Dark hair, loose around her shoulders, olive skin, dark eyes that sweep the room with the ease of a woman who knows exactly what she looks like and has made her peace with the power of it a long time ago. She is wearing a short white dress that shows off every curve, and she moves through the clubhouse like she owns it, or at least like she owns the most important thing in it.
Her eyes find Tate across the room.
And then they find me.
The smile on her face doesn’t exactly disappear… it just changes. It becomes something cooler and more deliberate, the kind of smile that’s really an assessment.
I look back at my beer as she crosses the room to Tate, and from the corner of my eye, I watch as she reaches him, sliding one hand onto his chest and leaning up to press her lips to his jaw like she is signing something.
Something tightens in my chest that I have absolutely no right to feel.Could she be his girlfriend?I look back at my beer before the thought can go any further.
“You’re back,” she says, her voice low, warm, and directed entirely at him.
Tate’s eyes cut sideways to me, just briefly, while something moves across his face.
“Raven,” he says.
“I missed you,” she says, her hand still on his chest, her eyes still on his face. “You didn’t call.”
“I was dealing with things.”
“I heard.” She glances at me then, openly and deliberately, the kind of look that’s meant to be seen. “I see that.”
I keep my expression neutral and take another sip of my beer.
She is beautiful, territorial, and she has every right to be both, and I have no right to feel what I am currently feeling, which I am choosing not to examine too closely.
Sliding off the barstool, I make my way to where Luke is standing near the pool table.
“You okay?” he asks, reading me with the efficiency of a man who’s been in enough rooms to know when something is happening underneath the surface of one.
“Fine. Completely fine.”
He looks at me for a second. “Sure,” he says in a tone that suggests he finds this about as convincing as I’d intended it to sound.
Tate appears at my shoulder, beer in hand, face giving nothing away. “Come with me.”
I follow him to a quieter corner of the room, away from the pool table, the bar, and the general noise of the clubhouse.
“I should have told you,” he says.
I look at him. “Told me what?”
“About Raven.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation about your personal life, Tate.”
“Maybe not,” he says. “But you’re living in my house, you walked in here without knowing, and that wasn’t fair.”
“Is she your—”
“No.” Flat and immediate, cutting me off. “It’s not like that.”
“She seems to think it might be,” I say, glancing over to where Raven is standing, her eyes fixed on me with a look that could cut glass. Turning back to Tate, his jaw tightens slightly.
“I’ll handle it.”
“Tate.” I keep my voice careful. “I don’t want to cause trouble between you and her. If my being here is going to create problems, if you want me to step back and give you space to—”
