But not at something like this!her overloaded brain howled hysterically.Not at your former sister-in-law’s pre-wedding river cruise in the most elegant city in the world, which you’re supposed to be helping her through while your entire former family watches!
“I’ll run downstairs to the bathroom, do a little cleanup. Everything will be totally fine!”
That last bit, she could tell she hadn’t managed. It sounded very nearly like a squeak.
“Sam?” Jamie’s voice cut in, and Layla turned to find him approaching tentatively, apparently hopeful that the stomach-turning part of this whole disaster had passed. “You okay, babe?”
Babe, Layla’s mind echoed, weirdly grateful. That was not a pet name he’d ever used for her.
She thought about warning him off, telling him not to come any closer, lest he get a sense of the skirt-slash-wall situation. But before he could take another step forward, someone else stepped in front of him.
Griffin.
He did not say,Excuse me.
But he also did not say,Your dress is disgusting.
He simply came straight for Layla, red-hot lava down the sideof a trembling mountain, and this time, when he reached out and took her hand, there was nothing tentative or begrudging about it.
His hot palm against hers, his strong fingers curling tight against the edge of her hand.
He said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “We’re going.”
* * *
It was a long time before Layla breathed a word again.
And when she finally did—when she finally could make sense of the streets passing outside the cracked-open back window of a rideshare that she could barely remember being guided into—it was way too late.
“Wait,” she said, which is probably what she should have said before she’d let Griffin practically drag her down the steps of the upper deck, and also before he swiped three pristine white cloth napkins off a serving cart and shoved them into her free hand, and also before he stomped down the metal ramp that led them back onto land, andalsobefore she simply stood, stunned and silent and desperate not to smell herself, somewhere along the Pont Royal, watching the man who’d brought her there flick determinedly back and forth through a roster of icons.
Rideshare. Maps. Browser. Maps again. And finally, most satisfyingly: a translation app.
Now, he turned his head to her in the car, looking at her as if he’d just remembered she was there.
As if she’d spoken to him in a foreign language.
“This is not the way to the hotel,” she said.
“Correct.”
Correct?She leaned slightly to the right, trying to get a peek over the driver’s shoulder so she could see the address he must’ve had up on his GPS, but she couldn’t get a good angle. She looked atGriffin again, who now kept his gaze straight ahead: one hand still holding his phone, the other—the one that had held hers so tightly—laid flat on his thigh.
“Where. Are. We. Going,” she bit out, insulted by his cool distance, the put-together way he held himself. Meanwhile, she was using one of her hands to awkwardly hold her now napkin-covered dress away from her thigh, while the other one still hummed and heated with the imprint of his.
He’d held it for solongthis time.
“To get you clothes.”
She blinked. “To get me—”
“In case you haven’t noticed, your dress is ruined.”
Did he not see her doing the weird napkin-holding? “I have noticed that, yes.”
“I wasn’t sure.” He cast his eyes briefly sideways, toward her lap. “The color blends.”
She gaped.Gaped. He was the rudest person she’d ever met in her entire life. And she’d gone tomedical school.
