“I’ve seen a friend. I’ll catch up to you.”
She walked over to him, her arms crossed against her from the chill. Apparently, no one thought to bring her clothes. He hated them for it, almost as much as he hated himself for wanting to take in every inch, memorizing the arcs of her rolling curves.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” he replied.
Gone was the woman he had spoken to all night, the hesitant woman with the hidden smile. In her place was a parliamentarian, a stiff-backed, guarded-eye statue who somehow managed to look down her nose at him even as she had to tip her head to look him in the face.
Daniel glanced over her bare shoulder. The Animos guys hadn’t left. They surveyed their interaction with careful consideration. He hoped the aristocratic airs were for them. He didn’t want her to be the snob she was supposed to be.
“I wanted to thank you. And if you need any financial compensation for last night, come to the house and Mrs. Long will take care of it.”
“I don’t want your money.” He swatted her words away. Her suggestion was nothing more than a flight of gnats to be broken up in the face of the swarm of locusts walking behind her. “What are you doing with those guys anyway?”
“Trying to fit in.” Before he could ask why the hell she wanted to fit in with them, she moved to leave. “Look, I have to go—”
“Here.”
Without thinking, his coat came off of his shoulders again.
“What are you doing—”
He offered it to her, a test. “You need it more than I do.”
“I can’t take your coat.”
“Well… Could I give you my number? You can ring me and give it over whenever you’ve got your own stuff back.”
“Yeah! That sounds—” Daniel lit up at the flicker of thrill she packed into the exclamation, but it was gone faster than it appeared. It was only a flicker. She pulled the invisible mask of decorum over herself. “It sounds agreeable. Here.”
Agreeable. Have we walked into a Jane Austen novel?He held the quip at bay, flipping open his guitar case and digging until he found an old Tesco receipt and a pen. He rushed. He didn’t want her to disappear before he could deliver.
“Here”—he smiled as their fingertips brushed—“I hope I’ll see you again.”
“I’ll have the coat dry-cleaned,” was her only response.
Without another word or glance in his direction, she slipped into the dense material, slipped into the crowd of men, and slipped out of his sight.
Had he imagined the way she clutched the coat to her chest? The way her eyes fluttered closed for the briefest of seconds as his collar brushed her nose?
He didn’t know if she’d call him or if he’d ever see that coat again. Maybe she’d talk to her father and get him fired. Maybe she’d go back to her Animos pals and tell them a horror story about the poor man who dared to speak to her.
All he knew was this: a fresh tune was in his mind, and his fingers were itching. She’d put a song in his heart, and he had to write it.
Chapter Seven
Since her first initiation ceremony, where she was forced to take shots from between the regents’ legs, Sam always assumed they used alcohol as a tool of humiliation. Forcing alcohol down an initiate’s throat was another leash by which to control them and lead them to their own inevitable doom.
Alcohol, she always figured, was one of the countless ways they thought they could run her off. If they made her miserable enough, they thought, maybe they could get her to quit, rather than having to put her through the paces of membership.
No one wanted to be the guy who forced out the future Lord Speaker’s kid. But ifshewere to quit… Not only would their hands be clean, but they’d have effectively kept Sam from rubbing her grimy girl hands all over their precious boys’ club.
Waking up on the final morning of her Rage, however, she realized she was wrong. In spite of her throbbing headache and spinning world, she saw the truth as clearly as if she had put on glasses for the first time. The alcohol wasn’t for them. Well, not entirely. It was also for her. Because she couldn’t remember a damn thing since her brother left.
It was a small mercy. Especially considering how close to vomiting she was. But it was mercy, all the same.
When she came to on Sunday morning, she didn’t open her eyes right away. First, she took stock of herself. Bent at a weird angle, her arms curled around her body… Had she slept on the stairs? Her tongue made circles in her mouth. Yes. She’d definitely drunk through more than a few pieces of her father’s coveted wine stock. A piece of lettuce was wedged between her teeth, but she couldn’t, for the life of her, remember how it’d gotten there. She scraped her memory for some recollection of food, but none came, and the harder she thought about it, the closer her stomach came to revolting. Her eyes threatened to open, but she kept them closed.
