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Rowan shifted her attention from the aisle. Straight to him.
Her gaze tangled with his. She looked so incandescently beautiful, Harry had to catch the inside of his cheek between his teeth and bite down hard to keep from groaning out loud.
Her cheeks pinkened.“Not polite to stare,”she mouthed, and Harry swallowed a laugh. A faint smile hovered on her lips, and her eyes were soft, like she’d yielded some of her armor. The longing he saw in her face matched the magnitude of his own, and he had to remind himself to breathe.
When the violin went silent and the officiant asked everyone to be seated, Rowan visibly startled. She cut her eyes away from Harry and swept a hand under her, smoothing the dress as she sat. A big breath raised her collarbones in sharp relief under her skin. For the rest of the short ceremony, she kept her eyes on her lap or fixed stoically on Patrick and Mercedes.
Again, that internal switch. If a glimmer of emotion slipped loose, she’d redouble her withdrawal in a way that had once made Harry think he’d imagined everything.
But now, heknew. This thing between them—whatever it was—was substantial. Significant. If anything, he’d underestimated the magnitude of it. Now that he knew her reluctance was rooted in damage done by another man, Harry felt confident he could change her heart, and he wouldn’t risk fucking it up by allowing it to be only about messy, meaningless sex. If he did, she would put him into that box, slap aTEMPORARYlabel on it, and he’d never get out.
Later, at the reception, Harry and Temperance sat at a table along the edge of the dance floor with the rest of the wedding party. He pretended to be involved in the conversation, but it exhausted him. A high-key hum of tension zapped through him like an actual electric current.
After the meal, the earlier hope and optimism about a future with Rowan crumbled as he watched her dance with some asshole friend of Patrick’s. Harry sat facing the dance floor with legs spread wide, leaning forward with his forearms on his thighs.
The guy was built like a rugby player, sporting a blond buzz cut and an ill-fitting dress shirt with buttons stretched to their limit across his chest. He churned his hips against Rowan’s ass as her body pumped like a piston to the beat of the blaring music. She was shoeless, and her hair had slid out of its tidy twist. Every time she bent her knees and raised her arms, her dress hiked high, to where her thighs curved outward and upward. The golden material of the dress was wrinkled, the fabric darkened in all the places where Buzz Cut’s sweaty hands had been.
All night, she’d catch Harry staring at her, and rather than look away or coyly pretend she hadn’t noticed, she’d challenge him with a piercing stare of her own. Bold. Unapologetic. The eye contact never lasted more than a few seconds, but each time, Harry’s heart rate spiked and stumbled, like he was being defibrillated while fully conscious. His molars creaked under the strain of his clenched jaw.
He was in inescapable, voyeuristic hell.
His mouth was parched as a desert boneyard, and no amount of whisky or water or wine could satisfy the pervasive thirst. Harry flexed his shoulders and hooked a finger into his shirt collar, tugging hard. His neck was as damp as his tongue was dry.
Harry drained his nearly full cocktail in one long swallow, shredding the cherry between his teeth. Ice clattered when he pounded the empty glass down on the table. Mercedes and Temperance froze in midconversation and fixed him with matching surprised glances.
“Sorry,” he growled, standing. “Excuse me.”
“Harry—” he heard Temperance say, but he kept moving. He shouldered through the crowd to get outside, seeking solitude, seeking rational thought, seeking calm.
On the wraparound patio, he paced, squeezing the bridge of his nose hard enough to make his eyes water. Over the last hour, he’d thrown back Manhattan after Manhattan, and the alcohol was beginning to numb his brain all at once.
Good. Something more powerful than Rowan McKinnon was finally dominating his bloodstream.
The night wind still had winter teeth, even though it was April. Harry shuddered, the tailored tuxedo doing little to prevent the cold from slicing all the way down to his skin. Gripping the edge of the stone balcony wall, he let his head hang between his shoulders. He sucked in greedy breaths through flared nostrils and blasted hot air back out through his open mouth.
What in the hell was happening to him?
The sweet scent of expensive tobacco drifted on the breeze, preceding low, familiar voices. Harry followed the curved wall of the patio to find Malcolm and Duncan leaning against the stones.
Harry and Mal had a complicated relationship that went back to their teens. It had grown progressively worse again after they’d ended up on opposite coasts of the country, infrequently seeing each other as adults. On the rare occasions Mal did leave his posh New York City aerie to visit the family, Harry had a feeling it was only for his daughter Charlotte’s benefit. Really, she was the only thing that kept Mal from being an irredeemable asshole. Regardless of how misanthropic Mal seemed on the surface, he was solo-parenting a confident, bright little girl, and that spoke volumes for who he really was.
He was still a pain in Harry’s ass, though.
A wisp of smoke meandered from Mal’s checkmark-shaped pipe. Duncan lit a thick cigar and used it to gesture a greeting at Harry. Then he nudged his chin toward the condensation-hazed windows of the lodge lobby. “Why aren’t you in there tearing it up with your date on the dance floor?”
“T.J. doesn’t dance,” Harry said.
Duncan paused with the cigar midway to his mouth and raised his eyebrows. “She tell you that?”
Harry shrugged. “Go ask her yourself.”
“I tend to try to avoid Temperance at weddings.” Duncan clamped the cigar in his back teeth.
Before Harry could probe Duncan’s comment for more information, Mal said, “What about the redhead?”
“She has a name,” Harry said. “Her name is Rowan. She’s Duncan’s date.”
Smoke poured in thick twin plumes from Duncan’s nose. “What about her?”
