style="font-size:15px;"> She had to quit staring. Moira knew that, in some distant part of her mind. It would be humiliating if Bruce were to happen to glance her way and catch her gaping.
Maybe, at the last minute, his plans had changed and he’d come on the chance that she would be here. If he’d tried calling her at home, and thought that because she didn’t answer…
He laid his hand on the brunette’s lower back. Really, almost, on her butt. The way his hand was splayed there was unmistakably proprietary and…sexual. Recognizing it, the woman smiled and tilted her head so that it, very briefly, rested against his upper arm.
Pain squeezed Moira’s chest. Surely he hadn’t been seeing someone else all this time. Or was even married? They had several mutual acquaintances who knew they were dating each other. Wouldn’t someone have said something?
And—face it—why would he have dated her at all if he had a wife or a lover who looked like that?
The backs of her eyes burned, and she suddenly felt homely and fat. Probably Stan Wells had turned in incredulity at the amount of flesh she’d squeezed into this damn dress.
Breathe, she told herself, and couldn’t.
She couldn’t seem to make herself move, either. She was frozen between one step and the next, excruciatingly self-conscious. What she’d convinced herself were curves were really bulges. And no one thought a woman whose skin was spotted was sexy. With self-loathing, she wondered who she had been kidding.
Then, to complete her misery, Bruce’s head turned and their eyes met. His face went still. Knowing a riptide of red was sweeping up her neck to her cheeks, Moira forced herself into motion. With her redhead’s skin, she didn’t blush, she flamed. Even from a distance, he would see.
Her eye fastened desperately on a bar ahead. She could pretend she’d been looking for a drink. That gave her a goal. Made her feel as if she was less pathetically, obviously alone.
Except, of course, that she was.
There was a short line. The couple ahead of her were strangers and paid no attention to her. She wished someone else would join the queue, someone she could hide behind. Unfortunately, in her peripheral vision she could still see Bruce and the woman. He spoke to her, then left her watching him speculatively and approached Moira.
If only she could cool her cheeks, she might be able to handle him with savoir faire. A surprised glance, an, “Oh, you made it after all?” If only she had any actual confidence.
“Moira.” He was here, at her side.
She tilted her chin up and, somehow, smiled. “Bruce. I didn’t expect to see you.”
“I didn’t think I’d see you, either.”
Anger was her salvation, or maybe it would embarrass her, she didn’t know which. She went with it anyway.
With raised eyebrows, she glanced toward his date. “Yes, that’s obvious.”
“Ah…I’m sorry about this. I should have told you.”
“That we weren’t dating each other exclusively?” She was proud of her level tone.
“It’s not like that.” He frowned at her. “We were. I was. It’s just that I ran into Graziella and…” Bruce spread his hands and shrugged. “We’d broken it off, but as soon as we saw each other again we both knew we’d made a mistake.”
In other words, Moira realized, he’d been in love with another woman the entire time he’d dated her. No wonder he’d been so patient. He’d been filling time with her. Licking his wounds. She couldn’t even flatter herself that he’d been on the rebound. He hadn’t been interested enough in her for their relationship to qualify.
It hurt. Her heart or her pride, she wasn’t sure which, but either way, it did hurt.
The couple in front of her stepped up to the bar. She moved forward.
“Honesty would have been nice.”
“I didn’t lie—”
“Yes, you did. If only by omission.” Anger was still carrying her along, thank goodness. “I didn’t understand that I wasn’t supposed to come tonight. You’ve embarrassed me. That wasn’t necessary, Bruce.” Drinks in hand, the couple stepped away. To Bruce, Moira said, “Please excuse me,” and turned to the bartender. “A martini, please.”
By the time she’d paid, Bruce was gone, striding across the ballroom toward his Graziella, whose name was as exotic as her looks.
Moira took a huge gulp of the martini and wished she could go home. But if she did that, the jerk would know that she wasn’t just embarrassed, she was humiliated and wounded. And she refused to give him that satisfaction.
She’d dance, and maybe even get a little bit drunk. She would clutch at her pride, because that’s all she had. And she wouldn’t let herself think until she got home about the fact that Bruce Girard hadn’t wanted her, not really.
Men never did.
WILL BECKER LEANED AGAINST the railing, his back to the view of dark woods that somehow still existed within a stone’s throw of the Redmond Town Center mall and the surrounding upscale hotels and restaurants. Instead, nursing a drink he didn’t really want, he looked through the floor-to-ceiling glass at the ballroom where other people seemed to be having a fine time.
Him, he hated affairs like this. He was content lurking outside, glass separating him from the gaiety within.
Circumstances being different, he wouldn’t be here at all. As it was, he and Clay had attended a few conference sessions together, but the real point of the weekend had been for Will to introduce his brother to everyone he knew. This had been a four day long changing of the guard, so to speak.
“Yes,” he’d said dozens of times, “Clay will be taking over Becker Construction. He knows the business. Hell, better than I did when I stepped in for my father.” Got stuck, was what he really meant. “I have confidence in Clay.”
That was the important part: to convey to everyone that he believed Clay could replace him without one of the county’s biggest construction companies suffering even a minor hiccup.
“I have plans,” he’d said vaguely when asked what he’d be doing. Only to a select few had he admitted that a week from tomorrow he was flying to Zimbabwe to begin a two-year commitment to build medical clinics. He only knew how to do one thing—build—but at least he’d be having an adventure. That, and doing good, instead of adding another minimall where it wasn’t needed.
Now, he was lying low. He’d done his duty this evening and would have left if Clay didn’t still seem to be having a good time.
Music spilled from the crowded ballroom, and he idly watched the dancers. Not for the first time, Will found his gaze following a redheaded woman whose lush body was poured into a high-necked forest-green dress that might have been demure on someone else—someone who didn’t have a small waist, a glorious ass and breasts that would overflow a man’s hands, even hands as large as his.
The guy she was dancing with kept trying to
