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‘I don’t want to discuss it.’
‘Very well, but please be more careful in the future.’
‘I am careful,’ she countered.
Since her mother had died, she had been dreadfully so. She wanted to explain the aberration that tonight had been, but with her face in his hands there was no room for words, so she just carried on staring into those beautiful, inscrutable eyes.
‘I mean it,’ Costa said. ‘There are a lot of snakes out there—believe me, I know...’
‘How?’ she asked.
‘Because I’ve had to work with them. For a while I was one of them.’
She wanted to know more.
Mary wanted more.
It was as though he was a magnet and her skin was embedded with shards of iron. She was drawn to him. So much so that she had to press her soles into the floor to ground herself and tell her lips not to move towards his.
Costa could feel the shiver of anticipation beneath his fingers and he looked at the perfect lips he had watched blow out a candle. He wanted them on his, yet he reminded himself of the circumstances of their meeting.
No, to kiss her now would not be fair.
He removed his hands from her burning cheeks.
‘I am going back in.’
Yet still he could not leave things there.
‘If I wanted to call you...?’ Costa checked, and saw her eyes widen. ‘I think it would be poor form to ask Ridgemont for your details.’
‘Indeed.’
‘So,’ he said, ‘what is your number?’
He took out his phone and, oh, so confidently went to type it in.
‘I don’t have one,’ Mary said.
She gave him a brittle smile as it dawned on her that he might be considering booking her ‘services’, before remembering that he’d said he didn’t pay for company.
‘I think it best we leave it there.’
‘Certainly,’ Costa said, pocketing his phone.
‘You have your party to get to.’
‘No,’ Costa corrected as he saw her into his car. ‘That was just to get rid of Ridgemont. I’m going back in now...’ He gestured with his head to the hotel. ‘Happy birthday, Mary.’
He closed the car door and watched as it glided out into the dark night.
‘Is everything all right, sir?’ the doorman asked.
‘Of course.’ Costa nodded, for now she was gone he could finally think straight.
As he went back inside Costa mentally amended his response.
In fact, things were far from okay.
