Chapter Nine – Hazel
CHAPTER NINE
HAZEL
I t takes me about five minutes to be able to complete my job for the silent auction. Milo has no idea just how powerful his kisses are. I’ve been kissed before, but nothing like the one he laid on me a short while ago. I felt it all the way to my soul.
Once I get my brain in working order, I go through and double check all the descriptions for the articles that are about to be auctioned. I get in a groove and run through them pretty quickly. When I reach the last item, a weekend at a Darling Resort in the United States, I sense someone behind me. I turn with a smile on my face, which dissolves the moment I see Jason standing there.
“Hey, Haze. I thought we could catch up.”
Jeez, the guy is a piece of work. He is so not understanding that I want nothing to do with him. He’s put on weight, and he’s bloated. I heard he drinks a lot now. His weekend habit of getting blitzed has apparently spilled over into the week. And who the hell dresses him? I’m usually stuck up about clothes, but seriously, his tux looks like he slept in it.
What did I ever see in him?
“Why would we do that?”
He blinks. “What?”
“I’m asking why I would do that? I think we said everything we needed to say five years ago.”
He broke up with me on my graduation day. We had been talking about moving in together, marriage, kids. Then we weren’t.
“We didn’t really talk it over.”
I shake my head. “You were the one who broke up with me by text.”
He didn’t show up to my graduation and just sent me a message that said I was suffocating him. One of the happiest days of my life became a memory I would like to forget.
“That was stupid. I was stupid.”
“You were ?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, I was implying that you hadn’t gotten any smarter over the years.”
“I’ve been trying to come up with a way to approach you.”
“Is this part of your twelve-step process? Apologizing?”
“What would I be apologizing for? We were growing apart for months.”
That was news to me. “We’d been to look at apartments three days before you broke up with me. Then there was the fact that you were fooling around with Rachel.”
“I was confused.”
“Sounds like you really were,” Milo says. The moment I hear his voice, my entire body shivers in anticipation. I glance over at him and notice he’s watching me, his gaze on my mouth. I lick my lips in reaction, and he rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath.
“Darling? What are you doing here?”
“I was just here to make sure that you weren’t trying to make time with my girl.”
“Your girl?” The way he says it makes me believe he doesn’t really think we’re together. I mean, we aren’t, but that pisses me off.
“Yes, his girl,” I say, my voice dripping with irritation. “I think we’re done.”
“I don’t think we are,” he says as he takes me by the elbow. I don’t feel threatened, but I’m mad.
“We were done five years ago.”
“But—”
“No buts. I’m done with you. I have been for years and why you’re here makes no sense whatsoever.”
“I…” he glances at Milo and for some reason, he pales. When I look over at my friend, I see the anger and have to fight to step back. I have never seen Milo angry before, and I know he would never hurt me. But he is definitely not a man anyone would want to anger.
“I thought we could catch up.”
I frown. “What aren’t you getting?”
Milo opens his mouth, but I hold up my hand to let him know that I have this. His mouth quirks, and he nods his head once to let me know that he will let me handle it.
“I don’t want to be a with a man who was such a loser that the only way to break up with me was on text.”
“It was too painful.”
I roll my eyes. At him and at myself. There’s a good chance five years ago, I would have fallen for that. I would have tried my best to smooth things over. But one thing I have learned over the last few years is that smoothing the situation over doesn’t mean that things are okay.
“If it was too painful, then you should have stayed around.”
“He was too busy,” Rachel Burton says as she steps up next to him. She slips her arm through his.
She’s dressed just this side of trashy. The dress she’s wearing probably cost her more than five thousand dollars, but it’s too gaudy, and a little too tight. Rachel is a pretty woman, with blond hair and a stick thin body, but she wears way too much makeup. She didn’t used to look like this, but I sense she’s panicking about getting married. There is also a venom about her I just don’t get, but I don’t like her mother much either, so the apple probably didn’t fall that far from the bitchy tree.
I look at her, then at Jason as he tries to untangle himself from Rachel, but she seems to hold on tighter.
“Listen, this is all great, but I have things to do. The auction is about to start, and I haven’t even had anything to nibble on. So, I am going to leave you two to figure out what the hell you are both talking about.”
“Sounds good,” Milo says, offering me his arm.
I take it and we go to the buffet tables. It isn’t anything heavy, but there’s a lot. And I realize then that I forgot to eat lunch. My stomach grumbles at the spread that’s before us. I’m thankful for the music playing at that moment because I can’t even think about how embarrassed I would be if Milo heard my stomach rumbling.
We get a couple of plates and I think that he’s going to find Silas and Georgie. Instead, he steers us toward a small table in a secluded corner. He waits for me to sit down before he does, after moving the chair closer to mine. In fact, I’m practically sitting in his lap.
“You know you don’t have to do this.”
He says nothing as he watches me pick up a shrimp and pop it into my mouth.
“I thought this is what we were doing?”
“Yes, but right now, who is paying attention?
He chuckles. I love his chuckle. It always makes me happy and warm inside.
“I think you forget who you are, sometimes.” He leans closer so he can whisper in my ear. His breath feathers over my skin and I shiver. “Everyone is watching us right now.”
I whip around and find out that he’s right. I mean, they aren’t openly staring, but they are throwing glances our way.
“You grab attention everywhere you go.”
I look at him. “I think it has to do with you.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t see it, but people watch everything you do. You draw attention just by being yourself.”
The way he says it makes the air back up in my lungs. It’s like he admires me. I can feel myself falling into the trap. I have to keep reminding myself that this man is just doing a favor. He’s playing a role.
“All the women were tittering about you.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“The only woman I care about tonight is you.”
I say nothing because I can’t. He’s staring into my eyes, holding my gaze hostage. The sincerity in his words pierce through all my barriers. I open my mouth to say something…anything, but my name is called up to the stage.
I blink, pulling myself out of the spell he cast on me.
“I gotta go.”
He nods. “We’ll finish this discussion later, Hazel.”
It sounds like half promise, half warning. Just the thought leaves me a little freaked out. And a little horny.
“Okay.”
It’s all I can say before I rise and hurry off to do my job for the charity.