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She is...stunning.
In bright red silk that is more negligee than gown, she is sex on a stick and somehow incredibly elegant at the same time. Her chestnut-brown hair is pulled into a messy chignon and her make-up is flawless—particularly her lips, which match the dress to a T.
He kisses her on the cheek but keeps a hand around her waist as he introduces her to Dean Walters.
‘He’s fascinating, isn’t he?’
Shit. How long have I been drooling over Connor, staring at him as though willing him to come and talk to me? It’s not like he and I are a thing—at all—but guilt flames in my cheeks. I need to do better. I have to pretend he’s nothing to me but a law professor I don’t particularly like.
‘Do you think?’ I turn to Louise, intentionally shifting my shoulder to Connor so that he’s no longer in my line of sight.
‘Everyone thinks. He’s incredible.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I’m going to apply to his firm.’
‘Seriously?’ My brows furrow closer together.
‘Yeah, of course. Unlike you—’ Louise grins ‘—I don’t disdain criminal law. In fact, I love it. The cases are so interesting.’
‘Yeah, and confronting...’
‘You’re going to have to deal with that in the CPS, you know.’
I lift my shoulders. ‘In the pursuit of truth, justice...’
‘Liberty.’ She laughs, and shakes her head. ‘You should apply, too.’
‘No.’ The word is firmer than I intended and I soften it with a smile. ‘I’m not interested in Hughes Brophy. And I don’t want to move to Dublin.’
‘You’re crazy! When I heard he was coming to teach this term it was the first thing that occurred to me. Along with everyone else in our year.’
‘Not me,’ I say emphatically.
‘I wonder why he decided to spend a term here?’ Louise ponders aloud and I desperately wish we could push the conversation to safer ground. To anything but Connor.
‘Not sure,’ I say, expressing my disinterest with the small rebuff.
Louise isn’t rebuffed. ‘I mean, after the Donovan verdict, it seems kind of weird to take his foot off the accelerator. He could have had his pick of cases.’
I can’t help it. I look over my shoulder, searching for his head. Dean Walters has left—it is now just the two of them, locked in a conversation that looks kind of serious.
The frisson of darkness I feel whispering across my spine is unmistakable.
I am jealous. Absurd, given that I can’t stand the man. But sexually, oh, sexually, yes. I want him. And I want him to want me.
And that gorgeous woman in the red dress is obviously going to be in his bed tonight.
Fuck.
That should feel liberating, because it firmly relegates the moment we shared into the distant past. Into a pile of irrelevancy.
But it doesn’t.
It makes me want to storm across the room and shove him to the ground, kissing him and mauling him with my bright red nails.
Yikes.
