I hesitate, my head spinning.
“Are you flirting with me?”
He shrugs. Eases closer. “I don’t know. Is it working?”
Is it?
Of course it’s working. But I’m terrified to admit it. Terrified to let myself hope for anything more from him.
“Listen,” he says, giving me a temporary reprieve from my ambivalence. “I didn’t mean to freak you out on the chopper.”
“Now you tell me,” I say with a shaky laugh.
He starts to smile but it never quite takes hold. Something in his expression is suddenly far too serious for frivolities.
“Bellamy. We need to—”
“Bellamy,” comes a voice behind me, saving me from myself, this delicious spellbound feeling and whatever ill-conceived confession I would probably have made.
I hastily turn, arrange my features into something slightly less obsessed and try to act like the professional I purport to be.
It’s one of the valets.
“I just want to make sure we have the stand set up where you wanted it,” he tells me.
“One second,” Griffin firmly tells him before I can respond.
“No problem,” the valet says, looking a bit startled to be addressed by the big boss. “I’ll just be out front.”
He walks off, but the interruption has done the trick and brought me back down to earth, where it’s time for me to face facts, no matter how painful they might be. I needed the reminder that Griffin is not for me, for a dozen different reasons. He’s a jerk a good percentage of the time. He’s my boss. He’s older and much more experienced. Insanely rich, belonging to this rarefied world where a person needs to pack a lunch before he or she sets out to walk from one side of this monstrous estate to the other. He’s a known player who dates models, actresses and civilian women beautiful enough to be models or actresses. He never looked twice at me before this past week.
I, meanwhile, am in imminent danger of losing my head over this man. A man who, while he may be interested in me now, will neatly slide another woman into my spot in his bed (probably while it’s still warm) tomorrow or next week.
In short? I must be out of my freaking mind to let Griffin get under my skin like this.
That being the case, I need to give him the widest possible berth tonight.
“I have to go,” I say, flustered. “I’m working tonight.”
He raises a brow. “Unlike me?”
“You know what I mean,” I say, scowling.
“Go. Do your job,” he says, then takes another sip of his drink.
Relieved, I start to walk away—
“As long as you understand that we need to finish our conversation. Sometime tonight.”
I stiffen, frozen inside some combination of dread and anticipation.
He brushes by me with the final pointed glance as he heads to rejoin his brothers, leaving me reeling with all the implications.
Luckily, I’m too busy to swoon. And this event will wait for no woman.
The next several hours pass in a flurry of activity, with me doing everything from overseeing the caterers and party planner to whispering important factoids about the guests to Griffin seconds before he meets them in the receiving line. My brain is too busy managing all the fine details to allow my personal feelings to interfere.
Until after the guests eat dinner, that is.
When we’re all outside under the massive tent that, along with the entire estate, sits atop a bluff overlooking the ocean. The breeze blows. White lights and candles twinkle. The jazz combo mellows everyone out with its take on Motown classics. The guests, nicely liquored now, move freely between the tables, chattering and laughing as they wait for the dessert service, which features Ella’s gorgeous pastries from Valentina’s. I’m beginning to think that my moment has come to sneak into the kitchen just long enough to grab my own quick dinner. All is right with my world.
Until I happen to glance in Griffin’s direction at the exact moment that some blonde sex kitten in a Versace dress decides to make her move and—I bullshit you not—leans in to whisper in his ear while stroking his crotch. I should explain that a) they’re standing in a relatively secluded corner between one of the bar areas and some potted palms and b) he immediately says something sharp to her, grabbing her wrist to stop her, but the damage is done.
That knife is stuck all the way up to the hilt deep inside my chest.
Worse, he sees me see them. Probably because my shocked gasp was loud enough to wake the dead. I have just enough time to rearrange my stricken expression into something politely disinterested, walk off and disappear into the kitchen before he can follow me.
My cheeks burn with impotent rage, humiliation and jealousy. I lean against one of the stainless-steel counters, trying not to get plowed down by all the bustling cooks and servers and to find Ella, desperate to get a handle on my irrational emotions.
“Ella. There you are. Thank God.”
Ella, who’s dressed in her pastry chef whites, apron and cap and is busy arranging treats on a silver serving tray, realizes I’m there and hurries over. She takes one look at my face, grabs my arm and steers me into the giant pantry, slamming the door behind us and clicking on the light.
“What’s going on?” she demands.
“No big deal,” I say, annoyed with myself now. This is stupid. Griffin does what I’m sure he always does and I’m ready to drop into the fetal position? Am I insane, or what? “Some woman just grabbed Griffin’s crotch. It’s nothing. I’m fine. Let’s move on.”
She pulls an incredulous face. “This is fine? You look like you’re either going to start crying or grab one of my knives and go cut someone.”
“I’m fine. I can’t flip out every time some woman makes eyes at my boss. Hell, every woman at the party is staring at him and his brothers. They’re all blinking out Fuck me now in Morse code every time he glances in their direction. And if he decides to fuck any or all of them, it’s none of my business.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I caught him watching you earlier. If I had to guess, I’d say any fucking that he wants to do involves you. Because he looked all soft and gooey-eyed. But what do I know?”
Hang on. This is an interesting development.
“The Beast doesn’t do gooey-eyed,” I say, afraid to believe it. It’s one thing for him to send me those vibes privately. Something else for them to be powerful enough to be noticed by someone else.
“Yeah,” she says flatly. “He does.”
We consider each other for a moment in silence.
“He was acting like he might want to hook up again,” I confess. “This morning on the helicopter.”
“Really?” She claps her hands and hops up and down in what I consider an appropriate reaction to this momentous news. “So what’s the issue?”
“The issue is that I don’t want to get my heart smashed,” I say, annoyed that I need to explain this to her, of all people. “You know I’m not good at casual sex. Duh.”
“So get good. This is your chance to practice.”
I gape at her. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you having a little fun. A summer fling before you leave for law school. You both enjoy yourselves while it lasts and get each other out of your systems. Then it ends when you leave. No harm, no foul.”