She rises on her tiptoes and gives me a wet, deep kiss. My skin flashes hot, then even hotter when she runs her hand through my hair, hauls me closer, kisses me harder.
When she ends the kiss, her lipstick is a mess and I love the look on her.
“Number,” I say roughly, dazed by her passionate kiss. “Give me your number. Give me your name. I want to see you again. Tonight. Any night.”
She looks kiss-drunk too, but she quickly blinks away the fog. “No.”
I stare. “What?” I can’t have heard right.
“I don’t want to be your bet, Gatsby,” she says, adjusting my bow tie. With a last pat, she spins on her heel and heads for the door.
No fucking way.
I won’t let her go.
I slice through the crowds after her, tracking her silhouette as she moves like a cat.
“Oh, Easton, that’s gotta hurt,” Nolan calls out, chuckling.
Not-Daisy stops abruptly as if she heard him. Maybe that’s my cue.
I catch up to her and lay a hand on her shoulder.
“Let me take you home. Apologize properly for the bet,” I say. With my tongue. All over your body.
She meets my gaze, mask through mask. “You’re so determined. Why?”
Her question could have so many answers, from the complicated—this is my life now—to the simple—I want what I want. But the truth is even easier. “We have chemistry.”
Sometimes chemistry is the only reason you need, and I haven’t felt it this intensely in a long while.
We complicate affairs of the heart when they’re often simply affairs of the nervous system.
Dopamine rules.
She tilts her head, wetting her lips as she watches me. But then she shakes off her thoughts and my hand from her shoulder. “It would be . . . too complicated,” she says, then turns away, sailing off into the New York night.
This time, I don’t chase her.
I don’t know what’s so complicated, but the last thing I need in my life right now is a problem.
So, goodbye, Daisy.
I head back to the festivities, stopping to refuel at the bar. “Just a club soda this time,” I tell Spencer.
My cousin fills a glass. “By the way, I knew you were Gatsby.”
“You’re like his identical twin,” Nolan adds. “But it’s fun to wind you up.”
“Appreciate the sentiment,” I say, but it’s hardly a consolation that my costume is good when the woman I want has disappeared into the New York night.
Spencer sets down the glass. “Better luck next time.”
“Indeed.”
I take a drink then do my best to shake off the encounter, focusing instead on why I’m here—meeting people to invite to my next party.
Finding people to bring together matters most to me, for so many reasons.
Most of all, to balance the cosmic scales of the past.
4
Bellamy Hart’s Planning Notes for A Million Frogs . . .
Thanks, Fate.
I finally score an invitation to a Carpe Diem gala, and it turns out Mister Sex in a Suit is none other than Easton Ford, host of the most coveted parties in New York.
That damn mask.
I better not have screwed my chances before I can scope out the man properly and make my request of him professionally. If I’m lucky, he won’t recognize me at his fête.
A man like him meets a million women. All he has to go on are the glass slippers of my lips, and there’s so much more to me.
I’ll have to convince him of that when we meet again in a few weeks’ time.
5
The Keeper of My Secrets
New York City is not for the fainthearted.
Good thing mine is made of iron, forged in a blacksmith shop, and ready to do battle with anyone, including my own sister.
I’m determined to win her over. She’s the best, and I want the best for my parties.
A week after the masquerade at The Lucky Spot, I catch the tail end of my sister’s set at Stella’s Comedy Attic in Chelsea. Rory owns the stage, spotlight on her freckled, innocent-only-on-the-outside face.
“And then this guy said to my friend, Are you Ariel? Because we were . . . mermaid for each other.”
The audience groans.
She groans too.
“Right? I had to pull the emergency pretend-to-almost-gag-all-over-him card.” She points her thumb at her sternum. “I don’t let my friends go home with guys who use bad puns. Standards and all.”
I chuckle as Rory finishes her set, thanks the audience, and weaves through the crowd to join me at the bar.
She bumps my shoulder with hers and teases, “If it isn’t the old school matchmaker of Manhattan.”
“We all have our callings,” I say. “Apparently, yours is to keep your friends from dating twits with low standards in humor.”
She flicks her blonde hair off her shoulder with a certain flair. “It’s a very important job, thank you very much.”
“And somebody has to do it.”
She’s done for the night, so we leave the club, walking along the tree-lined block in Chelsea on a late-summer night. Time to try again with my little sis. If she’ll perform at next month’s party in the Village, I can lure just the right guests. Hell, she might put me one step closer to hitting my gamechanger goal—enough matches to put the sting of the Coupled business behind me.