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Despite it all, I gave Bennett a truth I’d never admitted to anyone but myself: “I’ve wanted Camden Shepherd since I was old enough to understand what want is.”
A smile flickered across his face.
“But there’s never been anything between us. Nothing more than attraction. And even on the slim chance that Cam decided he wants me too, I don’t see how it could ever work. There are too many obstacles, and now I’m his employee. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
He leaned in conspiratorially. “Perhaps I can offer another piece of advice?”
I waved my hand as if to say Go ahead.
“Whether you want the man or the job, it isn’t Shep you need to court, love. It’s Nessa.”
Twenty
Maribel blinked at me, wide-eyed, when I relayed the story of my day at dinner that evening. “Nothing this interesting ever happens to me.”
“That’s a good thing,” Ravi muttered between bites of stew. “You hate drama.”
Maribel’s brown eyes went starry. “But I love drama when it isn’t happening to me.”
I frowned. “That isn’t helpful.”
She bounced in her seat and stirred her food. “You’re going to marry Cam Shepherd. I predicted this when we were kids!”
“Wow.” Ravi shot her a skeptical stare.
“That is a violent escalation from ‘He had a crush when we were in high school,’” I said.
Deflating a bit, Maribel took a bite of the stew. “His friend basically confirmed it though.”
“He did not,” I said. “He told me to figure out what I want.”
“He hinted—”
“Whatever. Look, the point of the story is that I don’t have access to Cam’s mother, so Shep is the rate-limiting step at work. I’ll never get anything done so long as he’s a part of the company, and he’s an unchangeable part of the company so—ipso facto—I’ll never get anywhere at that company.”
“Oh, no.” Ravi dipped closer to his stew. “She’s gone Latin.”
Maribel shrugged. “So quit.”
“I can’t quit. I’d have no income.”
She paused with the spoon halfway to her mouth. “Oh, right. Adulting’s the worst.”
That night, I tossed and turned as I relived the night of the cotillion ball, held at the town’s most prominent country club. My discount dress was a copper number with a long pleated skirt cinched at the waist with four sequined belts. It brought out my eyes and complimented my skin tone, and I’d never felt so pretty.
The enraptured way Cam looked at me when I walked into the room was something I couldn’t forget. The night flung enchantment about us like confetti, accompanying a host of stolen glances and clandestine brushes of hands. We had no understandings, had never spoken of the palpable thing between us, but some force drew us together that night, stronger than ever before.
I left the ballroom first, under the pretense of needing the restroom, then dawdled in the hallway until I sensed him following. He knew the place better—his family were members of the club—so he caught my hand and pulled me down a dimly lit hallway.
My skin warmed where he touched it, sending jolts up my arm, and my heels clicked against the travertine tiles below until he brought me to a smaller, carpeted room abutting the ballroom, one that could be opened to make the ballroom bigger if needed. Folded tables formed a neat stack against one wall, but the room was otherwise empty. The music filtered through the thin walls, dampening the rasp of our quick breaths.
He let go of my hand, and we stared at each other in the semi-darkness, silent. The air thickened with unspent energy, coiling like a spring. Then, as a waltz struck up on the other side of the wall, he lifted his arms.
I hesitated but a moment. We had danced only one other time—practicing in front of everyone else. I’d partnered with most of the boys several times, but Cam only once, as if fate knew we were a match waiting to be struck. I placed one hand on his shoulder, and he took my other hand in his. The heat of his fingers pressed into my waist, then slipped indecorously around it, pulling me closer.
Eye contact was both a gift and a terrible weapon. Heart fluttering, knees weak, I nearly swooned at the look on his face. We danced, fastened together by interlocked gazes and hunger, until I could take it no longer, and my hand in his slipped around his neck. His wrapped tighter around my waist.
Then we weren’t so much dancing as holding each other closely, communicating years of adolescent desire with loud silence.
