I tried to ignore the beauty and strength of his shoulders by noting the line of elite pride they made, sharp as a knife. Something about him made me feel silly, and the desire to take off my wig to even the playing ground made me feel even sillier.
Cam pulled her phone out of her pocket, frowning. “That’s Tyler—he’s got the baby at home alone. I’ll be right back,” she promised to no one in particular as she scuttled off.
And Jett took Georgie’s hand and dragged her onto the dance floor. I watched them go, smiling.
Leaving me alone with him.
It was then that I noticed the tingling of my nerves, gathering at my cheeks—one in particular, the one closest to him. Instinctively, I turned toward the feeling and found myself pinned beneath the weight of his gaze.
This must be what a rabbit feels before the wolf devours it.
Everything about him was imposing, as if he took up more space than his mass alone required. As if somehow, he consumed all the nearby air to power the rise and fall of his broad chest. I was unable to determine if he was disapproving or just bored. If he was judging me or simply indifferent. All I knew was that the intensity of his observance had disconnected several wires in my brain.
I blinked, flashing a smile before breaking the connection, turning to search for Jett and Georgie in the crowd, finding them bouncing around to “Goodbye to You.”
“Well, they seem to have hit it off,” I said.
“Seems so.”
A hot sensation bloomed in my chest at those two little words. Words that, unlike his demeanor, I could instantly tell without question were disapproving.
“I can’t remember the last time I saw Jett dance. He’s better at it than I remember.”
Liam made a noncommittal noise.
And we fell into an awkward, fumbling silence.
I grappled for something to say, anything to fill the noiseless void between us. “And how about you, Mr. Darcy? Do you dance?”
“Not if I can help it.”
I cast him a look. A disbelieving sound somewhere between a laugh and a scoff escaped me, but he just stood there, stoic and stern, watching the dance floor like if he concentrated hard enough, he could conjure up the great secrets of the universe.
Before I could respond, Cam was back, grabbing at my arm.
“The baby has a fever,” she said, and I thought she might be about to cry. “Tyler’s on it—I mean, she just has a little low-grade fever—but I just want to talk to him for a minute longer, and Fabio’s here. Will you make the announcement so I don’t cry like a crazy person all over the microphone?”
I chuckled, pulling her into a hug. “Of course, and don’t worry. She’ll be fine.”
Cam sniffled. “God, I’m the worst. Thank you, Laney.”
The second I let her go, she hurried off again.
Eager to get away from my uncooperative companion, I turned back to excuse myself.
But he was gone.
I brushed away an unexpected streak of disappointment and headed to the stage with my chin up, which coincidentally raised my nose in what probably looked like snobbery. How I hadn’t snubbed him first escaped me.
If Liam Darcy didn’t want to talk to me, I would happily oblige, and if I were lucky, I wouldn’t see him for the rest of the night.
Too bad I’d never been one of the lucky ones.
2
The Very Last Place
LIAM
I could remember few times in my life I’d been so uneasy.
It wasn’t the crowd, although I hated those with unbridled passion. The wigs didn’t help, nor did the Whitesnake ballad, the combination underscoring just how much I did not belong. My sister slow-dancing with a guy wearing rabbit furs and leather would have been my first real guess, but even that was a situation I could influence. A situation I was unhappy about, but a temporary one.
My gaze caught one face in particular, one unaffected by the blond Fabio wig or the atmosphere of the ridiculous party. One ablaze with colored lights and unrestrained exuberance as she talked to a friend.
Laney Bennet.
I studied her for a long moment through the end of “Here I Go Again” and into “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” In her Fabio wig, I couldn’t find anything particularly remarkable about her—except her eyes, which were such a vivid shade of blue, I could see them perfectly, even in the low light. But she had no gravitas, though her tongue was sharp enough. She was nothing like the women I knew.
Maybe that was why I couldn’t stop watching her. She and her friend bounced into the crowd like rubber balls, singing along with her mouth open so wide, I couldn’t figure out how she could still be smiling. She knew every word, which was equally baffling, pantomiming some of the lyrics and air-guitaring through the solo.
It was infectious. Were I a different man, I’d have met her out there, soaked up some of her joy.
But I was who I was. Freedom of that kind was unknown to me.
I took a sip of my scotch, which I’d procured on exiting the unpleasant conversation with Laney Bennet. Not because she was particularly unpleasant, but because I’d found myself lacking things to say. In part because I couldn’t stop watching her lips as she spoke.
An enigma. One I needed to leave unsolved.
With no small amount of force, I shifted my gaze to my sister and the other Bennet. Their hips were locked together as they swayed, singing to each other through the end of the song. But as “These Dreams” came on, they slowed. Her arms looped his neck as best they could for their height difference, and as she drew closer, his hands slid from her waist to span her back. But more worrisome than the placement of his hands was the look on their faces as they talked, turning in a small circle to the beat of the song.
The hiss of a fuse lighting in me was dangerous, one I’d dealt with more than a few times in regard to the safety of my sister’s heart.
Georgiana was all I had in this world. When our parents died a decade ago, the responsibility of everything fell on me—the estate, our family’s place at the ad firm, Georgie—and I picked up the yoke with the relief that came with something to do when you’d lost everything. What I’d thought my life would be, all that I’d imagined, crumbled and fell. But rather than excavate, I picked up the first brick and built on top of the wreckage.
She became my focus, the one person I had left. A daisy in a crack of concrete. Eternal sunshine. And I lived in the shadows cast by her shine, a silent guardian. Every time she cried, each time I held her in my arms, I felt her pain as if it were my own. No—instead of my own. I didn’t cry when they died. Instead, Georgie cried, and I felt everything through her.
Perhaps I’d sheltered her too much. She trusted others with blind faith, an unfathomable trait. I trusted no one, and she trusted all. She had the scars on her heart to prove it.
The last mistake, she’d nearly married. I learned at the last possible second of his intentions … two weeks before her wedding. The betrayal was total, her breakdown complete—so complete, I wasn’t sure how to pull her out of it. It’d been a year since then, and she hadn’t dated anyone, convinced she couldn’t be trusted not to trust.
But he was one in a string of men who weren’t good enough for her, who saw her for her status and not for the gift she was, and I wouldn’t give her up for anything less. The man who would win her would have to go through me.