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The champagne pour is a tradition, I’m told, that marks the start of the silent auction. What looks like hundreds of champagne coupes are arranged in a crystal tower on one side of the room. The hundred or so guests are arranged in a loose semi-circle around the tower as a crisply uniformed waitress stands on a step stool holding the largest bottle of champagne I’ve ever seen. Another worker, a young man, stands on another step stool supporting the bottom of the massive bottle.
“That’s called a Nebuchadnezzar bottle,” Rudy says in my ear, his body pressed up against the back of mine from where he guided me through the throng of guests. “It holds the equivalent of twenty standard bottles of champagne.”
“Seems excessive,” I answer in a low voice.
I feel Rudy’s smile against my cheek more than I see it. “It is.”
We shuffle a bit closer as more people crowd in. Rudy leads me to the left of the tower of glasses. The light plays on the crystal as the two workers shift their grip on the huge bottle of champagne.
Rudy’s aunt steps in front of the delicate tower of crystal, and a hush falls over the audience. Nancy seems perfectly comfortable in front of the crowd, her hands clasped gently in front of her stomach as her multitude of diamonds glitter at her neck, wrist, fingers, and ears. Suddenly, my delicate pendant doesn’t seem so over the top.
“Thank you all for coming,” Nancy says in a voice that feels quiet but carries to the far reaches of the room. “Your generosity tonight will go to help not one but three elephant sanctuaries in Kenya and will help fight the scourge of poachers in the region.”
She pauses for polite applause, and I know she’s made many of these speeches before.
“We will open the silent auction after the champagne pour. I encourage you to be generous, and don’t be afraid to outbid your best friend or your own mother.”
I smile as a laugher sounds in one corner of the crowd. There must be some inside joke there, but I’m more focused on the feel of Rudy’s hands on my arms. When his aunt started talking, he moved to grip my biceps, and now his hands are stroking my arms slowly, torturously, and I wonder if he craves the feel of my skin as much as I seem to crave his.
Leaning against the hard wall of his body, I let myself relax. Nancy’s voice lulls me as she stands in front of the audience of rich yacht owners, delivering a speech with practiced ease. I don’t belong here—I know that. Not only is my net worth probably small enough to get me turned away at the door on a regular occasion, but my life itself has been the opposite of what this represents. I’ve been a nomad. I’ve lived out of a suitcase for most of my adult years; none of the things I’ve wanted have been silent auctions with people dripping in jewels.
But for now, it feels good. Maybe it’s the fact that Rudy radiates safety. That with him—if nowhere else—I feel at peace. I don’t have to think of yesterday or tomorrow, unless it’s to imagine what it’ll feel like when we finally kiss again. His hands sweep up and down my arms, moving up over my shoulders and sending shivers coursing down my body. His fingers brush my collarbones, a spot on my body I hadn’t realized was erogenous until this very moment. My skin tingles from my chest down to my navel, my nipples tightening at the featherlight touch of his hands.
Eyes half-closed, I listen to another successful joke land with the audience, followed by Nancy’s direction for the two waiters to start pouring champagne. With the audience gasping, champagne starts pouring out of the massive bottle and down the tower of glasses, spilling over and down in a cascade of bubbles and excess. I watch the bottle tip higher, more golden liquid filling another glass, and another, and another, until the entire tower of glasses is spilling with the golden drink. All the while, Rudy’s fingers dance over my shoulders, my collarbones, my arms. When his thumb traces the strap of my dress, I can’t help the way I soften against him. He’s turning my body to jelly in a room full of people, and I can’t quite remember why that should bother me.
That’s the reason I’m not braced for the collision.
Between one breath and the next, I go from relaxed and a little turned on to off-balance and stumbling. The hem of my dress gets caught in my stupid spike heel, and I can’t take a step. Rudy grabs my waist, but he’s as off-balance as me. When his hands wrap around my middle, the momentum of his body sends us both crashing into the tower of crystal and champagne, just as the last drops are poured from the huge Nebuchadnezzar bottle.
I fall on the floor, crushing the table that held the tower of glasses, and the sound of shattering crystal echoes along with gasps from the guests. Rudy, through some sort of masculine-strength-induced voodoo, manages to yank me at the last moment and shield most of my fall. He lands mostly underneath me with only the sharp bite of broken glass eating against my arm. Champagne sloshes and falls to cover us both in sticky shards of glass.
For a few heartbeats, I lie still.
Rudy is beneath me, his arm clamped around my waist. I’m gripping his tuxedo as a drip of champagne runs down the side of my neck. Rudy’s cheek is bleeding and when I use my hand to turn his chin in order to check the wound, I notice my arm and hand is sliced too.
Blinking rapidly, I stare at the blood, the glass, then at Rudy’s face.
“You okay?” Concern is written all over his features, his arm still banding tight across my back, his other hand cupped over my cheek.
I do a quick inventory of my body. A sharp stab of worry pierces through me when I think of the baby, but when I feel nothing more than the ache of the cuts on my arm, I nod. “Yeah. I think so. For someone with such a hard body, you make an okay cushion.”
Tension leaves him in a whoosh, and his lips tilt into that smile that makes my knees go weak.
Then, as if a spell has been broken, I hear Nancy calling out orders as dozens of hands reach over to help the two of us up. Two unfamiliar male hands lift me right off Rudy and when I’m standing, I totter on my heels again. Stupid things. The strange hands on my arms linger until Rudy glances over my shoulder with a hard expression on his face.
“What the fuck was that about? I felt you push me.”
Jared’s hands drop from my arms as I turn, and he throws up both his palms. “Someone nudged me, man. It was an accident.”
Rudy’s jaw clenches as a bead of blood trickles down his cheek. I’ve never seen him like this—angry. Fearsome. He has one arm curled protectively around my shoulders as he takes half a step to put the bulk of his body between me and his cousin.
His cousin’s girlfriend curls her hand around Jared’s arm, her eyes flicking between the two men. Jared ignores her. My gaze snaps to Rudy, who swears quietly and viciously. Jared bristles but says nothing.
I find myself turned on by the fury written on Rudy’s face, and then I wonder what the hell is wrong with me.
The easygoing Rudy is the one I was first attracted to. The man behind the bookstore desk with laughing eyes and a mischievous smile. That’s the man I laughed with as the sun went down while we ate fish and chips. That’s the man who asked me for salted caramel brownies as he worked on the community garden.
This Rudy is entirely different. I find myself noticing just how much taller and stronger he is than me. How much I like the way his arm is still wrapped around my shoulders and how he seems angrier that I could have been hurt than the fact that he’s clearly bleeding from multiple injuries.
