He’d thought they were having a good time, but she’d seemed so offended when he’d told her he wasn’t going to dance.
Not that he’d ever been too concerned about sparing other people’s feelings. He tried to be a decent man and not hurt others if he could help it, but he said what he thought most of the time, whether or not the other person wanted to hear it. But beneath her clever insouciance—fueled by the champagne—there was something fragile about Amanda tonight.
He had the strangest impulse to protect it. Protect her. So maybe he should have agreed to dance.
He hadn’t. And now she was on the dance floor with dull Charles Kensington.
What the hell was she doing with him?
At least it wasn’t a slow dance. The music was a silly, upbeat pop song, so there wasn’t much touching involved in the way they were moving together. But still...
It made him want to scowl to see her swinging her hips and laughing with the other man.
He’d obviously drunk more than he should if he was resenting something like that. Amanda wasn’t his. She’d never been his, and she never would be. He had absolutely no right to feel this possessive jealousy regarding her.
He shouldn’t be feeling anything of the kind. She’d agreed to get drunk with him because he was there when she’d been feeling vulnerable. Now she’d recovered from the moment and was back to her normal self, which wanted nothing to do with him.
Just as well.
The things he’d been feeling tonight had not been safe or logical or characteristic of him. No sense in encouraging that in himself.
Better to go back to normal where he stayed on the periphery of life and occasionally watched Amanda from afar.
When the song changed to something slower, Robert scowled again. Now Amanda had her arms around Charles and was moving against him in an undeniably sexy way.
For a moment Robert imagined she was doing it with him and got hard from his own imagination.
Shit.
This was no good.
Maybe he should just leave before he did something he’d regret.
He was waging an internal debate when the song ended and Amanda returned to where he was sitting.
She was definitely worse for wear from the alcohol. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were vivid blue but not focusing very well. Her neckline was askew, showing a little too much of luscious cleavage he couldn’t seem to move his eyes away from.
She was gorgeous and sexy and still bright as sunlight.
And drunk.
“Come dance with me now,” she said, leaning over to grab his arm. “If Charles can do it, you can too.”
At least she hadn’t forgotten about him. He shook his head and said dryly, “I better not.”
“But why not? I’m a good dancer. You’ll have a good time. I promise.” Her voice pitched lower. Husky. Undeniably erotic.
His whole body went tight with a wave of hot lust. But he managed to keep his voice cool as he resisted her pull. “I don’t have any doubts about that, but I’m still not going to do it. Go find someone else to dance with.”
He was a fool. Had he really just told her to find another man to grind against in that sexy way?
“But I want to dance with you.” She moved her hand from his arm to his chest, edging aside his jacket to stroke his shirt.
He moved her hand before she got too low. “No means no.”
The words stopped her. She withdrew her hand like she’d been stung. Then she made a face at him and collapsed onto the chair beside him with a loud huff. “You’re not fun at all.”
“That’s undeniably true.”
“Why won’t you dance with me?”
“Because I’m not a dancer. And if you hadn’t had so much to drink, you wouldn’t have even asked me.”
That appeared to stump her. She sat frowning and thinking it over for a minute. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“Have you ever asked me to dance before?”
“No.”
“So that proves my point.”
“No, it doesn’t. It just means I didn’t realize you’d be good to dance with before. But now I do.” She turned wide eyes up toward his face and batted her thick eyelashes.
She was quite unjustly beautiful.
“Please?” she asked.
“No.”
“Pretty please?”
“I said no.”
“You’re an asshole.”
He chuckled at the abrupt shift in mood. “Guilty as charged.”
Still pouting, she slouched down in her chair and crossed her arms over her stomach. But she didn’t get up again. She didn’t try to dance with him or anyone else. And she didn’t ask for another drink.
He slid a glass of water over toward her. The ice was mostly melted now, but it was still cold.
She stared at the glass. Then sneered up at his face.
He arched his eyebrows.
“Asshole,” she muttered as she picked up the glass.
“I already admitted to the charge. What else do you want from me?”
“I want you to not be an asshole.”
“I’m sorry, sunshine, but some people are just born that way.”
DAVE AND STACEY LEFT the reception for their honeymoon about twenty minutes later. And after that, the rest of the evening faded into a vague, fuzzy darkness for Amanda.
She was still aware enough to understand where she was and what she was doing, but the details blurred. It was just as well. If she could think more, she’d recognize the significance. She’d lost Dave. Forever. Before she’d ever really had him.
But it was fine. Just fine. It had always been nothing but a soft daydream for her anyway. The aching hole in her chest was nothing more than exhaustion after four weeks of constant work and preparation and then drinking too much at the reception with Robert.
Robert.
He was still there. Beside her. He’d never left. It felt like he’d been sitting in the chair beside her forever.
It was strange. His presence was a comfort as well as a provocation. A security as well as a mystery. On a different day, she would have pondered the ironies, but right now she was trying not to fall asleep in her chair.
Her one saving grace was she wasn’t a throw-uppy drunk, so she hadn’t humiliated herself in that fashion. After drinking the three glasses of water Robert kept pushing at her, her mind was a little clearer. But she was having trouble keeping her eyes open, and with clarity came a heavy ache of loss that she’d successfully been holding back.
“I need a drink,” she whispered. Maybe to Robert or maybe to herself.
He looked like an old-fashioned movie star with his bow tie undone and his collar open. He’d been slouched down in his chair, holding a whisky glass that had been near empty for almost an hour now. He hadn’t taken the final sip. He reached out to slide a half-full glass of water toward her.
She curled up her lip. “Not water.”
“If you drink more champagne, you’ll start groping me again.”
Her huff of indignation was half-real and half-feigned. “I never groped you!”
“We’ll have to disagree on that conclusion.”
“Well, I won’t do it again. I was just trying to get you to dance.”
“I know that. I’m not fool enough to think you meant it, which is why I didn’t reciprocate. But I thought we’d gotten past the sloppy-drunk part of the evening. Do we really need to backtrack?”