Butterscotch sunlight glances off the bottle of champagne as she offers it out to me. "Join me?"
I absolutely, totally, and unequivocally should not agree.
"Yes," I hear myself say, beating back that mouthy asshole inside me who is bitching about how far off course I already am when I've only just arrived.
I'll have this one drink with Daisy, this one time, because denying myself feels unimaginable. I’ll sit, if only for a few moments, basking in Daisy’s inherent warmth, taking the opportunity I can’t quite believe has been tossed in my lap. After this, I will double down on my resolve to accomplish what I came here to do, and then leave without a backwards glance.
Chapter 4
Daisy
I cannot shakethe feeling I already know the man standing in front of me.
He claims he's a friend of Hugo's, but there's something about him that puts me at ease immediately. And that never happens to me. I can't think of the last time I felt at ease in my own skin. I love it here in Olive Township, this little hamlet I grew up in, but the sad truth is that the inhabitants of Olive Township don't really love me. They love an idea of me. An image. A mirage. If I let just one of them get close enough, everything they think they knew about me would disappear. So when I come across somebody who looks at me like I'm crazy for apologizing for something most people wouldn't label an outburst, and then in the next breath tells me to feel free to have whatever response I feel like having, I can't help but feel uneasy about the feeling of ease.
A mindfuck, I believe it's called. Not to mention the guy is physically attractive in a distracting way. Buttery blond hair slipping over his forehead, unruly and stubborn. Blue-gray eyes the color of the sky before a summer monsoon rolls in. A scar, maybe two or three inches long, grips the left side of his face,from forehead to the top of his ear. It doesn’t look too new, but it doesn’t look old either. However he got it, it must have been painful.
It’s almost enough to distract from the rest of him, exceptwho am I kidding no it’s not. The way that faded black T-shirt hugs those biceps is enough to kick a girl's salivary glands into hyperdrive. And those thighs. I mean, really. Is it necessary to be that muscular? Even the black canvas cargo pants, made more for utility than fashion, don't detract from the delightful muscle tone beneath.
Get yourself together, Daisy. You're engaged.
I clear my throat, remembering my manners. "You haven't told me your name," I say. His fingers brush mine just a touch too slowly as he takes the half-full bottle of champagne from my grasp. A ripple of gooseflesh rises on my arms, and there's something else, too, a pinch low in my belly. Too low to be my belly, if I'm being honest with myself.
I'm pathetic. Imagine being so starved for a man's touch that the brush of fingertips could elicit such a response from me. I have got to get myself together.
He sinks down in the Adirondack chair beside mine, stretching one long leg out while the other stays bent.
Bottle lifted to his mouth, lips poised a quarter inch from the rim, he replies, "Nor have you told me your name." He takes a drink, his gaze remaining on mine. It's only a drink from a bottle, but his lips are in the same place mine were a moment ago, and something about that feels intimate.
"I guess I forgot." A lie. More like I assumed he already knew who I was. An uncomfortable feeling flips through me. I don't like that about myself, how I assume someone knows me. The truth is, outside of this small town, I am simply just another girl. Maybe that's why I returned after college. Out there, I'm anobody. Here, in this town that raised me but doesn't know me, I'm somebody.
Shifting the champagne bottle to his left hand, he offers his right. "Peter."
It's not at all the name I expected him to say. He looks tooloose cannonto have a straight-laced name. There's some kind of ink on his left forearm, but it's almost too dark now to make out the details and I'm not bold enough to ask to see.
"You don't look like a Peter." My hand slides into his waiting palm.
"No?" He squeezes, not afraid to grip me tightly. Almost roughly. There's something about it that I love. Something I'm thirsty for. "What do I look like?"
My hand stays captured in his as he awaits my response. "I don't know." I shrug, squinting and making a show of looking over his face, but I stop quickly because he's too handsome. "Gage," I answer, deciding on the first ultra-manly name that comes to mind.
"Hah," he laughs once, loudly. "Gage," he repeats, quieter, shaking his head. "Out with it, princess. Give up that name of yours."
"Daisy St. James," I say, practically purring because I'm way too damned proud to have made him laugh. It doesn't look like something he does often.
I drop his hand and replace it demurely in my lap, waiting for him to tease me for adding my last name to the introduction, or maybe offering his so we're even.
But he doesn't. Instead, he shifts forward, extending the bottle to me.
"Champagne?" he asks when I take it, but the question is morewhy is this your drink of choice?
"It's a celebration," I explain, nodding back at the event room.
He doesn't say anything, just stares at me intensely. His lower lip is fuller than his top, giving him a perpetual pout. It's boyish, and somehow endearing, on this man who otherwise oozes masculinity.
Finally, he asks, "What are you celebrating?"
"An engagement."
