"That." She gestured vaguely toward where I'd left Sebastian standing. "That looked intense. That looked like the kind of intense that ends with either a fistfight or…"
"Don't."
"I'm just saying. The tension between you two could power a small city." She fell into step beside me. "You're flushed."
"It's warm in here."
"It's climate-controlled to exactly sixty-eight degrees."
"Then I'm having a hot flash."
"You're twenty-nine."
"Early onset."
Nalani laughed, low and knowing. "Okay. Sure. Whatever you say." She peeled off toward the bar, but not before throwing one last comment over her shoulder: "You should see your face right now. You're lit up like a Christmas tree."
Not lit up. Burning.
And the source of the fire was standing thirty feet away in a charcoal suit, watching me with eyes that saw too much.
I grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and drained half of it in one swallow.
This was a problem.
This was a very big problem.
And I had absolutely no idea what to do about it.
8SEBASTIAN
Something had changed.
I stood near the bar, watching Aria walk away from me, her green dress catching the light with every step. The crowd parted for her like she was royalty, and maybe she was, in this world she'd built. People reached for her, touched her arm, tried to pull her into conversation. She smiled at all of them. She was warm, open, and generous.
The exact opposite of how she was with me.
I lifted my glass. The whiskey burned going down, but it didn't clear my head the way I needed it to.
What the hell just happened?
I'd crossed the room with a plan. A simple plan. Say something civil, establish that I could be in the same space as Aria Kealoha without wanting to strangle her, and move on with my evening. Instead, I'd told her she looked good in green. I'd grinned at her like some lovesick fool when she'd accidentally called me attractive. I'd watched her pulse flutter in her throat and felt something I had no business feeling.
And she’d been the one to walk away first. That bothered me more than it should have.
Across the room, she was laughing at something Nalani said. Her head tipped back, exposing the column of her throat, and I tracked the movement like an obsessed man. Her hair was up tonight, revealing the delicate curve of her neck, the simple gold earrings that caught the candlelight.
When I'd first spotted her across the room, before the rational part of my brain had engaged, my first thought hadn't been the thousand reasons I should keep my distance.
My first thought had been:Beautiful.
I drained the rest of my whiskey.
This was Aria Kealoha. I did not find her attractive. I did not want to cross the room and pull her into a corner and find out if her mouth tasted as sharp as her words. I did not want to slide my fingers into that carefully arranged hair and watch it tumble down around her shoulders.
I signaled the bartender for another drink.
"Dad?"
