; the hot unfurling of something coiled tight that accompanies prolonged eye contact with the right person. With Diana, it threatened to overwhelm me with each extended second that stretched between us.
I’d call it sexual attraction, if that wasn’t completely inappropriate. I can’t be certain she felt it the way I did, but whatever it was, I refuse to dwell on it. It’s an absolute non-starter.
If I could, I would distract myself with the woman from Delirium, but it seems I am destined to make no progress there either. Perhaps Henry’s suggestion of finding someone new at the club is the only way forward.
“Fine. Send me the card,” I say to Henry.
He grins wide. “Merry fucking Christmas, Rafe.” He raises his glass, and Julian does the same. The rest of the evening passes with me forcibly directing my attention to my friends and keeping it there, not allowing it to veer off to thoughts of Diana, waiting for me to come home.Not one fucking time.
When I get back, Diana is at the kitchen island, her broken laptop propped up, and a notebook on the counter. The lights are low, and the glint of them reflects off her hair, casting shadows beneath her cheekbones. There’s a delicate beauty to her that reminds me of the woman from Delirium, and hercolouring is similar, but otherwise she’s her antithesis. Where that woman was bold and openly sexual, Diana is uncertain, as if she hasn’t yet learnt her own power. She was American; Diana is British.
And yet her mouth…
I blink, redirecting my thoughts. I shouldn’t compare them. Even now, my memory of that other woman is growing hazy, and I am likely imagining similarities that don’t exist in a feeble attempt to justify the feelings Diana stirs up in me.
She’s wearing an oversized cream sweater, the sleeves of which come down to her knuckles. Her hair is wet and casually thrown up in a messy bun, and her cheeks are smooth and clear, with a recently-washed sheen. She must have showered before I came back.
I stare longer than I should, taking in the curve of her neck, the slight pout of her lips, the focused expression on her face. I endured an entire dinner waiting for this exact moment, and now that it’s here, I loathe the buzz of excitement that lights up beneath my skin.
It's so wrong.
Diana bites her thumbnail, but when she sees me lingering in the doorway, she drops her hand.
“Hi,” she says softly, offering me a tentative smile that makes my chest tighten. “Did you have a good night?”
“I did. Thank you.” My words are clipped and emotionless as I pace towards her, shrugging out of my jacket and hanging it over a chair. “Where’s Lizzie?”
“She’s watching TV.”
“You didn’t want to?”
“No.”
A few strands of wet hair fall loose from her bun, and she tucks them behind her ear. It’s a perfect curve, the shell of her ear, anda crazy urge to mimick her motion and run my fingertip along its edge grips me.
“I wanted to dothis,” she continues, gesturing to her laptop as I blink back into the moment, appalled at myself. “For you.”
Heat ignites in my chest, spreading down my arms until a tingling sensation occurs in the palms of my hands. I offer her a nod in response, trying to appear unaffected by that ‘for you’, which made it sound as if doing thingsfor mewould please her.
I take a breath and roll my shoulders. Maybe Henry has a point; I need to get out more if the whispered words of my daughter’s best friend are lighting me up like a bonfire. I don’t like the way I’m reacting to her, and I’d hate her to know it. I stride to the sink and run cold water on my hands, shaking them out and drying them before approaching her.
“Show me,” I say, taking a seat beside her. She smells like strawberry scented soap.
Running me through the revised spreadsheets, she explains the details of what she was doing before. Reading and reviewing books, promoting the ones she enjoyed, seemingly. She’s listed potential authors and publishers she could offer services to, listed what she might charge for them, along with projected income based on a hypothetical percentage of people who might hire her each month.
I can tell the numbers don’t excite her, but she lights up when she shows me content made by other social media personalities. What seems to draw her attention the most is when they combine their love of books with something else: makeup or travel. Her niche, or so she tells me, is romance books and fashion.
