Chapter 29
Blake
you doing?”
Blake glanced over his shoulder. Every single guest at the table was watching them. “Not the time or place, Dad.”
Warren’s face reddened, but he gave a short jerk of his head and pointed across the room. They circled the guests and ended up near one of the side entrances. Warren waved at a few people, nodded and smiled, and then leaned close to Blake. In a low voice he asked, “Why on earth would you bring that woman here?”
Blake’s hands tightened in his pockets.
“Please tell me this is part of a plan to seduce her out of her property. Otherwise this looks like a colossal mistake. You bring the owner of a building we’re trying to acquire as your date to the DeVeau Ball? I’ve told you a hundred times not to mix business with pleasure.” His teeth clamped down on the unlit cigar. “I know you have a history with her. Hell, you probably even still have feelings for her. Wouldn’t blame you if you did. But you aren’t in college anymore. You’re head of one of the most powerful companies in this city, and you don’t sleep with the enemy, son.”
Blake could feel his blood pressure zoom from high to boiling over in a matter of seconds. First of all, I’m not sleeping with her, not that it’s any of your business. Second of all, I know who I am. And I sure know I’m not in college anymore. If he were, he’d be a hell of a lot happier. He dug one toe into the ground. He couldn’t believe he was standing here letting his father chastise him, like he was a kid who’d missed a tackle at football practice. “I know what I’m doing,” he finally said. “You don’t have to worry.”
“Sure about that?”
“Oh, look! Picture perfect opportunity!” trilled a voice behind them. “Gentlemen, give me a smile!”
Blake turned to see Lily Jorgensen, one of the Globe’s premier photogs, aiming her camera at them. He wiped the grimace off his face just as her flash went off.
“Now, you can do better than that. Pretend you like each other, okay? Arms around each other’s shoulders. Gimme a good father and son shot.” She moved a few inches closer and squinted into the viewfinder. “The Carters take the Ball by storm,” she added as her flash went off a half-dozen times. “I know that’s a headline I can print every year.” She dropped the camera to her shoulder. “Some things never change, eh? Good to see you both.”
Before either man could answer, she’d disappeared into the crowd, aiming her camera at other guests.
“Fantastic,” Blake said.
“Embarrassed to have your picture taken with me?”
“That’s not it.” The crowd surged around them, and to his relief, an elderly couple Blake didn’t recognize corralled his father and started talking. Blake took the opportunity to sneak away. There was no reasoning with his father and no purpose in talking to him any further.
He eased through the crowd, looking for Emmy. Table Three had six of its eight guests sitting in place now, but she wasn’t one of them. To his disappointment, though, Nikolas was.
“You’re sitting here?” Blake asked.
Nikolas grinned, glassy-eyed, and held up his beer as a toast. “Sure am. I’m thinking I’ve hit the big time if I’m seated next to Eastefire’s CEO.” He laughed, and a girl who looked barely out of high school giggled beside him. It certainly wasn’t the redhead Blake had caught him with last week at the office. “Oh, hey, this is Annie,” Nikolas added. He slipped one arm around her shoulders and gave Blake a look of warning.
“Your, ah...sister?”
Nikolas’s smile slid around his face and fell off. Annie just looked puzzled. “I’m his girlfriend,” she said in a high-pitched voice.
“Oh.” Blake reached over to shake her hand. “Nice to meet you.” Run away, he wanted to warn her, but if she hadn’t figured out Nikolas’s slippery nature yet, she would soon enough.
“Where’s your date?” Nikolas asked. His eyes glinted, and Blake guessed he’d had more than a few drinks to heighten his party mood. As long as the coke doesn’t interfere with his job performance, I couldn’t care less what he does on his own time.
Blake didn’t bother answering, and he didn’t sit down. Instead he threaded his way through the crowd, passed the bar, and escaped into a hallway that ran behind the ballroom. He didn’t know where his date was, but he was going to find out.
Emmy
of the elaborately arranged velvet curtains and rearranged the straps of her dress. They kept falling down, probably because she didn’t have much of a chest to hold up the bodice in the first place. She sighed and checked her phone. She’d been here less than an hour. How was she going to make it to nine?
She peeked around the curtain. A few couples stepped onto the dance floor. For a minute or two she watched them spin by, counting how many women she saw in black, how many in gloves and how many barehanded, how many with fake eyelashes and how many with fake cleavage.
She lifted first one foot and then the other, trying to force some blood flow into her pinky toes. This isn’t my scene. Never was, never would be. She wondered how Blake stomached it. He’d always claimed to hate the pretentiousness of his family’s lifestyle. Back in college, he’d made up excuses to his father and avoided public events like these whenever he could. But now? It looked as though they were run-of-the-mill for him.
She glanced at a side door. The bands had to be somewhere in the hotel tuning their instruments and practicing, right? They couldn’t show up ten minutes before nine and be ready to go on. Lord knows she’d listened to Bryan rehearse for hours on end when he was still living with her. A quick look around revealed no sign of Blake, so she inched out into the hallway and drew a deep breath. I’ll find him in a minute. He’s probably still being lectured by dear old Dad.
The Hotel Victoria was huge. She’d looked up pictures of it online, but the pictures failed to do it justice. One hallway led to another, and then another, and soon she was completely lost. Every chandelier looked the same, and the paintings on the walls all blended together until she had no idea where she’d seen the plump girl with the cat and where she’d seen the sunset over the farmhouse.
“Whoa.” She turned another corner and found herself facing an ornate staircase. It looked like something out of Gone with the Wind, or maybe Titanic. She put one hand on the banister and imagined just for a moment that she was the heroine of one of those love stories, wearing a long, sweeping gown and descending the staircase as her hero waited at the bottom with a top hat in his hand and a look of passion in his eyes.
In her imagining, the hero was Blake.
Had always been Blake.
“What do you say we skip the formal and get right to the after-party?” Blake nuzzled her ear as they stood in his room at the Delta house and Emmy arranged her hair.
“I spent a lot of money on this dress.”
“And I love it.” He slipped both arms around her waist from behind and rested his cheek on her shoulder. “I would love it even better crumpled in a ball on my bedroom floor.”
Her mouth twisted in a smile. “You’re bad.”
“Mm hmm. That’s part of what you love about me.”
She turned in his arms. Downstairs, voices shouted and chanted and music cranked up to its highest volume as the other Delta brothers pre-partied.
“I do love you,” she said. She brushed her lips over his. “Even the bad parts.” Sometimes it consumed her, the love, the way she thought about Blake from the moment she woke until the moment she went to bed at night. Watching her mother jump from boyfriend to boyfriend over the years, Emmy had never guessed it was possible to find everything she wanted in one single person. But she had.
“I love you more.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “The offer to skip the dance still stands, you know...”
Emmy pushed away the memory. She’d been naive back in college. Young. Totally inexperienced when it came to men and boyfriends and love. Relationships ended or went wrong or simply disintegrated over time, and you had to accept that and move on. The last thing she needed to do was stand here reminiscing about something long gone.
She decided to check the second floor for Bryan and his band, just in case. It wouldn’t take long. She climbed the stairs, keeping one hand on the banister to steady herself. Her borrowed shoes, impractical from the start, were now painful and cutting into her ankles. She had half a mind to take them off and just go barefoot the rest of the night.
At the top she looked down a long hallway of closed doors. She tried the first few, but all were locked. She didn’t hear live music anywhere close by, which meant the band probably hadn’t even arrived yet. Frustrated, she leaned against the wall, unzipped the clutch she’d borrowed from Liza, and took out her phone.
How’s it going? Liza had texted almost an hour ago. I want pics!!!
Emmy held up her phone, took a sad-faced selfie, and then deleted it. She switched the camera and took pictures of the staircase and the gilt ceiling and sent them instead.
It’s beautiful, she typed.
“Actually, if you’re taking pictures, the best view is out there.”
Emmy jumped and dropped her purse. All the contents spilled. “How did you find me?”
“Were you trying not to be found?” Blake stood at the top of the staircase, one hand in his pocket, looking impossibly handsome and concerned.
“No. I was just giving you and your father some talk time. Figured I’d look around while you hashed things out.”
“I’m sorry about that. I should’ve told him ahead of time that I’d be bringing you.”
“No kidding.”
“It’s a gorgeous place, isn’t it? I always forget until I’m here again.” He pointed at a door that opened to the outdoors. “There’s a great view of the harbor out there.”
She stood. “How high up are we?”
“Three stories. Not that high.”
“For you, maybe.” She retrieved her lipstick, phone, and tissues from where they’d scattered on the floor. And some change. And a different pair of earrings she’d stuck in at the last minute. And – thanks a lot, Liza! A condom had somehow found its way inside the purse as well. Emmy snatched up the tiny cellophane package and hoped Blake hadn’t seen it.
“It’s a huge balcony. With a very solid railing. It’s perfectly safe. I’ve been out there a bunch of times. Want to take a look?”
“No. I already told you. I don’t like heights.”
He walked over to her. “What if I hold your hand the whole time we’re outside?”
Oh, no. This close, she could breathe in all his yummy scents, Scotch and cologne and the pure masculinity of him that brought back memories so fierce they made her head swim.
The first time they kissed.
The first time they made love.
The first time they fought so hard she cried for an entire day.
The first time they made up, and Blake mended all her broken pieces back together.
Emmy began to wind one finger through her hair.
“Don’t.” He raised a hand to stop her. “You make me nervous when you do that,” he added. “I’m surprised you didn’t cut it all off. You threatened to a bunch of times in school.”
“We both threatened a lot of things back then.”
“We were kids.”
“You make it sound like it was a hundred years ago.”
“It feels like it was.”
Neither spoke for a moment.
Then – “Come outside with me,” he said again.
“It’s raining.”
“No, it’s not. It stopped a little while ago.”
She peered through the tall glass door. Sure enough, a shimmer of sunset shone through. No rain, though thunder still rumbled somewhere in the distance.
He pushed open the door. “Trust me. I won’t let you fall.”
I can’t, she wanted to say, but her traitorous feet followed him of their own accord. Before she knew it, she and Blake stood outside on an enormous balcony. He was right about the view; she could see the skyline in one direction and the harbor in the other. Lights everywhere. Traffic far below. The clouds above.
He was also right about the balcony. It was huge. And looked fairly safe, although the curlicued iron railing wasn’t more than waist high, and there was a small space at both ends. Someone might be able to slip through that space, her racing pulse told her. Be careful. Don’t walk any closer.
“I’m not going over there.” She stayed put, a safe few inches from the door and a healthy few yards from the railing. “I can see fine from here.”
“So can I.”
She looked up at the softness in his voice and found Blake not looking at the city view but at her. Somewhere below them, recorded music played.
“Dance with me,” he said.
“Here?”
“Why not here?”
“Because I should be looking for Bryan,” she began.
He put a finger to her lips. “Don’t say his name again.”
She frowned.
“I don’t like hearing you talk about another guy.”
“Blake, you can’t really –” tell me who to talk about, she wanted to say, but a funny sensation coursed through her. He was jealous. Jealous of someone he didn’t know, of someone who’d ceased to mean anything to Emmy long ago. She shouldn’t care that Blake was jealous, shouldn’t care about his thoughts or feelings at all, but she couldn’t help it.
“I can’t really what?” He pulled her close and wound one arm around the small of her back. “Besides, you agreed to be my date. You kind of owe me a dance. We are at a ball, after all.”
“The semantics are a little questionable, Carter. The ball is downstairs.”
“So? We can still hear the music up here.”
“Fine. One dance. Then we’ll go back down?”
“Whatever you want.”
The music swelled, riding on the night air. He held her tentatively at first, as though afraid he might break her. In the high heels, she came up a little past his shoulder, to a different spot than she had back in college. But after a minute they found a rhythm, their rhythm, and she relaxed into his touch. We still fit together. I didn’t forget how all our edges match up. And neither did he.
It was so easy to slip back into his embrace, even after all these years. So easy to like the way her chest met his. His fingers closed around hers, like they’d belonged there always. His hand tightened around her back, and waves of desire pulsed along her spine.
Warning bells went off inside her head. Get a grip. You cannot melt into a puddle of hormones every time Blake touches you.
But that was so much easier thought than done. She centered her gaze on the soft hairs at the base of his neck and tried to remind herself what she was doing at the ball in the first place. Bryan, remember? The band. The money. Her mortgage.
She moved back to put some space between them. “Your father was pretty pissed when he saw me.”
“So?” He rubbed his thumb along the back of her hand.
“Just saying. I’m sure he doesn’t think the deal is working out the way he planned.”
“Then it’s a good thing he’s not the CEO.” His gaze burned into hers, and she could read it as clearly as if he’d spoken the words aloud.
Fuck the deal. Fuck talking about business. I want you. Here. Now.
If he kissed her again, she’d be lost completely. Her knees would wobble, her sanity would vanish, and she wouldn’t even care. Who was she kidding? She hadn’t been wrong about that heady rush of love back in college. Relationships like theirs didn’t disintegrate, no matter how much time passed. The only person she’d ever, ever felt this way about was Blake.
The song carried them around and around, and with every turn, his chest met hers. His chin brushed her forehead and his hand tightened around her own. Emmy tried to remember how to breathe normally and failed. She closed her eyes and willed herself to hold on until the music faded. Then she could say they had to go back downstairs, join the crowd, wait for the band to start, anything.
The song ended. Finally.
But before she could move, Blake brushed a kiss against her cheek, then slid his mouth down to hers. Ten thousand fireworks went off inside her skull, and she abandoned all resolve and kissed him back.
“Em, if we start something...”
She deepened the kiss. She wanted to start something, and finish it, and do everything possible in between the start and the finish. Her head fell back as his mouth moved down her neck, and only when the heavens opened up with rain did she jump away from him and rush back inside.