He didn’t fit into any of the boxes I’d spent my whole life perfecting. He wasn’t Palm Beach or Charleston. He wasn’t a debutante’s husband or a socialite’s arm candy. He didn’t brag, didn’t ask, didn’t explain. He just did. Moved. Acted.
Protected.
And I’d treated him like an afterthought. A ghost. A mistake.
My cheeks burned with the memory of how dismissive I’d been, how certain I was of my superiority. Now the certainty was gone, knocked out of me by one long look and a lifetime of misjudgment.
He was more than I’d guessed. More than I could categorize.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
My words were soft as they tumbled out. “I was wearing a red dress. At the Langford ball.”
His eyes widened—just a fraction. But it was enough.
Everything shifted.
“You,” he said, like the word had gravity. “Sloane. You were the woman in the red dress?”
I nodded. “And you were?—”
“Leaving in a hurry,” he finished, voice suddenly rougher. “Didn’t think I’d see you again.”
“Neither did I.”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward.
It was positively electric.
What did this mean for me? For us?
“What the hell just happened?” he asked finally, glancing toward the door like he might still chase after Marshall and break his jaw.
I let out a breath. “Closure. Kind of.”
He looked at me then—really looked—and something passed between us that had nothing to do with bathrooms or masquerades or carefully plated salads.
Something that felt like fate—unfinished and inevitable.
I had no idea what was about to happen next. But I knew this: the game had changed. And so had I.
In an instant.
16
CHARLIE
Shock slammed into me like a round from a .45, my mind reeling as I tried to wrap my head around the impossible. Sloane Carrington—the entitled airport princess who’d sneered at my truck—was the woman in red, the one whose fire had seared me at the Langford ball, whose moans still echoed in my skull.
I stood frozen in the women’s lounge at the Isle of Palms Country Club, the walls pressing in, staring at her. Her eyes, fierce and searching, locked onto mine, mirroring my disbelief—the spoiled heiress I’d dismissed as a headache was the masked stranger who’d set my blood ablaze.
My pulse thundered, my throat dry, and for once, I had no quick comeback, no easy way out. I wanted to touch her, to confirm she was real, but I was rooted, grappling with the collision of disdain and desire that didn’t make a lick of sense.
Sloane cut through the silence, her voice soft but steady. “You want to get back to your lunch?” she asked, glancing at the door where Marshall had stormed out. I shook my head, stillprocessing, but before I could find words, she stepped closer, her presence a live wire.
“Neither do I,” she said, her tone sharp now, slicing through my haze. “I’d rather go with you.”
My heart kicked into high gear, a wild beat I hadn’t felt in years, and for the first time in forever, I was speechless, caught off guard by the hunger in her eyes. She didn’t wait for me to catch up.
