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Me: Don’t care.
Grace: Yes, you do. Come on. I know you’re already dressed for tonight. Carter sent me a text.
Carter. My traitorous brother.
Grace: Just come inside the hotel. Come up to the reunion. Have a drink with me. See the people you haven’t seen since high school who will fall at your feet the way they did back in the day. Oh wait, they still do.
Me: You’re doing a shitty job of selling it there, sweetums.
Grace: Everyone will think you’re a pussy if you don’t come.
Me: Nice gauntlet drop.
Grace: I thought so. Now get your ass over here!
I growl out a slew of curses under my breath, still seriously contemplating fleeing for the sake of my sanity, when I catch sight of a short, curvy redhead in a tight, backless black dress, higher than high heels, and fuck-me red lips that match her hair walking up to Christa. She’s as late as I am, and before I know what I’m doing, a smile cracks clear across my face.
I know her instantly.
Even if it’s been ten years since I’ve seen her. A guy never forgets the girl who gave him his first boner. A first-ever boner in class, I might add. We were twelve and she bent over to retrieve her fallen pencil when a flash of her training bra caught my eye. Instant erection.
I was pretty smitten after that moment, as you might imagine.
“Amelia,” Christa greets her, her face now lacking any of the warmth it had when she was talking to me. “I had no idea you were coming.”
What the fuck? You’d think in the ten years since we graduated from our annoyingly prestigious prep school that the rich girls would get over the self-created, mean-girl bullshit they had with the scholarship kids.
Amelia turns redder than her hair, and she takes a small step back before straightening her frame and squaring her shoulders. “Well, I’m here. Graduated same year as you. I even received the invitation in the mail. Must have been an error on your part,” she finishes sarcastically.
“Uh-huh. It’s a hundred-dollar entrance fee,” Christa snaps, taking far too much pleasure in announcing that sum as she purses her lips off to the side, giving Amelia a nasty-girl slow once-over.
“A hundred dollars?” Amelia asks, though it comes out in a deflated, breathy whisper.
“Yup. Sorry,” Christa sneers with a sorry-not-sorry saccharine sweet voice. “No exceptions. Not even for the kids who were on scholarship.”
And that’s it. Before Christa can say anything else that will make me want to throttle her, I walk over to Amelia, wrapping my hand around her waist. “Sweetheart,” I exclaim. “You made it. I was starting to get worried.”
Amelia jolts in my arms, her breath catching high in her throat as she twists to face me. Then she looks up and up a bit more because she’s about a foot shorter than I am even in her heels. Suddenly, two sparkling gray eyes blink rapidly at me, and my heart starts to pound in time with the flutter of her lashes, my mouth dry like I’ve been eating sand all night.
“I’m sorry,” she says, confused, her parted lips hanging just a bit too open for us to be selling this. “I think you must—”
I lean in, my nose brushing against her silky red hair that smells like honeysuckle or something sweet and I breathe into her ear, “Just go with it.”
She swallows audibly as I pull back, staring into her eyes and wondering how a color like that is even possible when she smiles and robs me of my breath.Whoa. That’s unexpected.
“I didn’t mean to worry you…” She trips up, biting into her lip like she’s searching for a suitable term of endearment. Or maybe my name? I guess it is possible she has no idea who I am. We didn’t exactly run in the same circles, and I just came up to her and wrapped my arm around her. “Oli,” she finishes with, and I blow out the breath I didn’t even realize I was holding.
“It’s fine. I just didn’t want to go in without the most beautiful woman in the world on my arm.”
Amelia gives me that stunning smile again, this time with a blush staining her cheeks, and I marvel at how it makes her eyes glow to a smoky charcoal. Goddamn, she’s fucking sexy.
“Wait,” Christa interrupts. “You’re with her?” She points at Amelia.
“I sure am,” I declare without removing my eyes from Amelia’s because those eyes, man. They’re just too pretty not to stare at. “I’m a lucky bastard, right?”
“You’re with him?” She turns that finger on me.
“So it seems,” Amelia replies, her tone a bit bewildered, though there is a hint of amusement in there, too.
