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“So do you.” His fingers tightened on my waist. “Like baked goods. It’s delicious.”
“I rub myself down with sugar cookie lotion,” I said.
He kept one hand on my waist while he trailed one finger down my arm. I shivered as electricity followed in its wake. “No wonder you're so soft.”
I forced a smile. Despite my mind's repeated reminders that this was fake and Mark was my assistant, my heart beat out of control.
“You coming dancing?” I asked, finally stepping out of the cradle of his thighs.
CHAPTER4
“Your sister looks beautiful,” Mark said, swaying us around the dance floor. Naturally, as soon as we started dancing, the song changed to a slow song, and I found myself back in his arms.
I nodded, watching the sole white figure move around a dance floor filled with black tuxedos and at least fourteen shades of red dresses. “It was my mom’s.”
“Wait, the dress you said you had preserved for yourself?” He asked, his eyes running over my face. They asked too many questions and garnered too many answers.
My heart warmed that he remembered, though I wasn’t entirely surprised. He seemed to remember everything I said, even the times I didn’t want him to.
“I assumed I’d wear it someday, but someday may never come.”
I shrugged like it was no big deal. Like it didn’t matter that I had spent my entire life picturing myself wearing Mom’s dress while walking down the aisle. That dream had only become more important when she passed away, and had become less likely to happen as more time passed. The more relationships that failed.
“Mom would have wanted one of us to wear it,” I continued, feeling him staring at me. “I’m pushing thirty and haven't had a relationship in over a year, if you can even call it that. Who knows if I’ll ever marry.”
I watched Ben twirl Emory around the dance floor, big smiles on both of their faces. He dipped her, and Emory’s head fell back in laughter.
That was something I missed. The easy connection, the laughter.
“Did you tell her you wanted to wear the dress?”
“No,” I said, feeling the need to defend my sister. At his dubious expression, I clarified. “I mean sure, I told her when we were kids. I was older. It was just assumed that I’d get married first.” I fiddled with the collar of his suit between my fingers, embarrassed that I had revealed so much, intentional or not. “Don’t make something out of this. She called, said she was engaged, and I offered the dress.”
“I see,” Mark said, like someone who did not see, but he didn’t pry further. He just looked at me with his knowing expression, ripping me open and making me reveal way more than I cared to admit, even to myself. I felt horrible for feeling even a stab of jealousy.
Mark always had this way about him, making me open up. I left Coal’s Lake a bit broken, and David, my college sweetheart, hadn’t helped with my confidence. Mark was one of the few I’d allowed myself to get close to after all that. I trusted him when I really trusted very few.
I studied his handsome face. His full lips. The slight scar to the right. The hair that always shaded his jaw this late into the evening, darkening his features. His straight nose. The intensity in his expression as he looked back down at me, catching me staring.
“How do you do that?” I asked.
“Do what?”
“What is it about you that makes people tell you things,” I snorted. “A talent I certainly don’t possess.”
His lips pinched to avoid smiling. “I didn’t know that I had that talent.”
The hand on my lower back pulled me closer and warmth pooled in my lower belly, adding to the overall warmth of the alcohol. I felt flushed.
“Oh, you do. You should have been an FBI agent. You meet someone for five minutes and they tell you their whole life story.”
“I think the alcohol is making you talk, not me,” he said, his eyes sparkling in the flickering candles lining the ballroom.
“Maybe it’s your eyes. They sparkle. They make people get all...” I lightly fluttered my fingers on my chest. “It gets all sparkly feeling in here. I wish I made people sparkle. I think it's my face. It screams at people to stay away.”
His lips quirked, the smile breaking through. “My eyes make your chest sparkle?”
All the heat from my belly rushed to my face.
