Chapter -10
Ten
Jealousy
Xerses
By the time the sun went down, I’d spent the better part of a day trying not to think too hard about tea glasses and Kelly.
I’d bought them because I wanted to. That part was still true. I’d seen them, thought of how she softened around tea before she softened around anything else, and I’d bought them without thinking through what that would mean when the gift moved from intention into her hands.
And then she’d looked at me in the garden and told me, without dressing it up, how that kind of thing landed and we were never going to be more.
I had heard her.
My gut had this deeply unpleasant awareness that I was not good at being kind. Somehow I hurt Kelly.
With other women, things stayed cleaner. Simpler. Terms agreed to early. Expectations leveled. Money created solutions. I couldn’t even remember faces.
But with Kelly, It was becoming impossible to stop thinking her.
I was leaning against the stone wall outside the back bar at the compound when Charlie found me.
Charlie grinned and dropped into the chair across from me like his bones had never once been taught restraint. Music drifted faintly from inside and the ocean moved below the bluff in silver-black lines under the moon.
“I don’t want to talk yet. Give me time.”
The doors behind us opened again, and the night shifted.
Kelly. I felt her before I fully saw her.
She stepped onto the terrace with Hope and Avril, both women still mid-conversation about something I didn’t catch because my attention had narrowed too far, too fast. Kelly had changed after dinner.
Simple jeans that made her legs look criminally long.
A fitted black top. Hair down again. Mouth a little darker than usual. Not dressed up exactly. Just sharpened.
She met my gaze and the now-familiar little current sparked inside me again.
Hope and Avril kept moving toward the lounge area near the railing. Kelly slowed half a beat.
Charlie rose before I could answer and called across the terrace, “Tell me we’re going into town. If I stay here one more hour, I’m going to start another family game and no one wants that.”
Hope made a face. “That’s because all your games become combat.”
“That’s because winning matters.”
Kelly’s eyes were still on me.
“That’s the plan to escape another post-dinner gathering,” Hope said.
Charlie spread both arms toward the night. “Freedom rings.”
“A few hours out is good medicine for all of us,” Miley said, appearing in the doorway with Jeff behind her.
That was all it took.
Within five minutes, the shape of the evening had changed. The family had done what it always did when someone suggested motion and rearranged itself around the most entertaining option.
My parents were staying in. Parvis had retreated with tea and a book. Roxanne had already launched into some longer conversation with the older siblings and their wives over guest room linens and flowers and whatever else wealthy people used to avoid sleep.
But the rest of us? We headed to town like we were back in Manhattan after work like we all used to go.
When a car stopped, I realized Kelly had pointed out this bar. It was one of the bars on the marina side where money and locals and tourists all collided badly and expensively.
I should have stayed back.
Instead I beside Kelly in the backseat of Charlie’s SUV with her thigh one narrow strip of air away from mine and her words played in my mind.
Inside, it was dim enough to flatter everyone and loud to excuse all kinds of bad decisions.
The group split naturally once we got in.
Charlie made straight for the bar like he had a moral duty to encourage bartenders.
Hope followed him with the expression of a woman who loved someone enough to permit public chaos.
Jeff and Miley disappeared toward a booth.
Avril drifted toward the far side where a live acoustic set was happening near the windows.
Kelly stopped near the high-top tables, looking around as if deciding whether she wanted to be social or simply vertical in a room with alcohol.
I touched the small of her back.
I leaned closer enough that the music covered the answer from everyone but her. “Vodka?”
Her eyes flashed but she nodded. “Good. One problem solved.”
I went to the bar smiling.
By the time I came back with two drinks, she’d been joined by Britney and Michael, who looked like the world’s least accidental aristocracy even in a crowded marina bar. Britney saw the glasses, saw me handing one to Kelly, and said nothing.
Kelly took the drink and brushed her fingers against mine on purpose this time.
The look she gave me over the rim of the glass after that was a problem I absolutely did not need in public.
Michael, because he saw too much and used too little of it unless necessary, looked away first but Britney did not.
Kelly met her gaze. Whatever passed between them lasted less than a second and said enough that Britney took her drink from Michael, nodded once, and turned to him instead of stepping between us.
The next half hour moved quickly. Music.
People shifting. Charlie already making friends and enemies in equal ratio.
Hope dancing once with him and once without him and both somehow looking like affection.
Avril in conversation with a local couple about something charitable because of course she was.
Jeff and Miley tucked into each other’s orbit even in public.
Michael and Britney speaking close to be private while still somehow watching everyone.
Kelly in a bar was a specific kind of trouble.
She was more and her hands moved when she talked. Her smile flashed quicker. Her attention sharpened and darted and landed. She belonged in rooms like this in a way money could never quite fake.
I saw men looking at her.
Then one walked in the door. His gaze landed right on Kelly.
He was the beach going local clearly and he moved toward our table with the easy confidence of someone who already knew Kelly at least enough not to feel awkward saying hello.
I felt my body lock before I’d fully registered why.
“Kelly?” She turned and smiled, clearly recognized him.
The guy’s face opened with it. “I thought was you.”
My hand tightened around my glass.
Beside me, Charlie made a low sound.
Kelly laughed lightly. “Ben. Hi.”
Ben.
Of course his name was Ben.
He leaned in for a quick one-arm hug like he’d done it before. Kelly let him. Her hand touched his side briefly in the sort of absent, socially intimate way that told me this was not a man she’d met once at a gas station and forgotten.
The movement hit low and ugly in my body before I could stop it.
“Everybody, this is Ben Carter,” Kelly said, turning back toward us. “He does some of the staging work for one of the brokerages I’ve been shadowing.”
A man with an actual place in her life that had nothing to do with me or my family or any arrangement.
I disliked him immediately.
Ben nodded at the group, then looked back at Kelly. “You never answered my text about that coffee place.”
Kelly’s mouth pulled into a rueful line. “I know. I’ve been busy.”
The pause before busy was microscopic. I hated how much I noticed it anyway.
Charlie looked from Ben to me and then down into his drink with all the glee of a man who knew better and planned to sin anyway. I said nothing.
Ben smiled at Kelly. “Still. I’m glad I caught you.”
His attention stayed on her a little too long.
Kelly said, “This is everyone.”
Ben nodded again, more fully this time. Then his gaze landed on me.
I held it.
“Ben,” Kelly said, and now there was the slightest change in her tone, something more deliberate. “This is Xerses.”
Ben looked between us once, then back at Kelly with the faintest spark of understanding. His smile did not disappear. If anything, it sharpened.
“Right,” he said. “I’ve heard.”
“Heard what, exactly.”
“Enough.” Ben smiled without losing any of his composure. “Kelly talks about the family she’s been spending time with.”
“Does she.”
“In passing.”
Kelly was watching both of us now.
Ben shifted his attention back to her and, in the most normal, reasonable, unthreatening voice imaginable, said, “You still owe me a drink for ditching me at the marina fundraiser.”
I stared at him. Charlie bit into a grin beside me hard enough that his whole face suffered.
Kelly looked faintly horrified. “That was not a date.”
Ben lifted one shoulder. “It had potential.”
My entire body has decided something before my mind thought it through. Tight in my chest and lower in my stomach, heat edged with something darker and less civilized than I preferred to admit to myself.
He was exactly the kind of man who could stand near a woman like Kelly and look.
Kelly laughed in that flustered, defensive way women laughed when they had no intention of giving a man what he wanted and didn’t want to be cruel about it.
“It did not.”
Ben looked entirely unconcerned by the rejection. “Agree to disagree.”
Then, because apparently the universe had chosen violence, he glanced at her drink and said, “Let me get you another one.”
“No,” I said. The word came out before I chose it.
Ben watched me.
Kelly looked at me.
For one second, my control had slipped and I set my own glass down.
Then forced my voice back into something more even. “I’m getting the next round.”
Ben’s brows lifted.
Kelly’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
Ben, to his credit, didn’t puff up or posture. He gave me one measured look and said, “All right.”
Then to Kelly, “Nice running into you.”
“Yeah.” She smiled, but it wasn’t quite the same smile as before. More careful now. “You too.”
He squeezed her elbow lightly on the way out.
Ben disappeared back into the crowd.
The second he was gone, Charlie muttered into his drink, “Wow.”
Hope elbowed him. “Shut up.”
“No, I mean wow.”
“Charlie.”
“I’m being silent now.”
Liar.
Kelly turned to me slowly.
Worse, I knew what I’d earned from it.
“What,” I said.