Page 22 of Reckless
“This,” I said slowly, “may be harder to undo than you think.”
Kelly stared at me.
Then she pointed toward the doors behind me.“Get inside before I throw you into the Atlantic.”
“I ‘d like to see you tr-”
“Leave, Xerses.”
I turned, but halfway to the doors, I stopped, and looked over my shoulder.
She was still standing at the railing, wind in her hair, fury in every line of her body, staring out at the ocean like it had personally betrayed her.
Beautiful.No one else was like her.I went back inside smiling.
Charlie caught one look at my face and muttered, “Oh, we are all doomed.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Three
Absolutely Not
Kelly
I made it exactly four minutes after Xerses walked back inside before I decided I either needed to leave or commit a felony in front of his entire family.
Possibly both.
I stood out on the terrace long enough for the cold Atlantic air to stop feeling refreshing and start feeling personal.My hands were shaking.My face was hot.My body was still doing the deeply offensive thing where it remembered every second of him standing too close and talking in that low, precise voice like he had any right to make my pulse do that.
He’d publicly claimed me.
He taken the most humiliating pressure point in my life and turned it into a move on a board or something like that.
But the worst part?
Was me.
For one blazing second out there on the terrace, when he’d said he hadn’t liked the way they were looking at me, some rotten, traitorous part of me had melted.
Not all the way.
I still wanted to knee him in a critical region.
But enough.
Enough that I was furious with him and myself.
I went back inside before Roxanne sent out a search party.
The foyer was quieter than the dining room had been, but not by much.The house was still alive around me.Staff moving smoothly in and out of rooms.Distant laughter.The clink of glass.Voices carrying from farther down one of the wings.The place always felt like it had a pulse, too many people, too much affection, too much money, too much life.
Tonight it felt like a trap wrapped in silk rugs.
Hope caught me first.
She came around the corner holding two little desserts on a plate and stopped dead the second she saw my face.
