But it was refreshing. For the rest of the night, Atlas introduced me to a carousel of faces I’d never remember and names that vanished as soon as they were spoken. Still, every set of eyes lit up covetously when they spoke to us.
If I said as much to Atlas, he would tell me I was abysmal at reading people and that I should stop trying. But I knew, in ways he never would, the lengths money could drive a person to.
A plaintive yowl dragged my attention back to the present, and Abernathy crouched on the chair beside me. This was closer than he usually ventured outside of feeding times. I wondered if she’d somehow changed his brain chemistry last night. I’d never seen him even slightly affectionate. I assumed he didn’t like people, the same way I didn’t particularly like people.
But he’d certainly likedher.
“Is this supposed to be an award-winning technology magazine, or a celebrity gossip blog?” Lucian demanded, leaning across the dining table and sliding an iPad in front of me.
“They got that up fast!” I commented through a mouthful of toast, scrolling the TechRaker article without actually reading it. I coughed, almost choking on toast crumbs when the image appeared.
My hand tingled anew. Because there it was, pressed against her warm body, at the very top of the stairs, just before Lucian had dragged me away with some growled words I hadn’t listened to. In the photo, her head was tilted back and up, her eyes on my face, a hint of a smile playing on her pretty mouth. I scrolled up, eyes darting across the words, my stomach fluttering.
‘Emerging from his private living quarters …’
‘Appeared very cosy …’
‘Mixing business with pleasure …’
“We—” I cleared my throat in an attempt to dislodge the crumbsthat were still rattling around in there. “Well, they certainly have an interesting take on an innocent encounter.”
“That woman is a menace!” Lucian snarled, snatching back the iPad and dropping into the chair opposite me. “I had to escort her away from Cadence and that Ivanov woman because she was shouting profanities and waving her arms about!”
A small guffaw snuck out of me. “Profanities and arm waving! Won’t someonepleasethink of the children?”
Lucian eyed me, face like a thundercloud. I had no trouble decipheringthatexpression. “While you were lurking down here, avoiding your own party with …her… I was upstairs with eyes on every one of the hundred guests crowded onto your yacht. All it takes, when there are too many people and too much alcohol, is one person’s erratic behaviour to tip it all over into anarchy, and I wasn’t about to?—”
“Excuse me, Mr Baxter … but I found these under your bed, and I wasn’t sure …”
I glanced up and registered what the cleaner was holding at the same time Lucian did.
“Innocent encounter my arse!” Lucian exploded as, red-faced, I reached out and plucked the black silky G-string from the cleaner’s fingers. “She was in your fucking room? With no knickers on?”
“Who?” I asked in the worst attempt at innocence, stuffing more toast into my mouth to try and mask my reaction. I shoved the offending garment into my pocket. What had I been thinking, snatching it from the cleaner? I should have told her to throw it away, that I had no idea how it had gotten there.
Except I did. The vision of her waving these very panties in my face last night, the amused glint in her eyes, bloomed fresh in my memory, and my cheeks burned.
“Did you invite her into your room?” Lucian asked, softer now. I toyed with the crust of toast on my plate.
“I did not. I found her in there. She said she’d ducked inside to … deal with a wardrobe malfunction and was waylaid by Abernathy climbing onto her lap.”
Lucian snorted. “By Abernathy? The cat who notoriously refuses to acknowledge the presence of humans unless it’s to demand food or attack them?”
“The same one. He must have sensed something about her, or …”
“Or crazy is attracted to itself,” Lucian muttered.
“I think you’re judging a book by its—” The pressure of a feline paw on my lap stopped my words in their tracks. I stared down, not daring to move as Abernathy tentatively stepped onto my thigh, claws piercing my trousers as if testing the stability of my leg.
“What is happening?” Lucian asked faintly, peering warily at the fuzzy beast through the smoky glass of the table. “Don’t move, he might be planning to rip your balls to shreds.”
“I don’t think that’s his intention,” I murmured. “I think he’s …”
Abernathy hopped entirely into my lap, rolled onto his back, and started purring.
“This is not normal,” Lucian mumbled.
“I think he’s found her scent on the … undergarment.”
