Chapter Thirty
Jase
My hands were shaking.
That was how nervous I was. Like I was about to ask a girl to prom. I guess, in a way, I was.
I messed with my collar a few more times, not making it better or worse, just needing the excuse to stand here another minute so my heart could stop pummeling my rib cage. I wasn’t proposing, for fuck’s sake.
Though, the fact that the thought didn’t have me lurching to empty my stomach in the stall behind me was interesting.
One last look in the mirror, one more deep breath through my nose, and I picked up the duffel now holding my chef clothes and pushed my way out the bathroom door.
“Are you sure there’s nothing I can get you?” an alarmed-sounding voice said from around the corner. “Security is going through our camera footage to find the person responsible. If you want to press charges?—”
“No, really, that’s not necessary,” Dani replied. Her voice had my strides lengthening as worry shot through my chest. “I’ll manage. Just please take the pens to the ballroom. I appreciate it.”
We practically bowled into one another as she rounded the corner to the bathrooms. I caught her by the elbows, giving me a clear view of the red liquid splashed across the front of her dress.
“What happened? Are you okay?” Concern fell from my words even though whatever covered her was too bright to be blood. If it had been, she’d be bleeding out on the floor, not standing in front of me, calmly dictating tasks to hotel staff.
“I’m fine. It’s just paint.” She studied the stain. “My dress is ruined, which sucks, but I have an extra with me, and who knows. Maybe a dry cleaner will have some luck with this.” She pulled the skirt of her dress to the side, inspecting it closer.
I ran my hands gently along her arms, trying to comfort myself as much as her. “Where’d the paint come from?”
“A bunch of protestors outside have water balloons filled with it. I think it’s supposed to look like blood. Probably because I’m a murdering whore and all.” I saw red for an entirely different reason at the thought of anyone calling her that, but I pushed my anger aside as she let out a flat chuckle. “I guess the virtual panel didn’t change their opinions on the situation, huh? Not that we really expected it to.”
She glanced up, her eyes amazingly calm given the situation, not a trace of fear there even after referencing what I assumed was the note on her car. Then her gaze shifted below my jaw, running down my chest all the way to my toes. Her brows pulled together.
“What are you…?”
Oh, yeah. That.
“I, uh—” I cleared my throat, once again painfully aware that I was in a suit for the first time since my brother’s wedding five years ago.
Her gaze met mine, this time with a mix of curiosity and affection. It was the latter that calmed my nerves enough for me to speak.
“I wanted to dance with you too,” I said softly.
It was the simplest truth I knew. I wanted to dance with her here, tonight, where she looked like a goddess, even with paint dripping down her dress. I wanted to dance with her tomorrow morning in my kitchen as I made her crepes with caramelized plums and vanilla cream, listening to her moan in my arms with each bite. I wanted to dance with her on lazy Sunday afternoons with Baxter cradled in our arms, and at the restaurant after close, and on holidays, and birthdays, and to cheer her up when she was sad, and to celebrate with her when she was happy.
I wanted to dance with her always, in all ways, to every single song.
Her brows lifted, tears gleaming in her eyes as her lips rose and her fingers threaded with mine. She squeezed them tight. “I hate that I have paint on me right now,” she said through a laugh. “I want to kiss you so badly.”
I couldn’t care less about paint. I cupped her face in my hands and dropped my mouth to hers, easing her body against me as if we were dancing right now. My lips brushed softly over hers, sinking everything I felt into the kiss. She gripped my waist, her smile continuing to grow until she couldn’t kiss me back anymore, setting my chest on fire. I opened my eyes but kept her close, sweeping my gaze over her face.
She peered up at me, eyes bright. “Hi.”
My lips tugged up.
“Jase?”
Cold shocked my system like I’d been blanched in an ice bath. My brain froze too as the last voice I expected to hear echoed through my ears and landed like a meat hammer against my stomach.
He shouldn’t be here.
Not at this hotel, not in this city, and definitely not at this event.
Not at this moment of all moments that was supposed to be about Dani and me and the months we’d put in to get to this place—at the finish line of a successful event and the start of something so much more.
Something I’d had to push him aside in my mind to convince myself I could have in the first place.
Yet as I dragged my gaze over Dani’s shoulder, there he stood, wearing his own perfectly tailored suit, his pregnant wife’s hand clasped in his.
The ultimate Beauford in the flesh.
My brother.