Except it all morphs when she talks to Declan. The ice queen becomes a sweet, warm princess and she is hot to snag him. Not that I have a claim on him or anything, though the way his hand is learning the terrain of my inner thigh makes me think he was a geography major with a keen interest in cartography.
I don’t stop him. I don’t want to. And he’s showing no signs of wanting to, either, as his fingertips graze against my skin, moving in light circles, taking their time as they feel their way through questions I know the answers to now, but can’t quite put into words.
Good luck, Jessica. You can’t compete with Toilet Girl.
But you just keep on trying.
Steve alternates between looking like a ferocious business insider and a wounded intern. I can tell the landscape of his internal sense of the pecking order of the world has been deeply shaken. Accustomed to treating me like a social necessary at dinners like this, he used to think he had to carefully coach me. As if I were a walking liability ready to spring a faux pas at any minute and ruin his chances for success.
And yet I loved him. Still kind of do. Because even now, with Declan’s hand practically typing out all the sexy scenes from Fifty Shades of Grey on my leg in morse code, a part of me wants to help Steve. Whatever that means.
“I saw the exhibit your brother has over at the Bromfield,” Jessica tells Declan, taking the opportunity to reach out and touch his forearm. My eyes lock on her perfect, slender hand, and suddenly the only meat I want between my teeth are those fingers.
The possessiveness makes my body go on high alert, and Declan’s hand stops moving. Even he can feel it. He shifts his arm just so, enough to make her drop her hand as he reaches for his wine glass, giving me a sidelong glance that tells me the message was most certainly received.
“The Bromfield is a gallery for modern art,” Jessica says pointedly to me, leaning around Declan. She says it like she’s a children’s television show host explaining a new concept to an imagined four-year-old audience.
“I’m more a Fountain Street Studios kind of gal,” I say as I reach for the bottle of wine in the bucket next to me. Steve’s eyes widen a touch, the signal obvious. I’m supposed to wait for someone else to pour it, or to ask Declan or Steve to, or I’m supposed to disappear into a giant sinkhole created by the gravity of my lack of manners.
Instead, I pour the rest of the wine into mine and Declan’s glasses, and gently return the bottle.
“Fountain Street?” Jessica says, eyes as wide as saucers, a sarcastic curl to her lip as she looks with fake helplessness between Steve and Declan. “I don’t believe I’ve heard of them.”
“They’re in Framingham,” I say, pretending not to notice the condescension. She sniffs, expecting the men to join in her game. Framingham is a former working-class town with a city center that is not even the kind of place where Jessica could imagine her cleaning lady would live.
“The old warehouse?” Declan says. “The one that the artists took over as a sort of co-op?” His eyes light up. “We’ve had commercial photographers from that operation come and do beautiful work for our promo materials in the real estate operation. High-end, quality work.”
Jessica’s eyes open wider, but this time driven by something other than coquettishness. A sharp look at Steve makes him literally sink a bit in his chair, as if his balls were deflating by the second.
“Have you been to one of their open houses?” I ask. The place advertises every few months, and I’ve always been curious.
“No, but I think we’re about to. It’s a date,” he whispers, loud enough for Steve and Jessica to hear. She leans back with her lemon face again and Steve reaches for her hand with a loving look on his face. She tolerates his touch like she’s getting a pap smear. Including the shudder, as if cold steel slides along her skin.
Declan and I reach for our glasses of wine at the exact same moment, and he hold his out to mine. “A toast!” He looks at Steve and Jessica, and they both pick up their wine glasses, Steve letting out a sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath for too long.
“What shall we toast to?” Steve asks.
Declan looks down in contemplation, and his hand opens on my leg, massaging up and down. I don’t even try to pretend to ignore it now, loosened up by the wine and his attentions—both public and private. Doubts fade as the scenario sharpens. Crazy as it sounds, Declan’s got his hot palm on my skin, his eyes on me, and his words, I suspect, are about to center around me, too.
“To…shopping for a billionaire!” Declan declares.
Chapter Eleven
Jessica inhales so sharply she sounds like she’s having an asthma attack as she exhales. Steve greedily takes a sip or ten of his wine without clinking glasses with anyone.
Declan gently nudges my wine with a punctuated connection of glass on glass, and eyes that blaze with so many unspoken words. His hand that moves from my thigh, up over my hip, and to the small of my back speaks a few thousand of them, though.
“I thought you were going to say, ‘To Toilet Girl,’” I confess quietly, leaning toward him. My lips are so close to his ear I could lick it. Only his slight movement backwards stops me, as he’s out of reach with a shift of air that makes me want to breathe him in forever. He could bottle that scent. Pure Declan.
He chuckles softly. “Too easy. Besides,” he murmurs, “if you really are on the hunt for a billionaire, you’re batting zero with me. I’m not even close. But you’re technically shopping for my father’s company, and he’s one.”
Before I can answer, Steve interrupts, and in a loud, commanding voice says, “I can’t compete. I’m only a millionaire.” Fake self-deprecating chuckle. Jessica gives him a honey-cheeked smile, one I thought she reserved only for men like Declan, who are an order of magnitude beyond Steve. I know—and Steve knows—he isn’t really a millionaire. “On paper,” he used to say. Um, okay. Even I, a mere marketing major, know that if you have $1.5 million in assets you’re not a millionaire if you also have $1.2 million in debts.
But what does a silly Mendon girl with a bachelor’s from UMass know? I’m guessing Jessica is a Wellesley girl. Too fragile for Smith, and too moneyed for Wheelock. Then again, she has a graduate degree from Harvard.
Steve’s gaze penetrates me, the look cold and hungry at the same time. As much as I hate it, he rattles me. It’s been nearly a year since he dumped me, so while I’m not a raw pile of goo living on ice cream and espresso between healthy doses of self-loathing and a nice injection of desolation, he’s still the man I thought I would marry. The guy who helped me have my first orgasm. The man who cheered me on at graduation. The one who patiently explained pivot tables on spreadsheets.