Eventually, I was hoisted back into the main room along with a sea of others. My ears hummed with a muted spattering of applause and I felt the noose getting tighter. But at that moment, a woman in a chinchilla muumuu stepped aside, and I suddenly saw a clear path to the front door. My eyes closed in momentary relief, and I silently promised never to sin again.
No sooner had I thought the words, than a pair of red talons closed around my arm and spun me around. It was the same bitchy girl from before, the one who seemed bent on my personal destruction. Her posse was right behind her as if to cheer her on. This time, she had a man with her—facing away from us as he murmured something to a tuxedoed stockbroker behind him.
In slow motion, he turned around. Our mouths fell open as our eyes met.
“You!” he said.
Let me preface this by saying that if this exact situation had happened to somebody else, I would have thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Amanda and I would have reveled in the impossible irony and delightfully downed tequila shots as we waited to see what would happen next. That’s probably why the cosmos saw fit to send this misery to me.
It was the rich man from the coffee shop.
Oh my gosh! This was his party?
Shit!
My heart thundered. No way could this be happening!
His eyes widened infinitesimally as he recognized me, and I turned the parched bone shade of his marble floors. If only I could slip through the tiles. If only there were a power outage, or an earthquake, or even something based loosely off one of those “gigantic animal” sci-fi horrors I was obsessed with. But no such luck. The silicone angel who facilitated all this was staring from one of us to the other with obvious glee, already basking in the grisly aftermath. I closed my eyes, bracing for one of the greatest tear-downs of all time.
But all I got was a soft kiss on the cheek.
“Hello, darling,” he said.
...what?
I opened my eyes to see him standing much closer than he had been before. A tailored arm slid gently around my waist.
“Hello, Markus,” I said.
He smiled, flashing me his perfect white teeth. And damn, did he have the most gorgeous, movie star smile.
When you thought “billionaire.” you usually pictured old men with tufts of grizzled hair coming out of their ears. But there was nothing grizzled about this guy. Quite the contrary. If I had to sum him up in one word and rich had already been taken, I think I would have gone with beautiful.
He had pale golden skin, a mesmerizing color that spoke to the fact that he worked inside all day but still had time for the occasional tropical vacation. His hair was silky and dark—a bit longer than I would have expected considering the rest of his perfectly trimmed lines. It was a guy’s hair. The kind your hot roommate had, and every now and then you just had to scrunch your fingers through it—all the while swearing you were just friends. (Or so I’d been told.) And then, of course, there were the eyes.
I hadn’t forgotten his eyes. Truth be told, they’d flashed through my mind more than once since our run-in at the coffee shop. That impossible emerald gray that made my entire body pause just to look a little longer. It’s just, I never thought that I’d see them again. Or that they’d be staring with unnerving attention...at me.
For one of the first times in my life, I couldn’t seem to talk. Lucky for me, Medusa picked up where I left off. “You...you know her? You actually know...?”
The billionaire squeezed my waist, and I looked up helplessly to meet his glorious gaze. Those ocean eyes sparkled for a moment before he cocked his head toward the woman—a subtle invitation.
My confidence rose a fraction of an inch, and I leaned back unintentionally into his grip as I shifted on my teetering heels. “Rebecca,” I reminded her with a victorious smile that didn’t entirely hide the fact that my knees were shaking.
Marcus smiled. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you took my breath away.”
My eyes tightened painfully into another over-animated smile. Just get it over with, man. If you’re going to out me—just do it already. But instead, he kept going along with the charade. Hey, I’m an actress so I got into character.
I shot him a seductive look. “Then you like the dress, babe?”
“Rebecca, you’re simply a vision,” he said in awe. “I can’t take my eyes off you.”
I touched his face and smiled. When he leaned down, I softly kissed him on the lips. Electricity shot through me. “Thank you. I knew this was your favorite color and I wanted to look perfect for you.”
“So you really know her?” his friend asked.
He stared into my eyes and smiled like he was completely smitten by me.
“We’ve been dating since—oh, when would you say, sweetheart?” he asked.