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“Takes one to know one,” a voice parried back. Finn hadn’t even realised she’d been standing close enough to be overheard, but a handsome man with unmistakably German tones to his voice was smiling at her. His hair was fair and his eyes glittered with blues and greys. “Cristoff Muller,” he extended a hand.
“Seraphina. James,” she tacked on for good measure.
“Can I get you a drink?”
She scanned the crowd for her date, but Caradoc had been locked in conversation with two other men for the better part of an hour. Her independence and pride had taken quite a beating.
“Sure, thanks.”
The hand on the small of her back was purely polite, but Caradoc looked up at that exact moment. Almost as if the winds of warning had whispered across to him.
He didn’t like to see someone else touching Finn. Anyone else, even someone as unimpressive as Muller.
“Champagne?” Cristoff prompted, as they approached the bar.
Finn wrinkled her nose. She wasn’t a big drinker, and she’d already had a glass of bubbles. But she nodded anyway, reckless spirit firing her blood.
“Thanks,” she murmured, when furnished with the flute.
“I’m more of a scotch man myself,” he grinned. “How do you fit in to this shindig?”
“Oh, um,” she sipped her champagne. What the hell was she meant to say? I’m sleeping with Caradoc? She shied away from such an admission. “I’m a family friend,” she hedged in the end, though it was such a poor explanation for what she really was that she felt an unwelcome sense of having lied. “And you?”
“My old man was husband number three,” he said with a self-deprecating shrug. “Sasha was my step-mummy for a time,” he laughed.
“And Caradoc your step-brother?” She asked hurriedly.
“Yeah,” he nodded, and Finn knew she wasn’t imagining the way his face clenched with emotion.
“Let me guess,” she prompted, well aware that she was being intrusive. “You didn’t get on?”
“Hardly,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Caradoc was always too serious for me. For anyone, really.”
Finn looked across the crowd, and her eyes clashed with her date’s. It was like being sparked with a thousand volts of live wire. Her whole system charged to a new level of awareness. Her cheeks flushed; she looked away, giving the impression that she was far more interested in speaking to Cristoff than she actually was.
“When was this?”
“Oh, years ago,” he waved a hand through the air as though it was unimportant. “Just before all that drama.”
Drama? Curiosity barbed inside of Finn, but Cristoff moved conversation on before Finn could work out a reasonable way to subtly interrogate him further.
Cristoff seamlessly navigated their conversation onto matters that were far more interesting to him, and Finn went along with it. She was grateful, truth be told, to have someone to talk to while Caradoc was otherwise distracted.
Without realising it, she finished her champagne.
“Hey, why don’t we dance?” Cristoff suggested nonchalantly, and a ridiculous sense of loyalty brought Finn’s eyes once more towards Caradoc. But now, a beautiful woman with hair as dark as night had joined him. The woman had skin like snow and lips like blood. She was a real-life frigging Snow White, and Caradoc’s smile seemed to glow with the light of the moon as he looked at her. Finn was beyond annoyed.
“Come on, I’m more coordinated than I look.”
“I don’t doubt it,” she said with a forced smile.
She wanted Caradoc to look at her, but his attention was completely transfixed.
She stood close to Cristoff as the music began to slow down. He wrapped an arm around her waist and she put a hand on his shoulder on autopilot. “Who’s that?” She had been aiming for disinterest but feared she was rather wide of the mark.
“Talking to Caradoc?” Cristoff sought clarification.
Finn nodded, her smile as breezy as possible.
