When he walked into the party I dropped a full glass of champagne. And it was a real glass, so I sent shattered fragments flying everywhere. It seemed fitting. When he’d left without a trace four years ago, I’d felt completely shattered.
Now he stood 20 feet away from me looking even more devastatingly gorgeous than before. I didn’t know how that could be possible. He’d spent the past four years in the Special Forces; I’d gotten that much out of my older brother, Colt. I knew the two of them had kept in touch after Dominic had saved his life.
After he’d nearly ruined mine.
When you fell in love at 18, it felt like the world was opening up, full of promise and new beginnings. Especially if you thought the man you loved felt the same way. And I didn’t mean puppy love, full of rainbows and princess dreams. I meant honest, real, I’ve found the person I want to be with for the rest of my life love.
But then Dom had left, no warning, no forwarding address.
It might have had something to do with the fact that his mother married my father. We hadn’t seen that coming. But the marriage had only lasted a year and a half. My father had passed at only 67 years old from cancer. Dom hadn’t even come back for the funeral.
But now here he was at our family’s annual holiday party. Wearing a tux. And making me drop champagne glasses.
“Are you all right?” someone next to me asked. A server hustled to sweep up the shards.
“Oh, of course. How clumsy of me.” Dropped glasses happened every year at this party, usually toward the end of the evening courtesy of the open bar. I’d started things off early. Seeing your long-lost love of your life walk through the door had that effect.
He spoke briefly with my brother, Colt. But then he made his way over to me. I knew he would. Nervous, I flitted among partygoers, maintaining my ever-cheerful exterior even as I remained hyper-aware of his every move. I was famous for my composure, my happy demeanor. No one knew what had happened between me and Dominic. No one even knew I had a secret to keep.
He stood before me. “Gigi.”
I’d recognize that voice anywhere. I still heard it in my sleep, low and dark. I didn’t have to look up to know it was him, so I didn’t. I kept focused across the room where some acquaintance or other was giving me wave. Perfect, bright, upbeat as always, I waved back.
But a storm raged inside me.
“How are you?” He still stood there, so tall, so broad and powerful. Of course I knew in the military he’d have pushed himself physically, but he’d already been in killer physical condition when I’d last seen him. Now? He looked like Thor with short, dark hair.
“Oh, fine!” I answered in bright falseness, the exterior I wore for everyone else in place. Everyone else accepted it without doubt.
Dom reached out and grazed my hand with his. I couldn’t ignore that. I looked up into his eyes, the ones I’d dreamed about for years now, so dark and yet the more you looked into them the more depth you could see, shades and hints of light.
“How are you?” he asked again.
I looked up at him, all pretense instantly gone. Stripped naked, bare for him, all my emotion in my gaze.
How was I? I was still in love with him. Deeply, madly, irrevocably. That’s how I was.
I drew a shaky breath. And then a friend intervened, a party girl, one of New York society’s finest. Exactly the type I tended to hang with, all surface, all the time. It was easier that way. When no one around you had any depth, then no one suspected you did, either.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” she asked, flashing him a seductive smile. His eyes never left mine.
“Of course!” I fluttered, shifting easily into social butterfly mode. “Samantha, Dominic. Do you know the two of you are both from California? I’m sorry, please excuse me. There’s someone I have to say hello to.”
And just like that I extracted myself from the situation. Now I simply had to staunch the bleeding from the freshly opened wound in my heart. That shouldn’t take long, maybe only another year or so.
Dominic. Back in New York. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined he’d return tonight. All right, in my wildest dreams he’d done a lot more than find me at a party and say hello.
I took a deep breath, then reminded myself to let it out. It had always been like that around him. Hard to breathe, with him staring directly into my soul. I guessed some things never changed.
I’d just have to make sure we never ran into each other again.
Dom
I got the call late at night. I’d grown accustomed to midnight emergencies. In the Special Forces, you didn’t exactly keep regular hours like a nine-to-five desk jockey.
But I’d finished my four years of active duty. I was now officially in the reserves, technically on call but no longer storming and raiding in foreign, war-torn countries, watching my friends get blown apart by IEDs. Big difference. At least I’d thought.
When I’d seen Colt at the holiday party Saturday night, I’d expected a follow up call. He’d stayed in touch relentlessly over the years, tracking me down even when it was damn hard. And it was damn hard most of the time. I’d grown to respect him, his loyalty, his friendship. The man remembered who’d helped him when he’d needed it. That said a lot about his character.
But I hadn’t expected him to call at 2 a.m. Monday morning. I’d been awake, lying in bed, thinking about her. At the party, Gigi had looked like a fucking beam of sunlight struck down through a crack in the ceiling in that shimmering silver dress with her soft, creamy skin and gleaming waves of strawberry blonde hair. All the times I’d dreamed of her, envisioned her like a talisman of hope in the middle of my darkest hours, I’d tried to convince myself that I’d exaggerated. I must have embellished the truth over the years. No one could be that staggeringly beautiful.
Then I saw her again and realized my fantasies hadn’t even done her justice. Her full lips, her petite frame. The way she held herself, graceful and light. The way she couldn’t meet my eyes. Then how she’d looked when she finally did, gazing up at me with her dark blue eyes wide and brimming with unspoken emotion. I saw a mixed-up brew of confusion there. And maybe longing? I might have seen a hint of that. Late at night, I sure hoped I had.
I’d already felt pretty worked up before Colt’s phone call. But his words jolted my adrenaline into hyper-drive like a hostile raid.
“We have a situation,” he’d begun, asking if I could be downstairs in five minutes to step into his limo.
Inside the car, he gave me the highlights of his current shitstorm. He was right. It was a bad one.
Colt was CEO of the family business, Kavanaugh Investors. I knew enough about human nature to understand without being told, you didn’t become a billionaire without getting your fingers dirty every now and then. No one amassed that kind of wealth and stayed squeaky clean.
It turned out his former COO had been dealing dirty for years, getting in way over his head with exactly the kinds of people you didn’t want to mess with at all, ever. I knew about those kinds of people. I hadn’t grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth like Colt. I’d grown up in Fresno, my father in a motorcycle club, my mother in a strip joint. It was cool on Sons of Anarchy, but not so cool as a seven-year-old needing regular meals.
But it had given me more of an education than all of Colt’s Harvard degrees. Most everyone I knew had a dark side and, given the right conditions, they’d go there. Greed and power were ruthless motivators.
Colt’s old COO had gotten into it with a Columbian drug cartel. I didn’t get all the details, we didn’t have time, but the gist of it was he’d gotten Kavanaugh Investors involved with the coffee trade, which had pissed off those involved with the cocaine trade, and now the cartel had issued a death threat.
The thing about a Columbian drug cartel was they really knew how to hit where it hurt. A typical bad guy would have taken a swing right at Colt. A more clever bad guy would have targeted his new wife, and that would have been effective. But
Colt had her under wraps, heavily guarded since intel had reached him that this could become a problem.