Page 4 of Dial F for Finance

I pull back enough to see her face.

Her pupils are blown wide. Her cheeks are flushed high. And when I really look—when I stop being the luckiest bastard alive long enough to actually use my eyes—I see it.

She’s drunk.

Not falling-over, slurring-into-a-ficus drunk. Jenna would never. But softened. Warmed through. Over the line where choice gets fuzzy at the edges.

“Hey,” I say quietly.

She frowns immediately, already offended by my tone. “Don’t hey me.”

I huff out a breath that is equal parts desire and self-preservation. “Jenna.”

“What?” she says sharply.

I keep my hands on her, but differently. Less possession. More steadying. It feels like trying to convince my body not to be a complete animal.

“You’ve had too much champagne.”

Her eyes narrow to slits. “No, I haven’t.”

“Jenna.”

“I’m perfectly capable of assessing my own condition.”

“I’m sure you are.” I brush my thumb once along her jaw and hate how much I still want exactly what she just offered. “I’m also sure I’m not taking you upstairs like this.”

For one second, she just stares at me. Then every soft edge vanishes from her face so fast it’s like a steel door dropping into place.

“Wow.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what? Be humiliated efficiently?” She pushes off the pillar, and I let her go, because holding on now would be the fastest route to losing a hand. “You can relax, Dominic. I’m not incapacitated. I made a suggestion, not a plea for intervention.”

“I know. And if you make it tomorrow, I’ll listen real fucking closely.”

That only makes it worse.

Color flashes high in her cheeks, this time from anger instead of champagne. “I’m not going to beg for credibility after kissing you on a terrace.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“No, you’re just implying I can’t be trusted to know my own mind.”

I scrub a hand over my face. “I’m saying I know mine. And mine says if I take you upstairs tonight, I’ll spend the next week wondering whether I got it wrong.”

The words sit between us, ugly and unavoidable.

Jenna’s laugh is short and flat. “Congratulations on your integrity.”

“That’s not⁠—”

“No, it is.” She takes one clean step back, putting air between us like a legal boundary. “You don’t have to dress it up. You’ve decided I’m compromised, and now we all get to enjoy you being noble about it.”

I bite down on the first defensive thing that rises up. “I’m deciding I’m not sleeping with you when you’ve been drinking, Jenna. I’m deciding that when we do this—finally—we do it with clear heads. I’ve wanted you for far too long to wake up next to you and learn you regret being with me.”

Her expression goes still in a way that’s worse than yelling.