kill him. She wanted to kill him.
Amy looked shocked. ‘Man, that’s expensive.’
‘But worth it,’ Scott said. One more look at Kate, and then he turned to Willa to say something.
The conversation ebbed and flowed around Kate as, silent, she pondered the way her evening had started—four friends sharing their secret longings for romance. But Willa’s was real. Whereas Kate’s…? Pure Hollywood. Never going to happen.
And it was probably time she admitted that she wanted it to be real. Wanted what Willa had. Wanted someone to trust her with his life.
Because she could be trusted.
People trusted her with their lives every day. They trusted her to extricate them from bad marriages with a whole skin and the means to live. They trusted her to do the best thing for their children. They trusted her to find a way for them to achieve closure, and keep their dignity, and get a fair deal.
They trusted her…before moving on with their lives without her.
And that wasn’t enough any more.
She wanted someone who trusted her but didn’t want to move on with his life without her. She wanted someone complicated and creative, and strong and principled, and smart and funny, and sexy and…and…hers.
She wanted love. She wanted, specifically, Scott Knight to love her. Not just the scent, the taste, the feel of her…but the whole of her. Wanted to trust him with her life and wanted him to trust her with his.
She wanted him to tell her about growing up never feeling quite good enough, and she wanted to make sure he knew that he was. Good enough for anything—for everything.
She wanted Scott to tell her about Weeping Reef. About Chantal and Brodie. How he’d felt, what it had meant, what it had done to him to feel so betrayed, if it still ate at him.
She wanted to tell him she would never, ever hurt him like that. That she would never betray him. Couldn’t betray him. That she—
‘Kate?’
Brodie—pulling her back.
‘Refill?’ he asked, nodding at her glass, which was empty again.
‘No,’ she said, and tried to smile. ‘And that’s my last—so don’t worry. There’ll be no heave-hoing over the gunwales tomorrow.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve held a girl’s hair out of the way, so don’t sweat it for my sake, Katie.’
Scott clunked his beer glass on the table. Loud enough to make Amy, sitting beside him, jump.
‘Kate—not Katie,’ he said. And then he turned back to Willa as though he hadn’t just bowled that out loud and livid enough for everyone to marvel at, and asked, ‘When’s Luke coming home?’
After a stunned moment, Willa gathered herself enough to speak. ‘No immediate plans, as far as I’m aware. He’s in the middle of a deal in Singapore he won’t tell me anything about. Confidential, apparently.’
‘Confidential,’ Amy repeated, but the tone of her voice—all dark, when Amy was basically the brightest, shiniest girl in the world—made Kate wonder if perhaps she wasn’t the only one hitting the cocktails a little too hard.
‘Yeah,’ Willa said, a little uneasily. ‘He’s like a clam about stuff like that.’
Amy looked straight at Scott. ‘But you know.’
‘About Singapore?’ Scott asked. ‘Nope.’
‘Not Singapore. I mean what happened at Weeping Reef.’
Kate wondered what she was missing and looked around at the others. Willa was looking startled—everyone else confused.
Scott half sighed, half laughed, winced. ‘I think we all know what happened at Weeping Reef.’
‘I knew he’d told you. You know—at Willa’s party—when you said that…that thing about a gentleman never telling a lady’s secrets.’
Nobody spoke.
‘Amy,’ Scott said into the awkward pause, ‘if you think I have a lady’s secret to tell—one that doesn’t involve me getting up to no good with a hooker called Lorelei…’ He waited while everyone at the table except a cringing Kate and a startled-looking Amy laughed. ‘Then please fill me in. Otherwise I’m going to go and fulfil my obligation to that clutch of hens—or flock, or brood, or whatever the hell a group of chickens is called. The ones who donated a chair to our cause when I first arrived.’
He waited, watching Amy, who was blinking, stunned.
‘Right, I’ll take that as a no, then,’ he said, and stood. ‘Give me fifteen minutes,’ he said to the group at large.
‘Yeah—as if!’ Jessica said as he was sucked into the crowd. ‘It will only take him five minutes, max, to sort out his next one-night stand. He has the gift.’
But Amy was looking at Willa, dazed and confused. ‘Luke really didn’t…?’
Willa slid off Rob’s lap and into Scott’s vacated chair, right next to Amy, and took Amy’s hand. ‘No, Amy. He really didn’t.’
‘Well…wow!’ Amy said.
Brodie turned to Kate. ‘We seem to be a little out of this loop, Kate. Shall we join the few brave souls venturing onto the dance floor?’
Kate had a feeling Scott wouldn’t like her dancing with Brodie.
But, then again, Scott was in the process of picking up a drunken bed partner on a hen night.
And he’d told Brodie she was all his.
And Scott didn’t love her.
And he never would.
And she wanted to die.
What was one dance stacked against all that?
‘Sure,’ she said.
Brodie led her onto the small dance floor. Without any hesitation—and completely ignoring the fact that every other couple on the floor was dancing without touching—he took Kate in his arms.
‘What’s going on?’ Brodie asked, without preamble.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You and Scott. Am I going to get my teeth smashed in for dancing with you?’
‘No. But I don’t think the threat of that scares you or you wouldn’t have asked me to dance, would you?’
No answer. He simply pulled her a little closer.
‘So, Brodie, why did you ask me to dance?’
