Page 80 of Cruel Kiss

"You should keep an eye on that one," I advise.

"Yeah," he growls. "I intend to."

We stop near a column. A server offers me champagne and I take it, mostly to have something to do with my hands. Ronan doesn't take one.

"You want anything?" I ask.

"No. Somebody in this family should stay sober and alert." He looks at me. "Might as well be me."

"Unexpected," I remark.

Ronan arches a brow. "That I'm not drinking?"

I nod. "Yeah. I thought you'd want to blame your handsiness on the alcohol. If you keep touching me while you're sober, I'm going to start to think you mean it."

His hand on my waist doesn't move. If anything, it presses in. "That's because I do."

I shiver and squirm. "That wasn't in the deal."

"No," he agrees. "A lot of things haven't been in the deal lately."

I look up at him. The gone-by-morning rule is dead and buried somewhere down the hall of my house and neither of us has held a funeral for it. He knows it. I know it. We just keep circling the grave, refusing to lay flowers.

"Not here," I whisper.

"Why not?"

"Not with all of them watching."

He nods, slow, and lifts my hand to his mouth. "Later, then."

Later.

What a delicious promise.

What a very bad idea.

I take a sip of my champagne and remind myself why I'm here. It's not for the dancing. Nor is it for the way his hand feels on my back. I'm here because it'suseful, like I said. And I have a job to do tonight, one I set for myself in the car on the way over.

The job is this: get through this whole thing without letting anyone see what I'm hiding.

I know it's in there. But if I don't even have the courage to say it under cover of darkness (and Ronan's bedsheets), then I definitely don't have the courage to say it out loud in the real world.

It's that age-old balance between standing on your own two feet as a proud, independent woman of the world versus the terrifying vulnerability of admitting you want, crave, maybe evenneedanother person.

I've spent a whole life reaching for people and getting nothing back.

Then I spent months learning I don't need to reach at all.

It's hard to split the difference.

But I'm getting better at it. Protecting my peace, as the kids say. Little by little, I feel myself settling into the evening, worrying less and less about how I look in this dress or what these people think of me.

So of course, that's when Vera decides to make her move.

She peels away from the window, blue silk floating ethereally around a frame that's supermodel-skinny. She's stunning, truly. High cheekbones, flawless makeup, porn star curves. She can't be more than thirty. I find myself developing an immediate girl crush.

But then, just as quickly, I fall right back out of love with her.