“Umm, has she ever done this before?” Jenna asked.
“Hell, no. Goddamn it, she’d been so casual asking to come to this reunion. Like it was no big deal.”
“I know. I mean, maybe they discovered they’re long lost...siblings?”
Rick gave her a look that made her last hope vanish. “You ever touched your brother like that?” He was practically growling in a very Danger Bond way. It was sexy as hell.
Oh, God.
Something had to be wrong with her brain. Had she really just gotten weak-kneed over the man who wanted to beat up her fiancé? Alcohol was the only answer, even though she felt as sober as a...sober person. “I don’t know. Maybe you could hit him one time. One time wouldn’t be too much.”
Rick retrieved something from his pocket, and for a moment Jenna was afraid it would be a gun or a knife. It wasn’t either, although she had the feeling he would have been handy with both. It turned out to be the ring, of course, and it was stunning. “It’s beautiful,” she said.
“I thought so. I thought she’d think so, too. But then she met... Is he famous or something? Faith never said what he did for a living.”
She sighed. “He’s an accountant.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I can’t seem to turn away. They just keep doing...” She moved her hand in a vague gesture.
Rick wasn’t looking at her, though. He was tall enough to see over people’s heads. “Shit. She’s a well-respected journalist. She’s won awards. She specializes in covering natural disasters.”
“Like the one we’re having now?” Jenna asked. The shock was wearing off a bit. More precisely, the shock was being shoved aside by a hurt that might be fatal.
“Yeah, except there’s nothing natural about it,” he said, as he put the ring back in his pocket. “Great way to bring in the New Year, huh?”
“I’m trying to think of one thing he could say right now that would fix this.” If only they’d left with Mindy and Zane...
“Hey...” Rick put his hand on her arm. “You okay? You’re looking awfully pale.”
“I’m fine, thanks,” she said, trying to breathe. “And by that I mean I’m not fine in any way. Although I doubt I’m going to faint.”
“Ten...”
The number filled the air, so loud it hushed the huge crowd.
“Nine...”
“Shit,” Rick said again. He took a step closer to Jenna. “If they—”
“Eight...”
“—even try to come back at the last second.” He faced Jenna. “She hasn’t even looked down this corridor. Not one look.”
“Five, four...”
People shifted, the crowd seemed to part, giving her another clear shot of the happy couple for a few seconds. If Payton glanced to his right, he would see her standing next to Rick. But he only had eyes for Faith.
“For fuck’s sake,” Rick said. “All they’d needed to do was walk around a corner. We’d have never known why they’d missed the countdown.”
“Maybe they planned...” They weren’t kissing, but they might as well be.
On the count of three, Rick looked at Jenna again, and she’d never felt so much empathy for another person.
Trying as hard as she could not to cry, she moved right into Rick’s personal space but she couldn’t look away.
“One! Happy New Year!”
Payton leaned closer to Faith. So close there was only one thing it could lead to. One second after Payton’s lips touched Faith’s, Rick put his hand on the back of Jenna’s neck and pulled her into their own midnight kiss.
The moment his mouth touched hers...fireworks.
RICK PULLED JENNA closer and kissed her again. He thrust into her mouth as the cacophony around them spurred him on. Even through his tux he could feel her fingers digging into him, her lips and tongue as fierce as weapons, the anger and the heat between them more dangerous by the second.
He hoped they were watching. That prick Payton needed to see what he’d lost. Never in his life had Rick experienced anything like this. In the back of his mind a voice whispered that none of it was real. Soon he would wake up, and the betrayal would have been a nightmare.
Jenna nipped his lower lip and broke that spell. It was real, all right. Revenge built on humiliation and pain, and he didn’t give one damn.
He inhaled sharply as Jenna pressed against him, against his hardening cock. Good. Great. He pulsed back, but when his balls started to tighten, he pulled away. Not far. He had her by the shoulders and she looked...well, she looked beautiful, but wrecked.
Tears had smudged her makeup, and there was a very small nick in her lower lip. Even though her pupils were blown, he could see the desperation in them. Wanting, he knew, to turn back time. Trying to make some sense of this bizarre twist.
“You want to get out of here?”
She nodded immediately. “Anywhere else.”
When he looked down the packed hallway, the lovebirds had finally stopped kissing and remembered who they’d come with. Payton looked stricken, which was a pity because Rick would’ve liked to have struck him first. Faith looked flat-out guilty.
Whether they’d actually spotted them, Rick couldn’t be sure. But when the two of them began squeezing past people, pushing through the crowd, Rick took Jenna’s hand and he bullied their way to the stairwell.
As the door shut behind them, he paused a moment. “I don’t know if you saw, but they were headed toward us.”
Her phone rang, and she pulled it out of her tiny purse. She shook her head and the sad smile she wore when she turned it off got to him. He much preferred the smile he’d seen at the buffet, when the world had still turned on the right axis. He doubted he’d see that anytime soon.
His phone rang, too. Like Jenna, he turned it off. Just for now? Maybe. He wasn’t in a position to walk away from Faith. Their lives were connected. And as far as he knew, they’d only kissed. That pissed him off all over again.
“Come on, then,” he said. They started down the steps. It wasn’t the quickest getaway ever because a lot of other folks had had the same idea, but they weren’t stalled often. Amazingly, when they made it to the coat check, the line moved along nicely.
Not quickly enough to distract Jenna from her thoughts, though. Her shoulders
