Chapter 5 Amelia
FIVE
AMELIA
Amelia fled along the wall of grotesque art and reached a less visible pocket off the great room—a sunroom that overlooked the estate’s manicured gardens.
Anger coursed through her and settled in her belly with a resounding ache. She never wanted any part of her father’s world. He forced her into the internship. But you agreed. He put her in an impossible position. You could’ve said no.
With shaky hands, she groped in her purse for her phone. She needed to leave before Emory Holt arrived and the storm did its worst. Amelia dug past a tube of lip gloss and her wallet. The purse was suspiciously light. She pried it open and surveyed its insides.
No phone. At home. On the charger.
Fuck.
It was too late. The storm arrived with a rumble of thunder, and a familiar face cut through the crowd.
It was typical of Brian Burrows to come for closure at a time like this.
Amelia’s childhood friend, he lived next door to Richard but rarely attended the gala.
Dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, and Chucks, he conceded only a black suit jacket for the occasion.
“Hey,” he said with a smile that used to give her butterflies and smoothed a fall of loose brown curls from his eyes. “I hoped I’d see you here. It’s been a minute.”
“Yes, it has,” Amelia agreed with a stiff smile, though forced platitudes were reserved for strangers. She’d known Brian before memory and relied on her parents to tell her all the adorable things they’d done together as toddlers.
As Brian summoned something to say, Amelia scanned the crowd for a natural exit. The party was too dense, though, and the dance floor packed with guests.
“Can I borrow your phone? I need to text my mom.”
“Sure.” Brian unlocked his phone and handed it over. “I didn’t know if you’d already left town.”
“I leave Sunday,” Amelia replied offbeat as she tapped a hasty message.
its Amelia meet me out front we need to go
“Sunday,” Brian repeated, vaguely dispirited as Amelia returned his phone. He never could commit to a feeling. “I meant to reach out, but time just…”
“Vanished.”
And so had he.
Last summer had sizzled with balmy heat against bare limbs, swinging on the hammock with his hand up her shirt. They’d shared soft kisses in velvet moonlight, and her clothes had ended up on his bedroom floor.
The connection had faded with the fall, as most things do, and reality had chilled with a cold snap. They were better off as friends. At least, that’s what he’d said and Amelia agreed, but her heart had broken bigger than she let on.
She’d mostly mourned the loss of her senses, that she’d conflated the comfort of a true friend with the intimacy of great love. Brian wasn’t her great love, so she’d moved on and he hadn’t even noticed.
“Arizona. I feel like I might never see you again.” Brian stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “I’m sure Portland has editing jobs too, you know.”
Amelia firmly shook her head. Every goodbye landed like a ploy to make her stay. It only ignited the instinct to flee and forget the nightmarish interlude. Something nagged with screaming urgency to leave and that perhaps she was already too late.
“I can’t stay here, Brian,” Amelia whispered beneath the jovial thrum of conversation around them. Thunder boomed and rain lashed the windows. “I have to go. The sooner, the better.”
“I guess I don’t blame you. I’d get the fuck out of dodge too if the guy I worked for was ‘suicided.’”
Brian’s fingers crooked in air quotes, and his green eyes glittered with the bit of gossip.
Amelia tempered her interest with a slow exhale. “What did you just say?”
“Burt. I overheard someone here saying he was mixed up with the wrong people. They wanted him dead, so they made it happen.”
Amelia gripped the strap of her purse and parroted the logic she’d used to console herself on sleepless nights. Looking back, it just seemed na?ve and absurd.
“The police would know if he was murdered.”
“Depends what side they’re on.” Brian gestured to the room where the driving beat of music replaced the piano dirge. “These people are morally fucked, Amelia. We both know the ends they go to for money and power.”
Amelia studied the guests gulping down cocktails and crowding the dance floor. The party pulsed with a grim undercurrent. There was always tension between the eclectic rich and glossy public figures, but a certain darkness united the clashing castes of the disgustingly wealthy.
As if to prove it, a drunk woman doubled over with laughter and sent wine sloshing from her glass. She reached for her companion to steady herself but lost her footing and tumbled into Amelia before hitting the floor.
Amelia might have gone down too but stumbled into a solid mass behind her. Strong hands gripped her bare shoulders and guided her away from the shattered wine glass and people rushing over to help.
Amelia needed no more cues to leave. She turned to thank the man behind her and be on her way, but her heart nearly slammed to a stop when she saw his face. Nothing could have prepared her for the savage collision of reality and daydreams.
Emory Holt towered over her, taller than Amelia could have imagined, or perhaps she had no anchor to what a man of his size looked like up close.
His mugshot was a poor approximation of how utterly handsome he was, but it’d done him justice in one way. He peered at her with sharp intensity, his eyes the color of warm honey.
“Hi,” was all Amelia could manage on a dumbfounded breath as the room faded at the edges in soft filters.
A gorgeous smile unfurled on Emory’s lips and betrayed a warmth that surprised her. She couldn’t reconcile it with his history of dark deeds.
“Hi.” He laughed, and his gaze swept to her mouth, along her cheekbones, and back to her eyes.
Numbness spread in Amelia, starting at her knees.
Turncoat legs went wobbly and weak and her constitution even weaker.
They were close enough that she discerned his cologne—spicy and faintly sweet—mingling with the scent of clean laundry.
Raven black hair hung in loose waves past broad shoulders, and he was swathed in well-defined muscle with thick arms and long legs.
“I’m so sorry,” Amelia said with more weight than a mere pleasantry. Her contrition plumbed perilous depths, those nights she laid awake wondering what had come of him.
For the moment, she apologized for her hands resting lightly on his forearms inked in black tattoos.
In a white dress shirt, Emory flouted pageantry with a few buttons undone and the sleeves rolled to his elbows.
An unfastened black tie was draped around his neck, and he hadn’t bothered with a suit jacket.
“You’re fine, sweetheart. I don’t mind.” His subtle flirtation disarmed her. So too did the resonant rumble of his voice, deep enough to sink into. “Are you alright?”
Emory loosened his grip on her shoulders but let his palms skim the length of her arms. Their eyes met with the quiet intimacy of his stolen touch.
“Yes, thank you.”
Flustered, Amelia righted the dress strap that’d slipped from her shoulder. Emory watched her, seemingly transfixed by how she put herself back together. Or maybe he liked how she came undone, the way her hand trembled and breath hitched.
“I’m good for it anytime,” he said with a wink and moved along.
Only then did Amelia notice his companions, two men on his left and one to his right. Across the sunroom, they lounged on the sofas in a close group with Emory central among the other three.
“Who was that?” Brian asked.
Amelia shook her head. “No idea.”
The lie came easier than she would’ve liked, but the secret she hid was the ecstatic rush that left her reeling. His picture had planted the seeds of intrigue, and Amelia nourished them neatly until they bore strange fruit. Indulging in it would be a mistake, her better angels warned.
But the feeling of being watched was universal, primal even.
It stuck to her skin and refused to be ignored.
With odd affliction, Amelia gathered some gumption and glanced in Emory’s direction.
Sure enough, he studied her as if memorizing the shape of her body, her face, the way her lips parted with a shaky exhale.
Emory bowed his head and listened intently to the man on his right.
With enormous blue eyes and dirty blond hair slicked back, he dressed much the same as Emory with tattooed forearms exposed and a dress shirt half-untucked.
Whatever was said, Emory nodded slowly and stared at Amelia from beneath his brows.
She felt on display for him, entirely exposed and frozen beneath the weight of his gaze. Heat seeped across her cheeks and down her chest. She couldn’t help the way her body betrayed her. Her heart beat wildly, the pulse settling between her legs.
I’m a good girl, she reminded herself.
But good girls didn’t get themselves off to the mug shot of a dangerous man. They didn’t fantasize about how he fucked or the damage his lips could do. They didn’t crave someone like him who’d wreck her for sport and leave her in ruins.
Emory was a killer. Her fear of him should have eclipsed his allure.
It should have. And yet, something compelled Amelia to keep his stare as she brushed her fingertips along the tops of her breasts in an exploratory touch.
It was sensual for having been subtle, a moment everyone else in the room might’ve missed.
But not Emory.
No, he noticed, so the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. Fiendish delight resided mostly in his eyes, though, as if he alone held audience to her most salacious thoughts.
And he wanted more.
With a slight tip of his head, he urged her to go on.
In the middle of the party, he wanted a show.
Amelia didn’t know him and owed him nothing.
And yet, she obeyed. She bit her bottom lip as her fingertips skimmed her thighs.
Was it an invitation or just a ploy for his attention? Amelia couldn’t quite say.