Page 97 of Unwritten Rules

“Oh. Mina, isn’t it?”

“Cut the shit, Zara. What do you want?”

I’ve got little time for my ex and her manipulations. And even less now, when she has effectively burst our stolen bubble.

“Branson asked me to—”

Mila rises from her chair, not a hair out of place, the embodiment of grace under pressure, and holds her hand out for me. I take it, tucking it into the crook of my arm, smiling easily into her unique eyes before she turns to Zara.

“If you listen really, really carefully, you’ll hear the sound of neither of us giving a flying shit.”

Turning to me as a broad smile spreads across her face, I raise a sardonic brow. “Oh yeah, I hear it.”

Zara’s mouth drops open when I side-step her, putting myself as the buffer between her and Mila to make our way back down the stacks in the direction of the event, but Zara’s voice pulls us both up short.

“Oh, Mira dear?”

She has a triumphant cat-who-got-the-cream look on her pinched face when we turn back toward her.

“I do believe your mother is here, though why a homewrecker such as Charlotte Hamilton would be welcome back amongst proper society is beyond me.”

Mila’s body stiffens beside me, but she doesn’t take the bait.

Strange that she didn’t mention her mother’s return from her travels.

I discreetly squeeze her arm, and her eyes rise to meet mine. Outwardly, she wears a look of unconcerned indifference, but I can see the hurt beyond the mask, and it enrages me.

“In all fairness, Zara, seeing as they had no option but to invite the widow of Xavier Hawthorne, the bar wasn’t set altogether too high to begin with.”

She grits her jaw, and some of the tension drains from Mila’s body as I turn to my Hellcat.

“Shall we?”

She smiles hesitantly into my eyes, some unknown emotion playing across her face before she nods, gripping my arm tightly as we leave my waspish ex and return to the party.

The tables have been cleared from the middle of the floor to make room for a temporary dancefloor currently heaving with guests of all ages whilst a string quartet plays Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida.”

We come to a stop at the edge of the dancers and I, like earlier, decide to go with what comes naturally.

Turning to Mila, I incline my head. “May I have the pleasure?”

A wide, bright smile breaks across her face, imitating my own, and she nods softly, almost shyly, as her cheeks blush prettily.

I lead her onto the floor as the song changes to Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams.”

“Oh, I adore this song, Nathaniel!”

Her tinkling laughter rings out, drawing the attention of several dancers nearby, everyone smiling at her unencumbered exuberance.

Her unmatched zest for life is one of the things I adore the most about her, and now that I’ve had her, I can never be without her. One kiss in Devon started the descent into madness, but it was that kiss earlier, that most intimate of kisses, that sealed my fate.

I’m hers.

She owns me.

And I would burn the world to keep her if I had no alternative. Because now that I’ve surrendered, I’d rather live with nothing and no one else until the end of my days than be without her for another single moment.

My Hellcat has just placed her ear over my heart as we sway softly to the gentle strings, when a feminine voice beside us makes her body stiffen abruptly.