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He knew that from personal experience.
Damn, he didn’t want to feel responsible. He didn’t want to get involved. He just wanted a couple of hours of shut-eye. But she was still the little sister of his best friend and former Harvard University roommate. Hell, Wes had practically grown up at the Burling house, especially during the terrible teen years stained by his father’s embezzlement scandal. Not only had Dan been the only friend to remain true throughout the ordeal, Wes also owed Evie’s brother an enormous debt for loyally signing on as his client during the infancy of Campbell Investments, Inc.
Not that Wes had a clue how to handle Evie Lee; the black sheep had perplexed her family for years.
Blowing out a breath, Wes stood and finally spied Evie, his gaze meeting her dark chocolate eyes. Long, brunette hair framed her misleadingly delicate features adorned with a small eyebrow piercing, and the vibration that had been pulsing through his body gained strength. Apparently her affection for grunge fashion hadn’t changed. She wore an ugly knit hat with a tiny brim in front and a white T-shirt with the words “Conformity: the surest form of death.”
The pretty, rebellious teen had matured into a beautiful maverick.
Wes stepped down the aisle to address Bob with a smile. “Light on the vodka, please,” he said. Ignoring the exasperating, and wholly inappropriate, attraction dogging him since his teens, he glanced at Evie meaningfully. “She doesn’t hold her liquor well.”
The soft snort from Bob as he passed by was barely audible, and Wes’s brow crinkled in restrained amusement at Evie’s expression, memories of his senior prom filling his mind. From the look on her face, it was obvious she was remembering, too.
Wide brown eyes locked with his as Evie hiked her chin a touch. And the wild, glossy waves of dark hair were just as tempting as he remembered. “Hello, Harvard Boy,” she said drily. “I see your pointless habit of bossing me around hasn’t changed.”
He bit back a smile. “Neither has your annoying need to be bossed.”
“And how do you figure that?”
He leaned an arm against the back of a seat. “I told you eleven years ago that you don’t handle your liquor well.”
Her balding neighbor glanced at Evie with concern.
“Lots of people drink too much at their first prom,” she said, pointedly ignoring her seatmate.
“Yes,” Wes said wryly. “But most don’t attend simply to protest the event.”
He suppressed a smile at the memory. Being elected Prom King had been a noteworthy turn of events that evening, but nothing compared to the memory of the attendees filing past a seventeen-year-old Evie in grunge attire holding a DOWN WITH THE MONARCHY sign.
“We fought a freakin’ war to overthrow royal oppression,” she said. “Why should we subject high school students to a royal court? Most people hate the exclusionary tradition.”
He lifted a brow. “And I’d venture to say that most prom-goers don’t end the evening vomiting on the chief of police’s desk as she’s telling the man to go to hell.”
Evie’s chin hiked higher, the sudden color on her cheeks bringing out the lovely olive tones of her mother’s distant Italian ancestry. She’d inherited the passion in spades.
And an impulsiveness that had worried her brother sick.
“I had every right to be on that sidewalk,” she said. “It was all just a…” She paused, as if searching for the right word. “It was simply a miscommunication.”
Wes couldn’t help it. He let out a laugh. “Oh, I think you communicated your displeasure well enough.”
During the pause that followed, Wes realized Evie had stopped arguing. Which was a change. But the spirited spark in her eyes remained the same—the very look that had set him on fire during his youth. Wes was never sure which had attracted him more, her beauty or her spunk. Whenever she was near, the air snapped with the charge of a pending electrical storm. He suspected her off-limits status had lent an air of the forbidden, increasing her appeal. And yet now, years later, the same prickle of energy spread up his spine and across his neck.
Staring at her lovely face, the buzz of awareness grew stronger, leaving him on edge. Feeling restless.
He’d warned the flight attendant to go light on the vodka. His duty was done. So he should be returning to his seat, catching up on the sleep he’d been craving for days. But it had been years since he’d had the pleasure of admiring her delicate features, the mesmerizingly smoky eyes, and the wide, impertinent mouth. So he allowed himself one more question before returning to his seat.
“What brings you to Boston?” he asked.
“My parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary party.”
He’d received an invitation to the event himself, so the news wasn’t a surprise. That she’d decided to go was.
He cocked his head. “I’m amazed you elected to make an appearance.”
Something flashed across her face, angst or an ache or a fragment of fear, and she dropped her eyes to her hands. “Of course I’m going,” she said. “They’re my parents.”
He patiently waited for her to return his gaze again, leaving his knowledge of her tumultuous history with her family unspoken. Fate had played a cruel joke on Evie Lee, the free-spirited nonconformist born into a traditional, upper-crust family heritage that reeked of old money. And she’d resented the silver spoon her family had repeatedly, and insistently, tried to stuff into her mouth.
