Chapter 1
Chapter One
“Viagra or Valium.”
I knew it. I knew that psychotic little shit wasn’t on the guest list. A guest list I curated by donor size and political standing. A list that took me six months to put together. And somehow, he convinced me he belonged here.
I should have trusted my intuition.
“I got all the V’s, daddy,” he’s whispering into my boss’s ear.
I, however, am going to vomit. Daddy?
“Relax, Hadley.” Callie’s voice rolls over the comm in my ear like honey. Good thing, too. I just spit my champagne back into the flute.
Fuck, I hope no one saw that.
“Vodka, Vroom, Vikes…”
“Callie, Callie.” I take two steps toward my boss, Leif, as the event crasher goes for his ass.
Full grab hand.
“Got him.” Callie grips the guy’s bicep and drags him away on my next relieved exhale.
It is, mildly, comical.
See, Callie is little. Fierce and feisty. But oh is she little.
Five two, curvy. Maybe one twenty.
This guy, whoever he is, is tall. Ish.
If tall were a suggestion instead of a fact, he’d be it. His pants are a little too tight. Black, too, which is why I mistook him for staff at the door. And his shirt is stained. I’m not even sure why I bought his line about the jean jacket, that it was the only one that matched his aesthetic.
Callie grumbles under her breath. She’s about to go full chaos goblin mode. It is honestly my favorite attribute of hers.
“Don’t move, asshole, or you’re fucked,” Callie hisses at the man.
Shit. I need to get to Leif and talk to him. Except Leif’s face is doing something I haven’t ever seen it do, not that I’m an obsessive coworker who watches her boss when he isn’t looking.
Which I’ve definitely done.
Leif isn’t watching the perp. He isn’t watching Callie drag the perp. He is watching me watch the perp. And whatever he is reading off my face is making his mouth do a thing. A sexy pouty thing.
One I can’t look at for longer than the five seconds I already have.
And Callie? I need to follow her because she’s unhinged.
Callie reaches for the baton, and I break out of the freeze into a brisk walk.
I rush past Leif, whisper, “I do apologize, sir,” and inhale.
I can’t help it. He smells like red velvet and that cooked icing my mother used to make from scratch on birthdays before she stopped making birthdays. I gulp it down like I am stealing it. Which I am. He is my boss. He pays me. I don’t get to have this. Oh but I want it.
Walk, you slut.
I catch up to Callie in the hall, where she’s whistling and twirling her baton while the intruder holds his head. She definitely hit him. At least it knocked the baseball cap off his head. This is not the space for a ball cap.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” I really can’t help myself. It’s a flaw. I could choose to keep my mouth shut. But alas I cannot. He pissed me off therefore I must tell him exactly what I think of him.
He looks back and for a fraction of a second those chocolate-brown eyes almost suck me back in. They did this once already tonight, at the door, when I was the one with the clipboard and he was the one with the wrong jacket and I opened the rope.
I opened the rope.
I don’t open the rope for anyone not on the guest list, not in two years of this job. And I opened it for him in under a minute and I don’t know what he said to make me do it.
That is the problem. Not his eyes.
Lesson learned.
“Come on, lady.” He rolls those sexy brown eyes. An unforgivable offense because I find that also attractive. “Not you again.”
Callie twirls her baton.
“Callie.” My voice echoes and I look around. We are at the end of the hall, the Sphinx Gallery behind us. “Where are you taking him?”
“Out.” She looks back like that’s the dumbest question I could ever have asked.
“Not the main entrance.” I smile at a couple wandering too far this way. At least she kept to the under-construction parts of the museum.
“Fucking sparkly fairy unicorn with pink hair…” Callie pauses and turns back to me.
“Did you just call her a sparkly unicorn?” Viagra guy asks. Because what else should I call him?
“Don’t talk to me.” Callie holds a hand to his face. “East entrance.” Then she rolls those chestnut eyes of hers at me.
“One day…”
“They’ll get stuck, yeah. I know.” She punctuates. “Can we get to the elevator now? I do have a job, and do you really want me to let that little man with knobby knees keep those rich people in line? Hell no.”
“Of course.” I swallow. Sometimes she terrifies me. But I love her anyway.
“Should be in there mingling.” She drags Viagra guy away, muttering under her breath. “Seven years, Hadley. Seven. Bachelors. Masters. Ph-fucking-D.”
“You do belong,” I agree softly as my eyes remain on the perp.
Perp. Yes, I think I’ll call him a perp.
The word doesn’t stick. Perp implies a category I have a folder for, and I just established I don’t have a folder for him. Intruder is closer. Wrong man is closer still. The man I let in is the truest and I am not saying that one out loud, not even in my head, not even here.
And I will be unpacking that with my therapist for a month.
“Why?” the drug dealer, no, the trafficker, no, what is he, asks.
“You know you don’t have to come with me.” Callie drags him down the hall past the Africa exhibit, his hands now zip-tied behind his back.
She must have done it while I was busy losing my mind.
I glare at the little shit in front of me. “I need to see this through.”
“Why do you hate me?” he says it like a statement, walking sideways as my bestie hauls him down the hall.
“You don’t belong here,” I mutter. Ugh, he’s making me sweat. Which is just perfect. I’m about to sweat my makeup off and it’s going to stain my fancy dress.
Which really pisses me off. I saved for an entire year for this damn dress.
“Hmm,” he hums, studying me far too closely. “You don’t look so good.”
The hall does a thing. The carpet tilts maybe an inch and rights itself before anyone but me notices. I plant my heels harder into it.
Callie hauls him along. “Quiet.”
“You are sassy,” he says before swinging back to me. “And you still don’t look good.”
Why is it when he says it like that it feels like he is pressing a thumb to a bruise.
“Got a V for me too?” I snap back.
I instantly regret it. I don’t snap back, ever. I shut the fuck up and do as I’m told but something about tonight has my mouth doing things it never does.
Speaking out of line.
This man, however, smirks like it pleases him. “I do.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Why? I am not attracted to this man. I’m not. But when he says it like that, my no doesn’t survive the sentence. Heat slips between my thighs. Those brown eyes blown black, half-lidded, the moment he…
Shit… I look away.
Luckily, we are at the elevators and pause before them. Callie hits the down button before giving me a weird look. It’s one of those ones she gives with her entire face. Mostly because Callie never does things in halves. She’s either all in or out.
My palms sink onto the bars heavily as the doors close, sweat still dripping off my brow, running streaks through my makeup. And I keep looking at this guy. Which I need to stop because the longer I look at him the more attracted I become.
His biceps are massive. Look away, Hadley
Callie doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t have to. Her hand tightens on the perp’s bicep until he hisses, and she shoves him a half-step further from me.
“Girl,” Callie snaps. “The fuck is wrong with you?”
“Doesn’t look like she likes elevators,” the guy says, so slowly, as though he’s just learned something interesting about me.
And he needs to know more, immediately.
Obsession crosses his eyes when he gazes from my toes to my nose.
I’m not a fan of that look. Except, I also am. Which is the entire problem with me, isn’t it? The look that should send any reasonable woman running is the one that pins my feet to the carpet.
Something is wrong with me.
Something has always been wrong with me.
“Nope.” I stand up straight.
Callie snorts because she knows it’s a damn lie. And I hate lying to her, even over the small shit. Lies get messy.
Besides, besties deserve truth.
“Hey.” The guy steps toward me.
My neck moves backward and my eyes widen. He is talking. His lips move. Sweat beads on his cheek, right by his ear. My tongue presses against my teeth. That spot right there.
I want to lick it.
“Oh hell no.” Callie pushes the guy into a corner. “You need to get your shit together. Whatever this is.” She waves her hands at me. “Shelve it.”
Meanwhile he stands there with his hands zip-tied behind his back and a shit-eating grin on his face.
“I have no idea what’s wrong with me,” I hiss, hoping he doesn’t hear.
The elevator door pings open. Saved by a literal bell.
She eyes me up and down. Not believing me, which I get. I don’t believe me, either. At all.
At least this floor feels significantly cooler, and I am not ashamed to say I fan myself as we walk out and the elevator doors close behind us.
It takes a moment for the lights to come on. The automatic is more like a three-second delay and even then, it’s a soft glow. Just ahead is the door to the parking garage and his exit.
“When was your last period?”
“You want me to kill him?” Callie lets him go and turns to him, all six feet of him. One hand is on her stun gun and the other the baton.
I’d bet on her any day.
“Not today, Callie. You look terrible in orange,” I remind her.
“I’d make it work for you,” she grunts. “Say the word and he’s dead.”
“I know you would.” Even though she shouldn’t.
“This is why women serial killers are never caught.” He looks between us before settling that sexy gaze back on me. “Seriously, can you answer the question?”
“Can you?” Callie looks at me, one hand on her hip, and her head doing that little wobble. She really wants me to say, yes kill him. See, unhinged.
“Outside.” I push his chest.
Mistake. That was a terrible, awful, amazing, and delicious mistake.
He smells so fucking good my panties soak right then. Right there. All wet and ooey gooey.
I’m so not fucked.
“Jesus.” He grabs my shoulders. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Out, out, out.” Callie grabs him, dragging the man away from me because I am, in fact, trying to lick his neck.
Just one little lick. I want to beg her.
But then I bitch-slap myself with reality.
What the fuck was that? This is the single most important night of my entire career. What the hell am I thinking?
Callie is halfway to the door. He’s staring at me.
“Seriously, we need to talk right now.” He looks desperate.
Somewhere there is a woman in a dress she saved a year for, standing in a service corridor under fluorescent light, watching a man she let in get dragged out by her best friend.
Her mouth is open. She has not closed it in some seconds.
Her hands are at her sides. She is not assessing.
She is not thinking. She is a body in a hallway and the body is empty.
I am the woman. I know I am the woman, and yet I can’t get back to her.
“Fuck it. What you think happened up there isn’t what you think,” he rushes out. Callie has her hand on the door.
The woman in the dress doesn’t respond.
“Talk to Leif. Leif. Do it,” he mutters just before Callie tosses him out on his ass.
The door closes. Life slams back into me, and I stumble half a step into the wall. The cold of the cinderblock through the silk is the first thing I have felt in a full minute.
He is gone. I want him back. I don’t know which of those sentences scares me more.
Callie walks back to me slowly. “You good?”
“No.”
“Yeah. Clocked the no before you said it.” She looks me up and down, and plasters on her diagnosis face. “You almost licked his neck.”
“I know.”
“In front of God and George.”
“I know.”
“You haven’t almost-anything-ed in two years.”
“Two and three months.”
“Counting?”
“Not counting.”
“Sure.” She loops her arm through mine.
“What now?”
“Now?” She tugs me along. “You drink.”