“Go.” Michael relieves me of my empty glass and jerks his head in her direction. “Say hi. Get it over with. It’s getting harder the longer you stand here. You’re thirty-four fucking years old. You know how to talk to a woman.”
That’s true. But there are standard human women. And then there’s Mia Jamison.
Separate categories.
“You’re right,” I say grimly, more because I’m sick of myself than from any sudden infusion of courage. “I need you two to keep eyes on the situation for me. Be on standby. Keep the car running. Maybe get a fire extinguisher. Just in case.”
We all laugh.
“Get outta here,” Jake says. “Report back.”
“You got it.”
“And if you hurt my sister again? I’ll kill you,” Michael adds with a hard glint of bloody murder in his eyes.
I take off without disputing his assertion about who did the hurting in my relationship with Mia. My feet get heavier as I work my way through the crowd, which is elegant and nicely liquored by now. By the time I get within ten feet of her, they weigh a ton apiece. My steps slow. My heart races. And all I can do is stare, because there she is after all this time and I can’t fucking believe it.
Mia Nova Jamison.
My first love. The woman whose image, smile and laugh burrowed their way into my brain one Roman summer when I was twenty and have remained there ever since. Resisting all my best efforts to eradicate them.
Like malaria or the kudzu that suffocates trees in the South.
I’m not happy about my excitement here, mind you. Why? Because I hate Mia Jamison for the way she left my life and for the condition she left me in when she did it. I should mention that up front. And I’m not talking about your garden-variety hate, as in I hate sushi. Let’s get pizza instead. I’m talking about the kind of hate that gets stronger over time, rotting you from the inside out. Sometimes it simmers. Sometimes it boils. Either way, the hate has no problem whatsoever existing alongside my ongoing fascination with this one woman.
Even so, my lingering hard feelings don’t stop me from staring at her. And I doubt they’ll ever stop me from wanting her.
You can’t blame me for that. She’s got a Liv Tyler vibe that’s enough to make people lightheaded when they see her. But her hair is blacker, her skin paler and her eyes bluer. Her dimpled smile is all her own, as radiant as a Tahitian sunrise. She’s always been lean and athletic. That hasn’t changed if the way her strappy and slinky black dress pours over her thighs is any indication. With a dress like that, you start to wonder about the panty situation. If any. She wears a pair of killer heels that really work for her, but not as well as they work for me and my impressionable dick.
She laughs at something the woman says. The husky sound combines with the flash of her white teeth and the confident way she flips her hair over her bare shoulder to form something glorious. I can’t lie about it. She’s on top of the world tonight, clearly. I allow myself to be mesmerized and wallow in that smile for several suspended seconds.
I’m allowed. I haven’t seen it for twelve years.
But then, without warning, she turns her head in my direction as though she’s heard my heart thundering over all the ambient noise. No surprise there. The two of us were always great at creating our own energy field. Our gazes connect across the ten feet that separate us. I feel that connection as a zap of electricity shoots straight up my spine. She stiffens, her eyes widening. Her smile fades, leaving something stricken behind as color floods her face. She recovers quickly, peeling her attention away from me and recapturing most of her social graces for the benefit of her friend, but she’s not that good an actress.
Except for the part when she acted like she gave a rat’s ass about me back when we were in college.
That was good.
This? The unmistakable flare of panic in her big baby blues? The glitch in her composure as she smooths her hair with a hand that now looks a little shaky? She’s rattled and she can’t hide it. I consider that a win. God knows she’s done nothing but rattle me since the day I laid eyes on her.
In a stroke of good luck, I complete my approach just as the woman excuses herself from Mia, leaving Mia to hesitate before squaring her shoulders and turning to face me. Maybe she was tempted to take off with the woman, but the Mia I thought I knew would never do that. She’s many things—merciless witch comes to mind—but a coward isn’t one of them.
Sure enough, she hitches up her chin, eyes glittering.
“Liam Wilder. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
I shrug and slide my hands in my pockets, buying myself time to get my shit together. It’s not easy to think straight while being in her presence and hearing the throaty sound of her voice again.
“I’m full of surprises.”
“That you are. I didn’t know that Michael had invited you.”
“He didn’t, but I’m sure that was an oversight.” I ease closer, arrested by the subtle defiance in her expression and by her scent, some carnal blend of flowers that defies description and is exactly the way I remember it. “You probably didn’t know I was back in town.”
“Odd, huh? You’d think a news flash like that would make the front page of the Times.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. One of the most intriguing things about Mia has always been the way she sharpens her tongue and wields it like a samurai sword, slicing and dicing people like a professional.
“Actually, Michael did mention you were back in the city.” She hesitates. “And that your mother had died. Sorry to hear that. I’m sure it wasn’t easy.”
“Thanks,” I say, which is all I can manage when I think about my mother’s decline and death. She wasn’t a gem in the mother department, but she was the only parent I had left, given my father’s sudden cardiac arrest death right before I started college. Not to mention the fact that Mia seems concerned for me, and a tender emotion from Mia is, sadly, like a hit of heroin to a recovering addict.
I am evidently the addict in question. No recovery here, boy.
“Did dying make her any nicer?”
“Nope,” I say with a startled laugh. “It’ll take more than a visit from the Grim Reaper to soften my mother up.”
She starts to smile with me, then catches herself and stops.
“You look great, by the way,” I blurt.
One of those delicate brows goes up.
“I pay a personal trainer, a hairstylist and an aesthetician to keep me spackled together these days. Glad to know I’m not wasting my money. And you’re not trying to flirt with me, are you?”
“Would it work?”
“Absolutely. Just like me going outside right now and trying to swim across the river to Jersey would work.”
I laugh again, somehow resisting the growing urge to swallow her whole. She’s that delicious.
“You looked great before all that, as I recall. Matter of fact, back in the day, I’d be looking forward to the end of the night and figuring out what you’ve got on under that dress.” I pause to give her a once-over that lingers on her small breasts, curious to see if the attention is enough to make her nipples bead the way they used to. Ah. There it is. So that hasn’t changed. Thrilling. “And you’d be looking forward to letting me.”