Every now and again, her eyes cast about—beyond the other dancers, beyond the bonfire. As much as she might try to tell herself she wasn’t looking forhim, she was.
She knew it every time she felt a pang of disappointment when she didn’t find him.
Then, soon, she knew it when her heart jumped into a gallop when she did.
There, standing at the edge of flickering bonfire light, was Sebastian with a small group of other company men, giving them the entirety of his attention as he always did when in conversation. Lit by the flickering glow of the bonfire, he was laughing and talking, the breeze lifting off the ocean tousling his hair about. In the weeks since he’d joined the company, his hair had grown longer, curling at the ends, catching the sun in light blond streaks. The man was simply gorgeous and glorious.
In all the years she’d known him, how had she never noticed?
She hadn’t allowed herself to, that was how. He’d been Archie’s close friend, and then her nemesis.
And yet…this Ravensworth—Seb—he was utterly unlike that version of Ravensworth—the one she’d had in her mind all this time.
Seb.
He had a good reputation with the other players, and more than a few of the women more than admired him. And today, he’d pressed his mouth to hers. His tongue had licked her bottom lip, and lit places inside her aflame that she hadn’t known existed.
And all she could think as she watched him converse with those other men was that she wanted to drag him into the dunes and make him do it again.
Seb…Ravensworth…
The man who was her nemesis. And yet…
Something about that didn’t feel right.
“I’ve never been your nemesis, Delilah.”
Those had been his words beneath the stage. But it wasn’t simply the words that had been haunting her since. It was the sincerity with which he’d spoken them.
He no longerfeltlike her nemesis.
And she wondered now if his words were true—that he never had been. And if so, how was that possible?
What was she missing?
One of the men in his group—she believed the man went by, improbably,Fix-All—must’ve said something particularly funny, for Ravensworth threw his head back on a laugh. She’d never seen him laugh like that—with abandon.
Then his gaze shifted and caught hers. No waver of surprise in those golden, moss-flecked depths. As if he’d known all along that she’d been observing him, and he’d let her take her fill. His smile didn’t altogether fall away, but turned quiet and assessing. It wasn’t a smile for his compatriots.
It was a smile for her.
He took a step, and she did, too.
Surely, slowly, they began walking toward each other, the hold of their gazes never wavering, the space between them nonexistent now that they’d locked eyes. It occurred to Delilah that, perhaps, it had ever been so.
For all the years she’d known him, a spark of awareness had lit through her whenever he entered a room. She’d never needed to look directly at him to know exactly where he was. It was an instinctive awareness. But it was more, too.
Apull.
A pull that didn’t feel rooted in dislike or enmity, but something else—something less tangible.
Could it be the opposite?
Could it be that shelikedhim?
Or perhapslikehad nothing to do with what drew her to him?
Did a magnet have to like the object it was drawn to?
