“He’s joking,” she assured my butler.
I shook my head. “I most certainly am not.”
Benson exited the car to come around to open my door. I scooted over but stopped when Delaney’s fingers brushed mine. I craned my neck to see her, and her eyes were soft on mine.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her hand cupped gently over mine on the leather seat.
A normal human would have simply smiled and said, ‘You’re welcome’. But I had a reputation to uphold of not giving a fuck. It was a reputation I’d maintained for years and I certainly wasn’t going to risk it all tonight. I held on tight to that reputation like a security blanket because I wasn’t sure who I was without it.
So I winked devilishly at Delaney and let my eyes skim down the line of her cleavage.
“You should have let me make you come, Ms Evans,” I said softly. “Then you’d have a reason to thank me.”
Delaney
A red carpet stretched into the dazzling light of the five-star hotel lobby. I couldn’t help but think that I was stupidly walking up a long tongue straight into the belly of a gold-scaled dragon. I was about to be eaten alive and I was serving myself up on a silver platter.
As I followed Ronan out of the town car and smiled a quick thank you to Benson, who disappeared from the glare of the popping and snapping cameras, I reached out to Ronan for the comfort and support of his arm. In his own peculiar way, he’d been something close to kind during the ride to the Solstice Ball from the mansion. I expected that to continue as we mounted the stairs lined with surging and thronging paparazzi, but instead my hand flew through empty air as Ronan suddenly stumbled.
I laid a hand on his back as he groped at the red carpet-covered stairs.
“Are you okay?” I asked as he pushed himself to his feet.
I looked back to see what he had tripped on—maybe—a rogue tube of Chanel red lipstick, a gold family heirloom cufflink, a blood diamond the size of my fist—but the stairs were empty and clean.
“What did you trip on?” I started to ask but was interrupted by Ronan pitching wildly to the side, nearly knocking me over.
My arms wobbled. I would have been grateful for Ronan’s dumbass yacht deportment lessons had I not been so confused and, increasingly, irritated.
“What the hell?” I hissed while trying to keep something resembling a smile for the flashing cameras surrounding us like vultures circling a blinding sun.
Ronan didn’t answer me but instead giggled stupidly. I stared in utter bewilderment as he stopped on the stairs and slung his arm roughly around my neck. I grunted with exertion as he sagged against me with a hiccup.
“Ronan,” I said, unable to catch his eyes. “Ronan. Ro—”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Ronan announced far too loudly, even considering the noise of the street and the press and the murmurs of the distinguished crowds just inside the hotel lobby. “Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you the ravisheling—ravishering—radishing?”
Ronan lifted his hand to his chin but took two or three pats to even find it. My head swivelled around the crowd worriedly; did I need to have someone call an ambulance? What the fuck was going on?
“Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you the radishing Ms Deedie Ellen.”
“Delaney Evans,” I said, glaring up at Ronan. “You know what my name is.”
I swatted away Ronan’s hand as he patted at my delicately done hair like a cat with a new toy. He laughed without a care.
“That’s what I said,” he said, his words slurring slightly. “Ms Deedie Ellen.”
I gritted my teeth as my anger flared up in my chest. How stupid was I to think that Ronan had changed? How naïve was I to think that he’d seen me nervous in the town car on the drive over and distracted me? How fucking dumb was I to think that Ronan saw me as anything more than a plaything?
Nothing had changed. Nothing except for maybe myself; I’d let myself get soft. Rich people were all the same and they always would be.
“Can we please just go inside?” I asked, pushing at Ronan to urge him up the stairs.
Ronan resisted me just long enough to wink at the paparazzi and say, “We’re going to go find a linen closet.”
I shoved Ronan’s heavy arm from around my shoulders and continued alone up the stairs. Ronan stumbled after me, laughing as he kept reaching for a squeeze of my ass and missing. I gathered my skirt into my hands so I could hurry to the landing. From there I turned to watch irately as Ronan undid his bow tie and flung it into the curious crowds thronging on either side of the sidewalk blockades. He then blew wild kisses, his arms flinging back so dramatically that he fell back onto his ass next to my feet.
“Woah,” he laughed as I dragged him roughly up and yanked him into a shadow behind a wide Doric column. “Whee!”
I looked Ronan up and down with wide, confused eyes. His hair was already ruffled and messied. His tuxedo shirt was unbuttoned and rumpled and partially untucked. His brightly polished shoes were scuffed and his cheeks were red like we’d had sex in the back seat of the town car. As I was staring at him, Ronan grinned and dragged his fingers through his hair.
“Well, that was fun,” he said, no longer slurring. “Wasn’t it? Ahh.”
Ronan was composed and coherent once more. It was as if the red carpet were haunted and he’d been possessed for a dozen or so stairs. I raised my hands at my sides to try to express my incomprehension.
“Care to explain what the fucking, goddamn hell just happened?” I asked in a low whisper, glancing at the fine ladies and gentlemen streaming into the hotel.
Ronan wiggled loose another button on his white silk shirt and glanced down at me with a frown.
“What?” was all he said.
“What?” I repeated, nearing exacerbation. “What do you mean ‘what?’? It was like an entirely different person got out of the car.”
Ronan grinned and patted my cheek. “Exactly.”
He slipped past me and walked straight in the shadows only to stumble into the light like I’d shoved him. I hurried after, my skirt brushing against my legs with the noise of wind through the trees. I caught up with Ronan beneath a crystal chandelier.
“You’re acting like you’re shit-faced,” I whispered, my heels clicking and clacking on the marble floors beside him.
“I am drunk,” Ronan said, winking at an old woman in a high-necked lace gown who scowled and looked away.
“You haven’t had a drop and you know it.”
Ronan stopped and moved me around so our shoulders were squared with one another’s.
“Drunk on life, Delaney,” he said, eyes darting around us. “Kiss me.”
I frowned. “What?”
“Kiss me.”
“No.”
“Kiss me.”
“No.”
“Fine.”
Before I could stop him, Ronan swiped his thumb along my bottom lip and then smeared my deep berry-coloured lipstick along his throat.
“Thanks, love.”
Before I got over my shock, Ronan slipped past me and disappeared into the crowd.
I could still hear him, though, hollering over the hushed conversations. “Who, pray tell, can direct me to the nearest tequila?”