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She held her breath, dragging her gaze up to mine for longer than she’d likely intended, before bolting to her feet and smoothing out the wrinkles from her dress.
The moment was too much, and she had obligations as her surviving family’s trophy.
“I should make the rounds. Thank you for taking in the fresh air with me, Stolas. Enjoy the rest of the night.” She stretched out her hand to bid me farewell.
I straightened myself and took her hand but rotated and brought it up. “I hope we meet again soon, Evie.”
Our eyes locked as I lightly caressed my lips over her knuckles.
Her cheeks flushed and her mouth opened, but it seemed that her words were lost. Instead, she nodded and walked away.
I waited until her silhouette had disappeared into the house before slipping through the void. I had no desire to mingle with any other mortals now that my agenda to encounter Evie had been accomplished. I knew the impression I left her with would have her thoughts trailing back to me throughout the rest of the night.
I also knew that we would meet again. Soon. I would make certain of it.
8
EVIE
After hours of peering over my shoulder, to catch sight of Stolas, and shaking hands with politicians whose eyes felt as if they were all over my skin, I found my father in the kitchen hovering over a tray of crab cakes and chugging a glass of water.
“I’m going home,” I said, grabbing my bag from where I’d stored it in the private liquor cabinet. “Your wife is passed out in the bathroom.”
“Damn it, Evelyn, you just left her there?” He looked out into the living room and waved over a waiter.
“She’s not my responsibility, Dad. Maybe the next one will be able to hold her liquor. But you’re getting pretty close to women who aren’t legally allowed to drink.”
He barked an order to the waiter and one of his staffers to assist Becky upstairs then turned around, massaging his temples. The deep lines on his forehead were exaggerated by the strain of his fingers.
“I don’t need your smart mouth tonight, kid,” he replied with a sigh. “Fine, go home and be safe. I don’t need the media scrutinizing your driving after a fundraising event at my home.”
Another reminder that my safety came second to his campaign image.
“I promise not to run any red lights or ram pedestrians on Wilshire Boulevard.”
He rolled his eyes and then pulled some painkillers out of a small medicine bottle.
“Goodnight, kitten. Love you,” he said, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and kissing the top of my head. He bustled out of the room.
“Night, Dad,” I said to no one but myself.
* * *
Igot back home unscathed but replayed every awkward encounter I’d had while driving. I rode the elevator up while recalling the conversation I’d had with the public defender who’d taken it upon himself to inform me that I had “developed into a fine woman,” and he wished he were twenty years younger so he could have asked me out on a date.
Twenty years still would have been far too old for me. He had been “old” since I was a child and was easily forty years my senior. The look on his wife’s face had almost been enough to encourage me to empty my stomach right there on the family room floor.
It wasn’t an occurrence that I escaped often. Every old man who knew me growing up or knew my father felt like they had some perverted right to ogle the woman who had grown from the young girl they once knew.
I shook off the visceral stain that had been left on my skin and shimmied out of my dress to get in the shower. The whole evening hadn’t been awful. I’d gotten a chance to run into a client from my company and connect with them on a more personal level. Any foothold was a good one, and he had set up a time for the two of us to meet and discuss working more closely. Was it poaching? Probably, but management would see it as valuable customer relations building.
Then there was Stolas.
The mystery man. I hadn’t seen him at all after leaving him in the garden. Oro had been talking with my father when I’d made it back inside but had also departed shortly after. I thought I had caught sight of Stolas out of the corner of my eye a couple times, but when I turned to look, he was nowhere to be seen.
There wasn’t anything concrete I could describe about the way he’d behaved while we lingered at the edge of the party, but there was something in the way he looked at me and the smile on his lips.
Not overly flirtatious or forward.
