18. If This World Were Mine #3
“Julian,” I whispered right under his jaw.
“Mm?”
“I didn’t know you could dance.”
“It’s been a while.”
He pulled me closer and my thumb settled at the back of his neck. Cheryl Lynn’s voice came in answering Luther’s, two voices answering each other, offering things neither could afford.
He tilted his face down and I felt him breathe me in.
“What are you wearing?”
I lifted my head off his chest. “My dress?”
“Your perfume.”
“Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.” I settled back into him, and inhaled where his collar met his neck. “Oud Satin Mood?”
He looked down at me. “You know my cologne.”
“I know a few of yours. You rotate. But you always smell good. Bibliothèque is my favorites I think.”
He just looked at me. “You pay attention.”
“A little bit.”
The song moved into the next verse, and whatever distance had still been between our bodies no longer existed.
I let my eyes close for a moment and when I opened them, across the floor, Simone had her hand over her mouth dabbing at her eyes.
Aunt Lorraine had a hand pressed to her chest. Half the tables nearest the floor had given up pretending they weren’t watching, and at the bar Tre was leaning back with his arms folded and a smile on his face.
“Julian.”
“Yes.”
“Everyone is staring.”
“Let them.”
I rested my head back on his chest and closed my eyes for a moment. He rubbed his hands up and down my back once, then squeezed me slightly against him.
I didn’t say anything else. He didn’t either. When the song faded, he stepped back, and my hand slid down off his neck, to his chest, resting there a second.
“Thank you,” he said, taking my hand in his and kissing it. Then he kept my hand and walked me off the dance floor. He didn’t let go until we were at the edge.
“Alyssa. I should —”
“I know. I’ll catch you again later.”
He went one way through the room. I meant to go back to the table, but took two steps and realized I couldn’t sit down yet. Not after that. My heart was beating like I’d run somewhere and I had no idea what my face was doing. I needed a couple minutes and a mirror.
I headed for the restrooms, but didn’t make it. Sabrina stepped into my path before I reached the end of the corridor.
“You danced with him.”
Her fake smile was gone. Whatever had held her together earlier was not holding now. I could smell the vodka under her perfume.
“Sabrina.” I kept my voice even and moved to step past her. “Have a good night.”
She side-stepped and blocked me. “I’m not finished talking to you.”
“We weren’t talking.” The Jersey version of me was ready to give her a verbal ass whooping.
But there were two hundred or more of Julian's guests on the other side of that wall, and I was the new face in a town.
Sabrina was clearly drunk and hoping to bait me into a scene.
I wasn't going to hand her one at this event.
“You don’t know what you walked into.” Her voice dropped, harder.
“Three years I’ve known that man. Three years.
He entertains his little distractions, the new face, the project, whatever’s shiny that month, and every single time he gets bored and comes back to me.
Because I know what he likes. I know exactly how to make that man forget his own name.
” Her eyes raked me. “You think because he’s playing hero to the sad widow, that means something? ”
“I think you need to move out of my way.”
“He always did have a thing for women who need rescuing. It makes him feel like a god. But the novelty always wears off, and when it does —”
I stepped to go around her again. Her hand shot out and closed on my arm, manicured nails digging in.
And that was the end of my diplomacy. Words were free. Hands cost. “Have you lost your mind?” I took her wrist and twisted until the fingers opened.
She gasped, stumbled back, then her face went ugly and she lunged.
“Back the fuck up, ho.” Taryn was between us before Sabrina finished the motion, Simone a step behind her. “You’ve got three seconds to get out of my girl’s face before I forget where we are.”
Sabrina stopped short. The corridor had gone quiet with people at the edges of it. A phone or two, already up.
Taryn had handed me the exit. I didn’t take it.
“You keep telling me what kind of man he is.” I kept my voice level. “Three years you said? And the only thing you know is what he felt like in the dark. That’s your whole education?” I laughed. “You wanna lecture me about him, but all you’re telling me is the of man he never let you meet.”
Her expression faltered and her voice slurred. “You don’t know what I gave up. How long I waited.”
And there it was. I didn’t know her, but I read people for a living so I knew the shape of her.
“I don’t know. But it sounds like you made yourself easy hoping he’d choose you.” I tilted my head. “He didn’t. That sounds like something you did to yourself. It doesn’t become my problem because you decided to put your hands on me over it.”
“You bitch —”
“I’m no charity case, and I think you know that.” I took half a step in; she backed into the wall. “I think you came over here because you bid twenty thousand dollars on a man who spent your whole bid looking at somebody else.”
I glared at her. “Walk back the way you came. Finish your evening, or leave, I don’t care which.”
Her chest was moving fast, she stared me down one more second. Then she turned on her heel back toward the ballroom and whatever was left of her night.
I kept my face expressionless, but inside I wanted to crawl out of my skin.
I hadn’t come to Lennox Falls to be a woman raging with another woman, over a man of all things.
Wanting Julian had felt so clean and clear on the dance floor, but out here, it felt like a thing I’d let break my composure in public.
And underneath it all, the smallest thing she’d said earlier had stayed put.
He’s a giver. He sees a need, and he meets it.
I’d taken her apart on the merits. I could do that in my sleep.
The other thing, the only thing that mattered, I couldn’t do at all: be sure.
The last time I’d been certain about a man, I’d been wrong.
Sabrina was a fraud and I’d read her down to the studs.
None of that told me whether, to Julian, I was the woman, or the need he could meet.
Taryn appeared at my side and looped her arm through mine, Simone through the other like nothing had happened, steering me back toward the light, away from spectators.
“For the record,” Taryn whispered, “that was art.”
“I can’t believe I argued with a drunk woman over a man." I shook my head embarrassed. “Pathetic.”
Simone squeezed my arm. “Stop it. You didn't argue over a man. She grabbed you, and you handled it. Those are different sports."
I let them walk me back inside.