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While the Rolsons bolted, she stayed. Her attention was very much on Ezra. “It has been a while…”
“Who are you?” His dismissive question didn’t hold one single note of curiosity. “Never mind. I don’t care. If you aren’t serving drinks, you can follow the bores.”
Ezra’s abrasiveness was nothing new to me. Perhaps it was petty on my part, but Genevieve reacted like he’d slapped her. Her eyes narrowed and her lips compressed. Before she could find a response, Ezra turned us away from her and started walking. Now, I could dig my heels in—a little hard in the four-inch pair I was wearing but not impossible—and make a scene, or I could avoid the scandal and find out what he wanted.
Before I could decide on the best approach, Milo appeared in front of us. “Ezra.”
“Asshole,” Ezra responded. “We’re leaving...”
A sigh escaped me. “No,” I said even as Pretty Boy shifted to block our path. Now, I did dig my heels in, half-pivoting to face Ezra. It put Milo at my back and forced Ezra to loosen his grip on my arm. “We’re not. This evening is far from over. If you just wanted to rescue me from the Rolsons, then mission accomplished.”
The look Ezra fixed on me held the promise of retribution. “You damn well know better.” I suppose I did. I’d known Ezra Graham for most of my life. He’d been Adam’s best friend for as long as I could remember. The two were inseparable, as well as insufferable. The past couple of years had been difficult, with Adam’s choices pulling him away from Ezra.
Somehow, that meant I’d inherited him. While Ezra could wax and wane in his affections, I was rather used to it. It was worse when he drank—he was either the cuddliest of drunks or the cruelest. I never knew which he would be at any given moment, sometimes both in the same night.
Swallowing the next sigh before it could escape, I tugged my arm free of him and then fixed his tie. It was a little crooked. While the rest of him was quite well put together, he’d been tugging at his tie. He always did secure it too tightly, like he needed a bite of pain to go with the evening.
Maybe we all did.
The room around us hummed with dozens of conversations. The faint chiming of glasses being served. There was music from the ensemble. The hush of shoes over the ballroom floor. Somewhere, the faint motorized propulsion of the air conditioning kicked in. From the tasteful crystal on the high-top tables to the silk drapes over the windows and the bunting around the edges. It was all quite welcoming, but it was still just the beginning of the evening.
I had zero intentions of leaving yet.
“Are you finished?” I asked after I smoothed down Ezra’s lapels.
He dipped his chin, his mouth flattening as he spared the briefest of glares for Pretty Boy behind me, then focused on me again. “I’ll be finished when you are. Walk out with me right now.”
“No,” I told him, keeping my tone soft to avoid aggravating him any more than he was. The fact he was here was enough of a complication. Just a few short weeks ago, he’d sustained injuries when we’d finally extracted the vengeance my best friend had been so richly due.
A lot of people had been injured, including Ezra. For a few hours—I shook off that thought. The inherent darkness in it hadn’t come to pass.
“Dammit, Lainey,” Ezra half-growled as he closed the distance between us. But Pretty Boy slid an arm around me and one minute I was facing off with Ezra and the next Pretty Boy was between us.
Oh, this was not ideal.
“Back off, Graham,” Milo told him, his voice as hushed and even as mine had been. “You don’t get to show up and manhandle her like you own her.”
“You mean like you are?” Ezra sneered. “Without her, you wouldn’t even have gotten inside. Instead, you’d be out there parking cars—probably where you belong.”
Right, he was definitely in a mood. I caught the eye of a waitress who hurried over with champagne. Tucking my little clutch under my arm, I accepted two glasses with a smile. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” she said, her smile as impersonally polite as any of the staff. She turned to Ezra to offer him a drink and I beckoned Milo to me. It didn’t take much for him to join me and he took the glass I offered him.
“Not throwing this one in my face?” Pretty Boy asked, the tease of his growl licking over every syllable.
“Did you want me to?” I dared him, head tilted.
“Not particularly,” he murmured. “But I could be persuaded.” He’d never removed his attention from Ezra, who glared at both of us now. For someone who understood the politics of appearance every bit as much as I did, Ezra made no attempt to soften his behavior. If anything, his poor manners and abysmal micro-expression control continued to earn us more of an audience.
“Don’t,” I said when Ezra opened his mouth. I used the champagne glass and the miming of a sip to hide my lips. “I don’t want to play this game with you tonight, Ezra. I’m here on business.”
“It’s not a game,” Ezra countered, narrowing the gap between the three of us.
“No,” Pretty Boy agreed with me. “It’s not. It’s obnoxious and uncalled for. Maybe you should go back to licking your wounds and letting them heal.”
“Maybe you should go back to Braxton Harbor, or anywhere that isn’t here. You don’t know what you’re doing and you sure as hell don’t know us.” Hostility erupted into the chilly air between them.
The tension threading through Pretty Boy’s arm tightened it under my hand. He hadn’t moved away but even his jaw set. I’d seen them both in violent situations. This was not going to end well for anyone.
