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“I see you’re still a dick.” She drains her Scotch, bangs her crystal glass on the bar as if it were a mallet and strides into the crowd. I can’t help but smile. What a woman.
After more fake and wasteful conversation, we all move into the main room for dinner. I’m one of the last to leave the reception, putting off the delight of sitting on the same table as my father for as long as possible. When will they realise that being joined in blood doesn’t mean we have to sit in one another’s company?
Dayna is standing in front of the table plan, trying to find her name, that naked back making my cock twinge. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” she mutters.
“Problem?” I ask, knowing full well why she’s pissed off.
“Not one that can’t be ignored,” she says without looking at me.
“Miss Cross, you’re on table one,” an organiser tells her. “Your microphone is on your seat.”
“Thank you.”
“Microphone?” I ask as we move towards table one, closest to the stage.
“What, you talk these days? Here I was thinking you’re incapable of conversing with a woman. Especially this woman.”
I grind my back teeth, trying to think of a retort that won’t be unforgivable, when a man pushes his chair sharply back from under his table and into Dayna. I instinctively put a hand to the small of her back to shield her. The only person who needed shielding was me. My breath hitches when our skin connects. She jerks, but not enough to break our contact, and I’m confronted with wide eyes, which could be shocked get-the-fuck-off-me eyes or shocked I-forgot-how-good-that-feels eyes.
“I don’t need you looking out for me,” she snaps.
The former then.
To the six men already seated at our table, I imagine Dayna appears poised as she acknowledges the faces and takes one of the two empty seats. But I notice the way her neck and shoulders stiffen. Her attention seems to hover on Caspar Kahn for a second, each of them boring holes in the other. Dayna starts fixing her microphone to her dress, breaking the Mexican stand-off. It makes me wonder whether they already know they’re both invited to compete for the well.
She rolls her eyes when I settle into the chair next to her. My knee grazes her leg, and she tuts subtly, but not so subtly that I miss it.
“I’m surely not that repulsive,” I say quietly.
“Who on earth told you that lie?”
Another organiser leans across Dayna’s shoulder and whispers something to her that makes her nod. His hands rest on the skin of her shoulders, contact I’m acutely aware of, and which I don’t like. She’s not yours, I remind myself. But damn do I want her to be.
“Miss Cross.” My father, on the opposite side of the table, is wearing a look on his face I recognise too well — arrogant prick. “I have to tell you, I was provided with one of the best laughs I’ve had in a long time this morning.”
She clears her throat. “Is that so, Harold?” she says with at least outward disinterest.
My hand tightens around the fork in front of me. My father doesn’t even look at her as he speaks; he’s putting on a performance for the others. It takes me back four years, only we weren’t sitting around a table at an industry dinner. My father, Dayna, my mother, brother and sister — we were all sitting at our dining table having lunch. That day, I let him break Dayna and me. Tonight, he still wants to put her down.
“Yes, I was thoroughly entertained to see SP had been invited to tender for the Bahraini well.”
Now I’m gripping my fork so hard it could melt under the heat of my rage.
“Interesting. I had thought the invitations were confidential,” Dayna retorts.
“Ah, yes, some of us are well-respected in the industry and therefore in the know, if you know what I mean.”
She gives a tight, sarcastic smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Of course I know what you mean, Harold. You just told me.”
One of the men, the CFO of Shale Wells, chortles.
“Huh. Well, a wasted invitation if you ask me.” My father picks up his wine glass, signalling his derogatory little show is over.
But Dayna sips from her own glass, leans back in her seat and continues, “How so?”
“Dayna, darling, clearly you’re not in a position to rival the likes of Layton Oil and Persian Fuels.”
She stands from her chair and smooths her dress in a manner that screams self-assurance. “I’m nobody’s darling, Harold, and actually, I will be bidding.”
