Chapter 4
Isla didn’t move first. That was the rule she’d made for herself somewhere between the elevator and the bar, and she intended to keep it, because the first person to move in a room like this was always the one who ended up owing something.
Rhys didn’t move first either. He just stayed there, close enough that she could feel the warmth coming off him, glass forgotten in his hand, watching her with that same unhurried attention that had unsettled her back in the club.
“You’re very good at this,” he said finally.
“At what?”
“Standing very close to someone and making it look like their idea.”
Isla laughed, low and real, before she could stop it. “It usually is their idea. I just make it easy.”
“And is this your idea?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might.”
She stepped back then, just far enough to break whatever current had been building between them, and let herself wander the room instead, trailing a finger along the edge of a bookshelf that held more architecture books than novels. No photographs here either. No clutter, no evidence anyone else had ever stayed long enough to leave a mark.
A chessboard sat on a side table near the window, mid-game, one black knight still in the air, so to speak, waiting on a move nobody had finished making. A pair of running shoes, worn soft at the heel, sat by the door, out of place among the marble and glass. On the shelf, one of the books had a corner of paper sticking out, handwriting visible along the edge.
She didn’t ask about any of it. Not yet. But she was paying attention.
“You live like a hotel,” she said.
“I own a few of those. Might be habit.”
“Must get lonely.”
“Sometimes.” He said it simply, without the practiced self-pity most rich men reached for when they wanted sympathy. It threw her off balance more than any line could have.
She turned back to face him. “You don’t seem like the lonely type.”
“Everyone’s the lonely type. Some of us are just better at hiding it.”
Isla turned the word over, then caught herself doing it and set it aside instead. Interesting. That was the word for it. Interesting, and dangerous, because finding him interesting instead of useful was not something she’d planned for tonight.
She crossed back toward him, closing the distance she’d made a show of putting between them, and set her empty glass down on the counter beside his.
“Ask me something real,” she said. “Since apparently that’s what you paid for.”
Something flickered behind his eyes, there and gone, the same tell she’d caught in the club when she’d mentioned the girl who wasn’t with him tonight.
“Why dancing?” he asked. “You clearly could have done anything else.”
“Could I?”
“You don’t say the first thing that comes into your head.”
“Most people do.”
“Most people aren’t watching the room while pretending they’re the one being watched.”
“Careful. That almost sounded like a compliment.”
“It was an observation.”
Isla studied him for a moment, weighing how much truth to give a stranger who was rapidly becoming less of one. “My grades weren’t good enough for anything else. No college. My family made sure I knew exactly how disappointing that was.”
“That doesn’t sound like your fault.”
“It never is anyone’s fault when you’re the one being blamed for it.”
She hadn’t meant to say that last part. It came out sharper and truer than she’d intended, and she watched him catch it, watched something in his face soften in a way that made her want to take the sentence back.
“Someone hurt you,” he said. Not a question.
“Someone always does.”
He reached out then, slow enough that she could have stepped away, and brushed a strand of hair back from her face, his knuckles grazing her cheek for half a second before he let his hand drop again.
“Not tonight,” he said.
Isla’s chest did something complicated and unwelcome, something that had nothing to do with the plan she’d walked in here carrying. She covered it the only way she knew how, closing the last of the distance between them and tipping her face up toward his.
“We’ll see,” she said, and kissed him before he could answer.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t supposed to be.
Then his hand came up to cradle the back of her neck, and the kiss slowed into something she hadn’t planned for.
She pulled back before it could go further. Had to.
Rhys let her go without protest, breathing a little unsteady, watching her with an expression she couldn’t read anymore, which frightened her more than anything else that had happened all evening.
“I should go,” she said.
“Should you?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t move.
Behind her, forgotten in her bag, her phone lit up again. This time she heard it. This time, walking to the elevator with her pulse still uneven, she finally looked.
Three missed calls from her mother. One text from Beatrice, sent an hour ago, before any of this had happened.
*Mom booked a cake tasting this weekend. Rhys couldn’t make dinner again, but we’ll figure it out. You better show up.*
The elevator doors slid shut.
Isla looked at Beatrice’s message one more time.
She smiled.
“You’re planning a wedding,” she murmured.
“For a man that who will be in my bed”