Smooth. Just call her Smooth Sadie. Call it a personal rule, but she didn’t run away. She did, however, often make a pit stop to collect herself when life—or one of her client’s exes—threw her curveballs.
She just needed a second to get herself in order. Check that there wasn’t food stuck in her teeth or a twig in her hair. Not that the twig thing had ever happened, but you couldn’t be too careful when facing an ex-flin—
“Eli has seats for us up front.” Marlee tugged Sadie straight toward Eli and…Roman.
Sadie’s stomach fluttered. She stalled, stopping Marlee. “I’ve got to use the ladies’ room. Are you good?”
“Totally good.” Marlee was already on an eye lock with her husband and Sadie was a very extraneous member of their party of three.
Sadie couldn’t help it as her gaze slid to Roman’s.
His eyes were pinned to her like a thumbtack in corkboard. He mouthed her name and she felt it straight in her bones and, more directly, in the intimate spot between her legs.
Yes, her first ever weekend fling smiled at her and the air snapped like it was alive.
Holy hell, when life was screwing a girl over, it sure didn’t take time to get to know her first. It just went right in for the main event. No dinner, no drinks, no night at the movies.
“I’ll be back. Hold my seat.” Purse gripped in her now sweaty hands, Sadie tried to pull her gaze away from Roman’s but it held like it was Velcro’d. She took control of the moment, tore her eyes away, and did her best saunter out of the chapel, down the little hall, and into the ladies’ room.
Thankfully, it wasn’t one of the restrooms with a bunch of stalls. Nopers, it was a little one-person room big enough for just Sadie to stave off a momentary panic attack with a quick pep talk in the mirror.
C’mon Sadie. Get it together. You don’t do sweaty hands. You do calm and collected. You are a shark in the courtroom.
A force to be reckoned with.
She did her best to channel Courtroom Sadie, who took no shit from anyone.
It didn’t work.
Courtroom Sadie had taken a recess.
The truth was that seeing Roman shifted something inside her in a way she hadn’t experienced in a long, long while. Like the time she’d discovered that one mascara that did amazing things for her lashes, but then they had inexplicably discontinued the brand. Until, years later, she found it again on the shelf at Ulta and got so excited that she texted her girlfriends—Marlee, Becca, and Kellie—just to ensure they knew the news too.
Like that.
But way morewhoa.
Except this time, she wouldn’t be texting anyone because no one—absolutely no one—knew about her fling with Roman Dvonakov. She did have some pride, after all.
She’d considered telling Marlee who Roman was, but in the end, she hadn’t. And then she’d met Oliver and he became her rebound guy. The rebound guy she’d dated for a lengthy amount of time. The one who screwed her six ways to Sunday when he lifted her internship right from her grasp. The internship that would’ve shaped her trial career. Oliver weaseled his way into the position using her as his conduit to meet the attorneys at that firm. The legal circuit was cutthroat, and Sadie had realized it several mediocre orgasms too late.
She took another eight deep breaths, stuck her Ann Taylor pastel-pink clutch under her arm, and opened the restroom door.
Roman waited smack-dab in the middle of the hallway, giving her no opportunity to stealthily avoid him. Damn.
She met his hopeful gaze, and oh man, she sunk like she’d whacked straight into an iceberg in the Atlantic.
She shook her head in solidarity with herself—past, present, and future Sadie all together in one moment of utternooope.
That smile though.
God, she’d missed that smile. That smile sliced straight through her heart.
“Rome.” She glanced at the camera in his hands. The camera he’d named Louise.
It was still Louise. Always had been for this guy.
“Nochnaya babochka.” His deep voice filled the air between them, immediately heating the space she had tried to ignore between her thighs.
