Theo walked away to look out over the lake. “What did you expect me to think?”
“You thought I was giving him a blow—” she broke off into peals of laughter again.
Theo didn't feel amused. In fact, he was still battling the rage swelling in his chest. He looked around at the people watching them curiously and cursed softly. He was angry with himself for feeling anything at all when he walked into that room. He should have felt the same way he would have if it were Charlotte he had interrupted, instead of this still-simmering anger at another man he didn’t even know. It wasn’t like him to be jealous or suspicious, and yet here he was.
“I can't wait to tell that story,” she finally said, wiping her eyes.
"I think that's one story you want to keep to yourself," he said stiffly.
"Why is that?" A wary look replaced the amusement.
Theo didn't like where this was going, but he was almost helpless not to say it. "I'm sure you know why.”
The laughter in her eyes was gone now. “I’ve been labeled a lot of things, but ‘concerned about opinions’ isn’t one of them. Especially yours,” she finally said. For once, she wasn’t laughing. Her shoulders were straight, her chin high. She turned her back to him and looked out over the lake.
“It doesn't matter what I think or what anyone else does,” he said to her back. “It matters what you think. Does it bother you?”
She was silent, still looking at the water.
"Is he your boyfriend?" he asked abruptly.
"Wouldn't you like to know?” She turned slightly until he could see her, a familiar, dazzling smile on her face.
“Yes,” he said simply.
She studied him, a teasing grin tilting her pink lips up. “Race you to the beach,” she finally said before picking up her skirt and running lightly down the stairs.
Theo watched her white skirt float down the steps and take the lighted path down to the lake. He wasn’t going to follow her. He was going to go back inside and network with the people who supported him and trusted him with the next four years. He owed it to them and to his family to do the right thing.
“Fuck,” Theo muttered, right before he took the stairs two at a time.
“You came.”Amber stood at the end of the lantern-lit pathway, watching the lake when Theo joined her. She tipped her head and let her hair tease her bare back, enjoying the caress of the wind and the heat radiating from Theo’s body. She knew he was watching her, could feel his tension and it excited her, a tangible reminder of the heat that seemed to simmer between them.
Theo was the most uptight, straight-laced, responsible man she knew, and none of those were flattering. There was no good reason on earth why she continued to tease him as she did when she needed to keep this job, and yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“Yes,” he said, a low rumble in the quiet. The lights of the lake house and the dim noise of the party felt far away fromwhere they were, even though it couldn’t be more than a few dozen feet.
“I didn’t think you would.” She turned her head to find him watching her. His eyes were darker than before, and his hair tousled from the wind so close to the lake. His cool reserve was firmly in place again after the fire in his eyes when he had walked into the study to find her with Johnny. Theo’s judgment had cut deeper than she expected.
Hurt. Attraction. It was a dangerous combination. One made her rebellious, and the other made her risky.
“I came to see you after that night too,” he said, and dammit if the sincerity in his voice didn’t cut right through the facade they’d built over the years. She knew exactly what night he meant. How could she forget the night she had first met Theo Clairmont.
“I know,” she said after a while. She lifted her chin. “I didn’t want to see you.”
When Grant and Theo Clairmont had pulled up in a Northfield police cruiser that night ten years ago, Amber knew immediately who they were, and she’d wanted to melt into the road rather than see them.
Everyone in town knew the Clairmont family, if not for their history of philanthropy, then for the regular media attention their dad garnered as mayor.
Even back then, Theo had been larger than life, handsome and broad shouldered, tanned from weekends at his family’s lake house. He’d told her later as they drove her home that he was on summer break from college.
He had seemed to her to be from a different planet than her, sitting in the back of a cruiser, still slightly drunk, wearing a gown that was ripped down the side. Certainly, Theo Clairmont appeared more sophisticated and well-mannered than any of the guys she was used to in Cedarwood Village, and it madeher even more uncomfortably aware of the contrast in their worlds.
The night had begun innocently enough. She’d spent days sewing her dress because she couldn’t afford to buy one, but it had turned out beautifully. When her date picked her up, Owen Masterson, a handsome kid from a good family, they had danced until she was reeling, feeling all the effects of a full-blown teenage crush. When Owen suggested they get out of there early to party privately, she didn’t hesitate.
They were drinking in an empty parking lot when Owen suggested she go down on him. Queasy from the alcohol, she had refused, and Owen got angry, calling her a tease. Nausea and hurt had settled like lead in her stomach, and when she got out of the car, he tried to pull her back, ripping her dress when she resisted.
Owen had begged her to get back in, and when she told him to go to hell, he squealed out of the parking lot, leaving her to walk home, where Theo and Grant found her.
