“Takes after her mother.” He winks at me. “Lucky for her.” Then, before I can step back, he leans in and presses a kiss to my cheek that lands a hair too close to the corner of my mouth. His breath could strip varnish, and his hand could qualify for a restraining order if it sneaks any further south toward my ass.
Raymondguffaws like this is just the funniest damn thing he’s ever seen. “Watch it, Jozy—that’s my wife you’re nuzzling.”
“I’m just saying hello, Ray!”
“Say hello with your hands in your pockets next time, you dirty dog.”
DeMaris winks at me again as he pulls back. I take a sip of my sparkling cider and stare over his shoulder at a centerpiece.
As I do, the one man I actuallywantto see comes into view.
Matvei is at the bar across the room, in a tuxedo cut so precisely it makes the other men look like they’re wearing rented clown costumes. He’s facing away from me, talking to another guest, and not returning my gaze.
He is, however,awareof me. I can feel it the way you feel a hand hovering an inch above your skin.
After exchanging a few more side-mouthed jokes with Raymond about the various sets of cleavage on display, Senator DeMaris wanders off to abuse another guest. When he’s gone, Raymond steers me toward a knot of partners by the ice sculpture. I trot out my hostess smile as we do the whole small talk song-and-dance.
But the whole time, I can feel Matvei across the room, not-looking at me.
Until—
“You’re better off asking— Hold up, where is…? There he is!” Raymond announces suddenly, lifting his glass toward the bar and roaring over the hundred-plus heads separating him from us. “Satyrin! Get over here!”
Oh, no.
Oh, no, no,no.
Matvei pushes off the pillar with slow, lethal ease and crosses the parquet toward us. Every step he takes peels another year off my life expectancy.
“Mr. Snyder,” he says when he’s close enough to talk at a reasonable volume. He nods to the partners. “Mr. Lowery, Mrs. Harrington. Mrs. Snyder, hello.”
“Matvei,” I say back. “Lovely to see you.”
To my credit, it comes off with the appropriate aloofness. No way does anyone know I’ve been whispering his name into my pillow for days on end now.
His eyes hold mine. “You look very well.”
“Doesn’t she?” Raymond yanks me an inch closer to his side. “I had to threaten to break her arm to get her into that dress, but here we are. Worth it.”
A horrible little silence settles over the group. No one laughs, but Matvei somehow laughs the least. His eyes roam over Raymond like he’s deciding which limb he’d most like to sever first.
“It’s a very flattering color on her,” he says calmly, putting a merciful end to the tension.
“Isn’t it?” Raymond drains his bourbon and drops it down on the tray of a passing server. “Cassandra, you gonna finish that? Alright, I will.”
Without waiting for my reply, he snatches my cider out of my hand and chugs it.
My face goes ashen.
The result is as bad as I expected. Raymond turns and spits a thin stream of liquid onto the floor next to his feet. “What the fuck is this?Cider?”
Everyone is looking at me expectantly. I swallow hard. “I was, uh, easing into the evening. I haven’t eaten much today.”
My husband looks beyond disgusted. But beyond that surface-level disgust is the same curious gleam I saw when he found the prenatal vitamins, when he walked up to me in the woods at the pheasant hunt.
He knows.
He has to know.
