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Then, because it was the nature of their relationship, she turned the tables on him. “I suspect you Russos do it much differently.” She tapped her chin with a finger. “A late-night Christmas Eve dinner at some bougie restaurant, the kind that charges a couple hundred dollars a plate for three bites of food. I’m thinking expensive champagne, not wine. And…no gift exchange at all.”
She nailed it in one, and he knew why. “Penny filled you in, I see.”
Liza nodded, her smile fading a bit. “Doesn’t feel very festive, does it?”
Matt didn’t reply. The truth was, he dreaded the holidays every bit as much as she looked forward to it. She probably wouldn’t be surprised if he confessed that more often than not, he spent Christmas Day in his office at work. There were too many sad memories attached to the holiday, so he found it easier to pretend it didn’t exist, treating it like any other day.
Liza must have taken his silence as a signal that their conversation was over, as they both turned their attention back to the room, standing next to each other in silence. The band struck up a slow number, the large groups of dancers dispersing, breaking up into couples.
“Dance with me,” he said, before he could think better of the request.
Liza looked at his hand like it was a snake…but then, she slowly lifted hers, placing her palm in his, allowing him to lead her to the floor.
She stepped into his arms, glancing over her shoulder toward his table.
He followed her gaze and saw Patricia still deep in conversation with Bethany.
“Patricia won’t like you dancing with me,” Liza said. “She strikes me as the jealous type.”
“That doesn’t concern me.”
“Trouble in paradise?”
“No paradise,” he replied. “No girlfriend,” he added, strangely bothered by the fact she thought that’s what Patricia was to him.
“Does she know that?” she asked with a cheeky grin. “Because you’re dating a serial fiancée.”
Matt didn’t respond. Primarily because she wasn’t wrong, but also because he couldn’t. Her goddamned red dress was going to be his downfall tonight. He’d failed to take into account the fact it was cut low in the back.
As they spun, his hand shifted, and he found skin.
A gentleman would lower his hand, put some of the silky material of her dress between his palm and her back.
He couldn’t do it. And because he was apparently a masochist, he began to caress her soft skin, his thumb slowly stroking her, up and down, up and down.
Liza lifted her face. He expected her to call him out for his too-familiar touch, but instead, he heard her soft intake of air. And what he saw in her beautiful brown eyes left him struggling to catch his own breath.
Desire.
Now, as she had on that night at Enigma, Liza held his gaze as they moved in time to the music.
The moment felt surreal. It was as if they were the only two people in the room.
Their closeness allowed him to see things he’d never noticed before, like the specks of gold in her eyes, the small beauty mark on her left cheek, the fact she had two piercings in her ears instead of one.
He and his brothers were tall men, all of them well over six feet, but he’d never noticed the difference in his and Liza’s heights until this moment, as he held her. The top of her head came to his chin, and she felt small in his arms.
Which seemed wrong. Someone who’d captured and held his attention with such strength and tenacity should have been so much taller.
She’d opted for an elegant updo tonight, and his fingers itched to pull out the pins to watch the thick, chestnut-brown mass of waves fall over her shoulders.
“Why did you ask Davis to leave?” he asked, curious about her failed date.
“A misogynist and a feminist are always going to be a bad combination. Turns out his attraction to me had less to do with who I am and more to do with what I could do for him.”
“So he’s still holding on to those grandiose political aspirations.”
She nodded. “Six dates in and he’d planned our whole future. One where I would give up my career to support his, putting my stellar fundraising skills to better use, garnering campaign contributions for him as he shook enough hands and kissed enough babies to land the big gig in the White House.”
