“I remember you, dear,” said one of the ladies whom Fiona faintly remembered. “You were reading our palms at that fundraising event at the JW Marriott back in October.”
“Oh, yes,” Fiona replied, darting a glance at Gideon.
He stood just outside of the little cluster, his mouth anchored to one side in some sort of expression that could have been a smile. Despite the frozen look on his face, he looked so good it made her stomach flutter and her mouth water. He’d recently had his hair cut, and although that stern look still graced his face, she knew there was warmth and emotion beneath the shuttered expression.
Warmth and emotion that was now being given to Rachel.
Fiona couldn’t stanch the flood of memories—remembering how carefree he was when he smiled, and how heated his expression could be when he was trying to argue a point.
How hot and liquid his eyes were when he was moving inside her.
How good that felt.
Howright.
“Good evening,” she said, somehow forcing the words from a dry throat as she turned to greet Gideon Senior.
She shook his hand, remembering with a pang how much she’d enjoyed the seemingly blustery man and his date, the latter of whom was looking at Fiona as though trying to see into the depths of her mind.
“Hello, Iva. I haven’t seen you since we found those letters of Valente’s.” Now why had she said that? The last thing Fiona wanted to do was make Iva feel uncomfortable for not visiting her.
“It’s been far too long, dear, I know,” Iva replied. There was what seemed to be genuine regret in her voice. “Hollis and I were in California for an extended visit—but now that I’m back, we’ll have to have lunch again.Soon.”
“I’d like that,” Fiona said—even though she wasn’t certain she would.
It was one thing to enjoy Iva’s company—and that of the other Tuesday Ladies…but now that Gideon was out of the picture, it might be more bittersweet than anything.
She smiled, and then turning—having no choice but to greet the elegant woman standing very close to Gideon. “It’s Rachel, isn’t it?”
Fiona forced herself to put sincere warmth in her voice and made sure she made good, solid eye contact with the elegant dark blond who was standing hip to shoulder with the man Fiona loved. “Congratulations to both of you.”
At the last phrase, Fiona finally looked at Gideon, head-on, and when their eyes met she was stunned at the blankness—bleakness—therein. His gaze contained emptiness, only emptiness—not even the cool professionalism she’d known—and she couldn’t suppress her own wave of grief.
Somehow she shook Rachel’s hand, but Fiona simply couldn’t make herself touch Gideon—especially those gorgeous hands.
Before he even had the chance to offer, she turned to the other couples, whom she barely knew and who would be a wonderful distraction, and reintroduced herself to them.
The ladies babbled about her palm-reading, and even the men—for all the stiff-necked properness of their proper old money and power—seemed fascinated by her talent.
“You’ve never readmypalm, Fiona,” Brad said with an inflection of intimacy that made her cringe.
She’d never even allowed him to kiss her, let alone given him cause to use that tone.
“I should have asked you to do it before the election—but now that we know I’ve won, maybe there’s something else you can tell.”
Fiona laughed brightly, studious in keeping her gaze from checking Gideon’s reaction to Brad’s comment. “I wouldn’t have been able to tell you if you’d win the election anyway…but I should be able to tell you whether you’ll find success in your new job.”
Relieved to have something to focus on—even if she didn’t want to broadcast the lack of their non-existent intimacy, she took Brad’s hand and turned it palm-up.
And then she almost dropped it.
Fiona had never had such an immediate reaction to reading someone’s palm before. Intense discomfort and unease washed over her in an awful surprise. She felt as if a black cloak had sudden dropped over her, smothering her.
What was wrong with her?
Fiona blinked to clear her mind, and focused on Brad’s hand.
She tried to follow the lines of his palm, but anything she might have read into them was engulfed by her strange feelings of aversion. Nevertheless, she concentrated, traced some of the lines on his hand with her index finger, and babbled something—she would never remember what—about him being a success and having a happy life with two children and a wife and several other comments that sounded palm-reader-like. She was relieved to notice that at some point, Gideon and Rachel had stepped away, and that made her slightly more at ease.
