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My arms circled her under the water, and I brought her close to me, her face moving to my shoulder, half of her hair submerged in the water. My lips brushed her hairline, and I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
I skipped the flutes of champagne being passed around and headed straight to the bar for the good shit. I ordered an old-fashioned and took a drink the moment it was in my grasp, dreading the rest of the evening.
I might have a nice smile and seem charming, but truth be told, I hated these social events. Enough time had passed since my prison stint that most people had forgotten about it, so it was easy to chat. But also, most of the people high up in the hierarchy were guilty of shit far worse than what I’d been convicted for.
I was harmless by comparison.
But I also dreaded spending the evening with Scarlett.
I’d have to sit there and act like she meant nothing to me. Have to act like she’d wounded my pride when she dumped me. Had to somehow be passive-aggressive without being too passive-aggressive. It was a production that I didn’t have the energy for.
A woman came up to me at the bar. I hadn’t noticed her approach because my thoughts had been on Scarlett and her father. She was pretty, with long blond hair, wearing a beautiful dress. She struck up a conversation with me, and normally, I would just excuse myself and walk away, but since I was putting on an act, I let it be.
I noticed when Scarlett entered the party, even though she was clear on the other side of the room and I was engaged in a conversation, because she was that fine. She wore a black dress with the straps hanging off her arms. It was skintight and reached the floor, her killer heels making her ass even plumper.
I forced myself to look away and pretend to care about the blonde.
But fuck, I was exhausted. I was exhausted by all this bullshit. I had a woman I wanted to kiss right in the middle of that crowded room, but I couldn’t do shit about it. I had to stand there and pretend to care about a woman whose name I couldn’t remember, even though she’d just told me what it was.
Dante and Scarlett mingled at the party, taking the champagne flutes and sipping them like they weren’t horse piss. Despite the fact that Dante never touched his daughter, I could see why anyone would assume they were together—because he was bleeding-money-out-of-his-eyes rich, and she was the most beautiful woman at the party.
Our eyes met across the room.
The electricity crossed thirty feet, traveling from her eyes to mine and then back again. It was just a heartbeat, but an entire moment passed between us, our time spent in the bathtub the other night, waking up in the morning to a beautiful breakfast that we could never finish, her legs wrapped around my head when I woke her up that morning. I felt it all—and so did she.
Then she looked away and took a drink of her champagne.
“Are you alright?”
I turned back to the blonde.
“Just seem distracted.”
“Thought I saw someone I knew.” I gave her my focus again, and this time, I kept it in place because I had an image to uphold. “So you’re a violinist for the orchestra? That’s fascinating. I used to play the violin.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “We used to go to school together.”
“We did?” I asked, my eyebrows furrowed.
“I thought you didn’t recognize me,” she said with a chuckle. “Cassandra Rowley. I was second chair.”
“Oh…now I remember. Sorry, it’s been so long?—”
“And I look a lot different,” she said with a laugh. “I get that a lot. You look different too. A lot more…muscular.”
“Yeah, all I do is eat and lift.”
She smiled as she looked me over. “I can tell. You know, I had the biggest crush on you in school.”
I had no idea because I hadn’t even known she existed. “Wow, I didn’t realize.”
“So, are you seeing anybody?”
“Uh…” I spotted Dante and Scarlett approach, heading right for us at the worst possible time. “No.”
“Good,” she said. “Looks like it’s my lucky day.”
Dante shifted his eyes between us, trying to gauge if the conversation had concluded.
