The honesty of it catches me completely off guard. I look at him, searching for the strategy underneath it, the angle, the thing he wants me to think so I'll do something useful for him.
Is that sympathy? Or is this calculated, is this him making me feel like he's on my side so I'll?—
"And yet here we are," I say.
"Here we are."
He doesn't move away. Doesn't fill the silence with small talk the way men do when they're performing charm. He just stands beside me, close enough that I catch his cologne, dark and cleanand unreasonably distracting, and I am furious at the specific way my body keeps registering his proximity like it's important information I need to act on.
He is standing extremely close and he knows exactly how close he is and he is not moving and I am not going to be the one who steps back first because that would mean he wins something and I don't even know what we're competing for.
"So," he says, voice dropping just slightly, not casual at all underneath the casual. "Where have you been."
"I'm sorry?"
"Five years." He tilts his head, just slightly, and I catch the line of his jaw, the scar there, the shadow of stubble, and I drag my eyes back up to his and he has absolutely noticed me doing it. I can tell by the way his expression doesn't change at all, which is somehow worse than if he'd smirked. "You know, the Ghost Heiress. You disappeared. Now you're back. Where'd you go?"
"Away," I say.
"That's not an answer, Gia."
The way he says my name like it already belongs in his mouth. Something skitters up the back of my neck and I refuse to name it.
"It's the only one you're getting," I say.
Something moves through his expression. "You always this friendly?"
"Only with men who ask invasive questions at my own wedding reception."
"Our wedding reception."
"Semantics."
His mouth does an almost-smile that’s so sexy, it is not fair. "You've got a mouth on you."
"Is that going to be a problem?"
He looks at me. Slow. Deliberate. Starting at my eyes and dropping, just briefly, just for a fraction of a second, to my mouth. Then back up.
"I don't know yet," he says. "Depends on what you do with it."
The words land and my brain, my absolute traitor of a brain, goes somewhere it has absolutely no business going. His mouth on mine in that church. The hand at my throat. The way he kissed me, taking his time about it, like I was something worth taking his time about, and now he's standing here looking at me like he can see every single thought currently running through my head and finding all of them extremely interesting.
Do not think about it. Do not think about what it would feel like if he?—
Heat crawls up my throat and onto my face and I feel it happening and I cannot stop it and he sees it, I watch him see it, watch something shift in those green eyes from almost-amusement to something quieter and more dangerous, something that makes it very clear he knows exactly where my mind just went.
I glare at him.
He says nothing. Just holds my gaze with that infuriating patience and the corner of his mouth moves, barely, just enough to make me want to say something extremely rude.
I hate him. I hate him and I want to put my hands on him and I hate that too and this entire situation is a disaster.
"Your father says you'll be compliant," he says, the word sitting in his mouth like something he's already decided is wrong.
"My father says a lot of things."
"So, you'll not."
