Chapter 34
Immediately I’m standing in the corner of a Christmastime dream, exuding Charles Dickens in more ways than one.
This place is a time portal all its own.
Old-fashioned, enchanting. As for the party crowd, I blend in so swiftly that I almost turn back to run and grab Quinn.
Instead, I steady my breaths like a grown-up, panning the room, preparing for my next move.
No one even looks in my direction.
It’s anticlimactic, really.
I let my shoulders relax, taking three cautious steps, then three more.
Fancy guests mill about with champagne flutes and tiny appetizers.
Classic carols flood from a live jazz band stationed against the far wall, next to an extravagant bar.
Lofty ceilings and cherry-oak-wainscoted walls give the ambience of an old library.
Red-velvet chairs, black-leather booths, and giant fresco paintings throw back to Renaissance Europe.
I keep bumping through the crowd, intermittently averting my eyes from any possible contact and obsessively searching for Reid.
Again, nobody seems to notice or care that I don’t belong—in this party or in this decade.
As I sidle up to the counter, the bartender smiles at me warmly, all dimples, brown eyes, and Afro.
“What can I get you?” he asks. “We’ve got a full bar. Or cider? Eggnog?”
“Ooooh. Can I have eggnog, please? But virgin? Err—no alcohol.” I blush.
He just winks. “Virgin eggnog for the lady in red.”
Out of nowhere, I feel a presence appear at my side, radiating warmth.
“My dad loves that song,” says a voice.
It’s not a line or a pickup attempt.
Just a lighthearted, kind interjection.
But I freeze, my eyes dead ahead on the liquor bottles lined up like jewels against the back wall.
Focus on something, anything.
Ninety-nine bottles of . . .
I can’t move.
Because I know that kind of sweet observation as well as I know its source, that voice, not too high and not too low, just perfectly pitched, smooth like butter . . .
I’m slipping.
Into oblivion, into a mess of tangled thoughts—and wedding vows, his hands in my hair, of screaming babies, one then two, his lips on my ear: Can I plan you a party for your fortieth birthday?
The first and only man to romantically love me like a woman deserves to be loved.
I’m so sorry that happened to you. Our family calendar of color-coded pandemonium, but our pandemonium.
The scar above his left hip bone from a surfing accident when he was twelve, fin slicing—through his skin, through my heart now . . .
My husband.
Reid.
The vague pull of memory even snags on a time when his dad, in fact, hummed a bar of that song when Tabitha came down for dinner wearing bright red.
“Ma’am?” repeats the bartender, for the second time or maybe the twentieth. I can’t be sure; I fled my body just now. “Your eggnog?”
I blink at him, managing a thin smile, grabbing the beverage. “This looks so delicious, thank you,” I croak.
Then riskily, bravely, finally, I decide I will look at him, standing next to me now, within inches of my silk-draped frame.
Turning to my right, I force myself to absorb the full vision of him, as briskly but intentionally as I can.
And I do.
Boldly, I do.
I take in his crooked grin, trim black suit, fantastic hair.
He looks young—my gosh, he looks young. His haircut is preppy, his face lean, his stature broader than I recall at this age.
No fine lines around his eyes yet. But also, he looks so confident.
Unwavering. Cool. Like everything must come easy to him.
He’s dripping with swagger, but not with sleaze, which is no insignificant feat.
Wow, he looks good.
Unbelievably good.
The heat of attraction thrums through my body. I’m twenty-one, twenty-nine, and forty at once. It demands all the willpower on Manhattan Island for me not to grab his neck and pull him into a hug. Not to kiss his face all over and tell him everything.
Mostly, how much I’ve missed him.
He cants his head slightly, blue eyes blank. “I don’t think we’ve met.” He holds out a hand, which I know will be large and just rough enough to be sexy.
I grab it, picturing his hip scar again.
“I’m Sutton,” I say.
He gives a gentleman’s nod. “I’m Reid. Nice to meet you, Sutton. Or should I say”—he nods toward the bartender—“lady in red.” He grins again.
Another effortless art form of Reid’s: His cheesiest comments always land with disarming charisma. How does he do it? I laugh. “It’s a great song.”
I sip at my eggnog.
Delicious.
Reid straightens, rapping the bar with his pointer finger. “You work in our Wall Street office?” His gaze leaves mine, searching behind the counter, and my heart drops a notch. Don’t look away from me, Reid! I don’t like his full attention drifting away from me for even one flash.
Every second of this meeting matters.
Pull it together. Seize his attention. Turn on the charm.
You’re Sutton Layne!
“I don’t work in the Wall Street office,” I say, going with honesty. “Yet, anyway! I start soon.” Okay, honesty adjacent. “I’ll be assisting one of the, uh, teams. It was so kind of them to invite me. They said it would be a good chance to . . . get to know some of the people.”
His brows spike with sincerity. “Nice! Who are you working with?”
Crap.
“Jeff,” I spit out of nowhere. “Just . . . a great guy.”
He nods, seeming interested. “Stevens or Hamilton?”
I gulp. “Uh . . . Hamilton. Definitely Hamilton.”
Reid whistles. “Good luck with that.” He glances around like a deviant, voice hushing.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Jeff Hamilton has never been wrong.
Never. Not once. About anything! Isn’t that just incredible?
” He flattens his hands on the bar. “You’ll be working with a superhuman species incapable of human error.
So, yeah. Just remember he can’t make mistakes—incapable—and you’ll be just fine. ”
He winks.
I think maybe he looks at my mouth, glossed red, before slipping his eyes to the ceiling.
He’s nervous; I know he is.
He’s attracted to me.
I can tell.
And I need to get him alone.
The whole story—our story—is vibrating from my core. I think it will be best to just spill it. I might be crazy, but I think he’ll believe me.
Won’t he?
“I appreciate the tip,” I say a little suggestively, simpering. I inch closer to him. He doesn’t move, but he does stiffen. Now I glance behind the bar. “Are you waiting for a drink?”
He runs a hand through his dirty-blond hair.
No wedding ring, I note.
“Yeah—I don’t know what’s taking so long.” He shifts in his shoes.
I smile. “When it’s ready, would you want to—I don’t know, sit somewhere together? Talk some more?”
This time, his eyes find my scarlet lips, and he doesn’t tear them away. I think I even see them moisten before he bites down on his lip.
And swallows.
Then he clears his throat and flattens his tie.
Finally, his pools of eyes meet my own.
“I actually feel like—” he starts. “Never mind.”
“What?” I say urgently.
He shakes his head. “I can’t. It sounds like the worst kind of line.”
I shake my head harder. “Try me.”
Trust me, babe, I don’t mind.
He holds up both hands like he’s caught.
“It’s just that you seem . . . familiar to me.
I feel like we’ve met before.” He pauses, gesturing to the region in front of his heart.
“Like . . . I actually feel it, somewhere in here.” His cheeks flush.
“Oh my gosh, that was so lame. I’m sorry.
And way too intense for work party conversation.
Wow. Yeah . . . On the other hand, I think—I know—I would almost certainly remember meeting you. ” He coughs into a fist. “Anyway.”
I step nearer to him still.
He is so entirely Reid in this place, in this space, in this second, I can hardly conceive it. Nervously adorable and respectful and warm and handsome and honest and good.
I decide right here at the Oak Room bar that he is the most lovable, perfectly imperfect person roaming the earth, just for me, and I will not be spending one more day without him. I will fight for him, and for us.
“We have met before,” I hear myself say softly—in the very moment that not one, but two drinks appear like magic in front of him.
Right as I add: “We’ve met many times.”
I roil back at the sight of the beverages, my eyes darting to both glasses, both limes, both straws, and then back to Reid.
He freezes, now shifting his own gaze back and forth between the drinks and me—a decision point.
“We—”
He’s about to finish his thought when a petite young woman, a beauty-queen blonde in a short dark-green off-the-shoulder number, materializes behind him.
She stands on her tiptoes and pecks his cheek.
Her demeanor is high pep, curled hair spilling all around her shoulders.
“What took you so long, baby? I missed you.”
Baby?
Come on, Reid. She’s so young! Practically captain of the cheer squad.
She must be, well, around twenty-nine.
But still.
I missed you?
That was supposed to be my line tonight.
As the girl’s mouth pops into a smile, cloud white, she reaches up to fold back a stray curl behind one ear.
Even her ears are cute.
Then I blink as something catches the light.
Something on her left hand.
Sparkling.
A diamond in white gold or platinum.
Rectangular, radiant, solitaire.
Just like mine.
Reid’s grandmother’s diamond.
I look down to my finger instinctively.
Of course, it’s bare.
No, no, no.
I drag in a breath, unsure what to do, feeling upside-down in my body. My stomach and mouth have switched places—and everything’s rolling.
Where is the pickleball when I need it?
I’m not sure that’s what I want, but if I had it, the temptation would be roaring right now.
At the very least, I want to look at the floor—desperately—but I force myself to endure the play-by-play of this moment, no shortcuts.
Through every balloon.
I’m going to see this through.
My teeth grind.