“You didn’t say you were coming!” she told him with a bright grin as he moved to pat Hiromi’s back. “It’s not even my birthday!”
His gaze flicked back toward me. His smile wavered. “Gracie.”
A gruff “Gracie” was all I got? I’d had my head on his shoulder a month ago. I’d held his hand back then too.
“Come with me to get a drink,” Hiromi said suddenly, poking her aunt before pushing her chair back.
It wasn’t the fact Selene got up immediately that prickled my senses, but the fact that she did it with a smile on her face I’d only seen her use when she was being sneaky.
“Want something?” Selene asked Alex.
“Any beer is good,” he answered in a rough voice.
The aunt and niece looked at each other before disappearing into the crowd.
Alex slid into the seat that Selene left beside me. Lights flickered around, striking his face in different angles. Everything about him seemed normal. The same. I saw just enough to notice he had his contacts in.
He angled his body in the chair, giving me a good view of his thighs in those dark jeans. The nice black boots he had on. As handsome as he’d been in his tuxedo, and as perfect as he filled in his Defender suit, him in everyday clothes put everything else to shame.
I pressed my lips together before asking, “What are you grouchy over?”
“I’m never grouchy,” he said, dead serious.
I burst out fucking laughing, and it took me a minute to calm down. When I did, I said, “All right then. You look nice, by the way.”
He stared. His throat bobbed, and the second shit he said to me was, “I didn’t know where you were.”
I’d missed the sound of his voice, I thought as I shrugged, not trusting my own.
“You didn’t leave a note,” he kept going, his voice still that low, crabby one.
“I did at first, but I stopped leaving them….” That was a weird statement. How did he know about my notes?
“Why?”
All righty then, we were going straight into this. He wasn’t going to ask how I’d been doing, what I’d been up to. Okay. So I told him, “You were gone. I didn’t think you’d care if I left the house for a little while.”
For one millisecond, his irises did that unreal glow before just as quickly going back to normal behind his contact lenses. The urge to look around to make sure no one had seen it rode my chest, but no, he knew what he was doing.“Why would you think that?” he asked.
It wasn’t that much of a mystery. “Because you were gone,” I repeated slowly.
“I could’ve gotten home any time.”
Like I didn’t know that. I set my elbow on the tabletop and cupped my chin with my palm, deciding to be the reasonable one. He could be annoyed with whatever he wanted to be annoyed with, but I wasn’t going to let him drag me down into Crabby Town. “But you didn’t.”
His eyes moved around my face, over my throat, across my chest by my breasts. I’d bought a cute top at the outlet mall, and I’d decided to wear it tonight. It dipped low enough that my grandmother would’ve been scandalized, but then again, she thought T-shirts showed off too much arm.
“How are you?” I asked him, trying to be calm and cool like he hadn’t dropped me cold turkey without even saying goodbye.
“Fine.” I was pretty sure a muscle in his cheek might have tensed. “Did you have a good time while I was gone?” Alex asked slowly, so strangely, it felt like a test or something.
I nodded.
“Hiromi and Selene were good company?”
“The best company.”
Oh, that got me a raise of an eyebrow. “The best?”
