Chapter 21
Isabelle
The next day, I sat next to Selena on one of the many tufted, silk-upholstered, multicolored ottomans that had been arranged
in a circle. I tried to ignore the unstoppable need to move.
Below the gilded ceilings and in romantic light from the torchères, Opéra Garnier’s grand staircase was the setting for Henry
and Selena’s Mehndi. Decorated with calla lilies, jasmine, and marigolds, the space was steeped in the traditions of both
Henry’s and Selena’s families. Garlands wrapped around the grand marble stairwell, where servers carried trays of what was
probably Michelin-star-quality food.
Not that I’d know.
My stomach groaned, interrupting the whispered sound from the violins being played at the landing.
“Hungry?” Austin chuckled across from me, taking note of my attention on the circulating servers.
The spiced scent of masala and chili wafted past, and I sat perfectly still.
I was starving, and the mehndi had been on my hand for over an hour, with hours to go before it was dry.
I looked directly ahead. From my vantage point at the top of the long landing between the central staircase and where it bifurcated,
I could see all the servers below at the main level, each carrying a tray of something tantalizingly delicious—caviar toast
points, bite-size samosas, masala vada. My patience wore thin as I got dangerously close to hangry.
“Yes . . .” I said as I shifted on my seat.
The ottomans were set up in a small circle for the bridal party to relax and have their mehndi done. At the bottom of the
central steps, anyone in attendance was welcome to have an artist complete theirs as well. Some guests had taken the opportunity.
“I can help with that.” Austin shrugged. “But you’re going to have to ask nicely.”
A baiting playfulness glimmered in the flecks of blue and gray in his eyes, lit under the golden glow of the ornately painted
domed ceilings. That flirtatiousness became more than the occasional occurrence while pretending. Now it was pushing the line
we never really agreed not to cross.
“You have to feed her, dear.” Beatrice Amari—the mother of the groom—gently tapped Austin’s shoulder as she walked past. Her seat was actually
next to mine, but she hadn’t sat down yet, busy greeting guests. “It’s how the men make themselves useful at this event.”
I scrunched my nose, leaning forward an inch, propelled by an electric excitement that made me want to move. It had to have been because I was sitting so long. I was restless. “Make yourself useful, dear.”
Restless or not, I was on pins waiting for his response, watching his eyes as closely as he watched mine.
He didn’t say anything else. A grin played tug-of-war between his cheeks, but he got up and made his way down the steps, seemingly
taking the hint. Moments later, he climbed back up the steps with a small plate in his hand, having followed orders.
But the mocking smile on his face made me sure his obedience ended there.
“Say please,” he teased, sitting across from me. I pushed my lips together in a tight line. His grin grew wider. “Come on . . .
ask for help.”
“I don’t like asking for help,” I admitted curtly.
When you were a woman of color in surgery, you had to be twice as good to get half the recognition by patients or colleagues.
I never gave anyone reason to pin my success on anything but my own skill. I also had the privilege of being Dr. Felix Mercado’s
daughter. Trying to grow out of that shadow meant never asking for help. Because he never did.
“Someone tell Malcolm we have breaking news,” he drawled sarcastically. “Why not?”
I paused.
A truth pushed up the back of my throat, so I swallowed hard and shoved it back down.
I didn’t ask for help because then I’d be in a position to hear that call go unanswered.
I simply didn’t want to get used to having someone I could count on.
I got used to the idea of Blake eventually being that person. That blew up in my face.
“I don’t need help,” I clarified.
Like I was trying to prove it, I used the tips of my fingers on each hand, the tiny bits of surface area that weren’t painted,
as chopsticks and carefully picked up a perfectly rounded pastry dipped in syrup.
“Clearly.” He watched, holding the plate steady beneath the path my fingers took, like he was expecting what happened next.
It dropped back down to his plate and, thanks to Austin, not my dress.
“It’s not that hard,” he goaded.
“Easy to say when you can use your hands.”
“I meant asking for help.” He leaned in, holding up a tiny rolled pastry. Finally, I gave up and opened my mouth and took
a small bite. His eyes watched me with every ounce of attention he had. That moment was suspended, slow. I scraped a crumb
that fell on my lower lip. The lines along his throat shifted. His voice lowered and became a little gravelly. “And I based
an entire career off of not using my hands. I can do a lot without them.”
That taunting smile paired with the intense focus from the stare—that didn’t leave me once—fanned heat down my body.
All of it felt like foreplay.
A drop of the syrup pulled at the corner of my lip. I lifted my hand reflexively to wipe it but stopped when his fingers gripped
my chin.
“No hands, Isa.” His reminder was low in the inches between us. His thumb dragged slowly across the corner of my lip, picking up the syrup on its way.
A buzz filled my stomach, like I’d swallowed two handfuls of popping candy, and they were going off like fireworks in there.
It moved through my nerves, making everything tingle.
He looked at his thumb for a moment like he was deciding. I opened my mouth, and the pad of his thumb pushed just past the
entrance. I ran my tongue over it.
A growl was just barely audible under his flexed jaw.
My mind filled with how he tasted. How good it felt when his body was firmly pressed against me. When he kissed me like it
was the last kiss I’d ever have; like he didn’t want it to end.
The memory prickled my skin with goose bumps. A heat welled in my core.
My heart roared in my ears, but I realized it was all I could hear. The grand staircase, a place where conversation was meant
to echo, quieted.
And it yanked me back to the present.
Feeling eyes on me, I swallowed hard against a dry throat and looked around to see that I was right. Everyone seated at the
top of the landing and many of those mingling below had stopped and looked because we were doing such a good job at selling
this that maybe we were attracting attention.
A little proud and a little mortified at how obvious the heat between us was, in a relatively public setting—a high-society
event—I cleared my throat.
Next to me, Selena’s wide eyes met mine, then darted right back down to the intricate design painted on her hands and arms.
“So, where’s Henry’s name? It should be here somewhere, right?” someone from the wedding party asked Selena. She looked down at Selena’s mehndi and drew everyone’s attention back to the bride.
“What an excellent question,” Selena announced a second later, and everyone became unconvincingly interested in the design.
Austin’s cheek twitched as he pulled away.
As if pressing play, the rest of the room went back to normal. I was thankful we didn’t occupy too much more of the room’s
collective attention and it went back to where it belonged—the bride.
We were supposed to look like a couple, not put on a show. I tried to think of something else to talk about that wouldn’t
immediately route us back to flirting.
But that was basically nothing.
So, I asked the first thing that popped into my head.
“The Stade is where the World Cup was, right?” I looked down at my own mehndi, needing to fill the space with words to get
my face to cool down from all the heat that flooded it. “The one before you came back to the States?”
I remembered it distinctly because Blake had been watching from my place, wearing a Cade jersey, of all things.
Something switched in his eyes. “You have been googling me.”
“Relax. It was a quick search. I was curious why you came back to the States.”
“I came back for a few reasons,” he admitted, his eyes moving along the golden moldings.
“And those are . . .”
He took a long sigh and sat up a little straighter.
“I’m more of a plan follower, not maker. My best friend always had a plan, and I went along with it. When he died, I sort
of dropped the ball, so to speak. I went back to the States to take care of everything that was left behind.”
Three puzzle pieces set themselves up perfectly, but left just enough room between for me to speculate, telling me so much
about what brought him to the same training facility I was doing research in without telling me much at all.
“Like the foundation?”
He nodded. “It’s the least I can do. He was like a momager, best friend, and tutor all rolled into one.”
“If I had functionality of my hands, I’d lift a glass to toast.” I tipped my chin up. “To excessively involved best friends.”
I could relate to that. So much so that I could feel the pull along my heart, knowing a familiar dynamic was changing for
me, and it was scary. I glanced over to Selena, deeply immersed in her mehndi with her soon-to-be in-laws.
The melancholy must have been visible.
“Not much changes,” Austin offered, drawing my attention back. “Don’t worry. She’s not leaving you behind.”
“I know that.”
“Well, if you didn’t,” he noted in a playfully taunting tone, like he knew better than to cross my pride.
“Okay . . . if I didn’t?” I conceded. “For argument’s sake . . . was it hard? Not being around when your best friend got married
and moved to a different place in life than you?”
“No, not all. His wife, Zoya, was like a part of the duo we never knew we needed.”
“Oh.” My shoulders slumped.
He chuckled. “But when they told me they were pregnant, I was thrown. It didn’t hit me till I visited during the offseason.
Everything in their lives had changed and a part of me was a little annoyed. I was happy for them, of course. But I was a
little resentful they didn’t just stay frozen while I was gone. That they moved ahead and built a life I didn’t feel like
I had a place in.”
A lump in the back of my throat made it hard for me to ask what I needed, but I managed to croak it out. “What did you do?”
“I became their kid’s favorite person as revenge,” he said quickly and flatly. A slow smile grew along his jaw seconds later.
I grinned. I couldn’t help it.
“I didn’t do anything,” he answered more seriously. “Love isn’t finite; it makes room. And you can’t slow things down but
eventually—in one way or another—you catch up to each other. One day you will have whatever your version of that looks like.
Everything settles out.”
I wondered what Austin’s version of a family looked like. Probably a kid or two. He was patient and caring. It was probably the type of thing he’d eventually
have.
Everything I’d probably never get to. I didn’t want to think about that. I was finally having some fun. I didn’t want to weigh
it down with truths that didn’t even matter since we weren’t really a couple, he was moving somewhere here soon, and I had
a legacy to get to.
I wanted to revel in the fun.
I smacked his shoulder with the back of my hand since it didn’t have any mehndi. “This is what they mean when they say listen to your elders.”
He waited a beat, studying me for a drawn-out pause.
“Careful.” His voice lifted, becoming lighter—like he was teasing. My shoulder relaxed. This I could handle. “I can still use my hands.”
“Is that a threat?”
A curl fell forward into my face and he brushed it back, his fingers leaving goose bumps in their wake.
He was pulling me back into the haze. This time I let him.
“No.” His fingers pulled my face toward him, sliding past my cheek to curl gently around the base of my head. I leaned in.
Under the sparkling lights, the blue in his irises was riddled with little facets of gray.
His lips brushed against mine.
It was hardly a kiss. It was warm and intimate.
It gently pressed and passed along my lips, drawing me in slowly.
“Offsides?” he mumbled.
“No,” I breathed, my eyes closed.
I let my mind go blank and not harp on what the hell we were doing. Because if I did, I would have noted that this wasn’t
like the kiss before. It was slow and tempting. Tiny brushes that were so teasing that my body warmed like it was so much
more. Desire curled deep in my belly.
Maybe because I hadn’t had sex in something like two hundred and four days, but who was counting?
Austin pulled away. Both of us barely opened our eyes to watch each other.
“Was he looking?” The words pushed out of my mouth like a reflex, some flimsy attempt to remind myself of the boundary between us.
His jaw flexed, but his gaze stayed glued to mine. “Do you care?”
I started, realizing what he was really asking, and what that meant. Even if we were pretending on all other fronts, this
spark between us was real. That realization lit a fire in my chest that danced between my legs.
“No . . .” I admitted, watching him carefully now. My mind flashed to all the ways we could make use of our gorgeous hotel
room and insanely comfortable bed. A bed I wouldn’t mind being pinned to after a nearly yearlong dry spell.
A smirk tugged at his cheek. “Then why ask, Isa?”
“I . . .” Maybe I wanted to see his reaction. That glint of heat in his eyes that told me he wanted every wicked scenario
playing out in my head just as badly. “I’m giving you the chance to back out, you know. A fling might offend those Regency-era
sensibilities.”
Both of his eyebrows lifted. The dim lighting carved streaks where his jaw flexed. “I’ve been waiting for the okay to go.”
“Oh.” My lungs burned, every breath laced with something hallucinogenic when I was that close to him. “You have it. You can
take control.”
“Good, because I plan to.” Eyes unmoving from mine, he watched me. For those extended seconds, all I could think about was
how much I wanted to touch, feel, taste him. Then he moved a few inches back from me and his eyes flickered around my face. “How long till you can wash that off?”
“A few hours.”
He let out a slow, controlled breath. “How about I help?”
My heart raced.
The space between our bodies crackled with electricity. It sent a buzz down my spine. I nodded. “I could probably use a hand.”
“Or two.”