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I lean over to whisper to Sara. “Ladies’ room. If Kace comes out, please don’t let him think I left.”
She points to the door I came in with Kace. “Go that way. He’s there.”
“I don’t want to intrude.”
“You won’t be intruding. There’s a small bathroom to the right when you exit into the hallway.”
Accepting that my escape to compose myself is now waylaid, I simply say, “Thank you,” standing up and hurrying in the direction she’s given me.
Marvin waves at me from the stage, not the least concerned about me heading into private crew territory. I’m not sure what to make of that, but I open the door to the hallway and step inside. Kace and Chris are standing there, both leaning a shoulder on the wall and it’s like being pierced with a beam of testosterone and hotness, the two of them almost too much in one place. They both straighten. Chris immediately nods at Kace and turns and walks right.
Kace is already stepping toward me and catching my hand, aligning our bodies and every part of me is tingling. “Hey,” he says softly, stroking my cheek.
“Hey,” I whisper. “I was just going to the bathroom.”
“Kiki’s a friend. She’s not with me. She’s never been with me.”
My hand flattens on his chest. “You don’t have to tell me this. We’re just—”
He cups my face and tilts my gaze to his. “We’re just what?”
“I don’t know, Kace.”
He stares down at me, eternal seconds passing in which I can’t read his chiseled expression, until he says, “Neither do I, baby, but I never will if I don’t make sure you know that Kiki is not with me.” His hands find their way under my hair, to my neck. “You have my full attention, like it or not.”
“Like it or not?”
“I’m many things you might not like, Aria, but I own those things.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I know.” He leans in and kisses me. “Go to the bathroom. I want you in there when I take the stage.”
My hand is still on the hard wall of his chest, the thundering of his heart that tells me he’s affected by what he’s spoken. Words that suddenly read like a confession that I don’t understand. I’m affected by him. He consumes me, so easily he consumes me, and though I know deep down that he is too close to all that I have run from, I can’t seem to run from him. Instead, I find myself wanting to know more, to understand him.
He turns me to face the direction Chris walked, leaning in to whisper, “Hurry back.”
I hesitate and then turn to face him. “I’m not leaving,” I say and I said the words because I meant them and because for indiscernible reasons I feel that he needs to hear them.
A flicker of something in the depths of his stare is there and gone before he cups my head, kisses me, and then turns me around again. “Good. Now hurry, baby.”
I don’t know how the word “baby” spoken by this man weakens my knees quite so completely, but coming from Kace August, it melts me right here in this hallway.
Still, somehow, I start walking, the weight of his stare hot and heavy, but the bathroom is close. I slip inside the single-occupant space and lock the door. I lean against it and stare into the mirror directly across from me. What is happening to me?
My cellphone rings and thinking it might be Crystal, I quickly snag it from my purse to find an unknown number. It could be a client. It could be Crystal calling from a phone inside the auction house. It could be Gio. My hand trembles as I punch the button. “Hello?”
There’s crackling in the background and I’m almost certain that I hear a female voice. I push off the door and desperation and gut instinct overtakes me. “Sofia?” I say because it just feels right.
Suddenly the line is silent, even the crackling fading. And then it goes dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I’m haunted by that call for no good reason.
It was a butt dial, I tell myself. Someone called me by accident.
Wasn’t it? Didn’t they?
A full minute of me staring at my screen passes and I force myself to slide my phone back into my purse, to move on. I hurry to the sink, where I re-apply my missing lipstick. Missing because Kace kissed me. Because he keeps kissing me. And I keep letting him kiss me. I keep kissing him. And liking it. I really like it and him. So much, but I’m not overthinking this—whatever this is—going on between us. Okay, I will overthink every moment with this man, because that’s what I do, just not now. I’ll wait until later tonight when I’m home alone in my own bed.
