“Close my—”
“Just do it. I promise it’s worth the few moments of trust you’ll have to give me to lead you around this room.”
Jesus. Another alpha. What is it with the men in this town? They are all handsome, rich control freaks.
“Come on, it’s a vision you’ll enjoy. Women love shit like this.”
“Well, you certainly have the gift of persuasion,” I say through a chuckle. But when I glance up at him again, he looks… nostalgic. And maybe a little sad. Possibly a bit regretful.
I close my eyes. Because I would never turn down the opportunity to get a story that can cause so much emotion a decade later.
“Picture this, Molly,” he says, leaning down into my neck. I breathe in deeply as he whispers my name across the sensitive skin. “Hundreds of girls dressed in white gowns, much like the one you’re wearing tonight. And hundreds of escorts, dressed in a tux, much like mine. We filed into the grand cathedral, four abreast. Girl, boy, girl, boy. Black, white, black, white. Each escort holding the hand of his beautiful partner up, like he’d won the lottery.
“The stained glass was glowing from the interior lights. The music was lively. And nothing but proud faces beamed from the perimeter. My heart was beating fast that night. We’d been practicing the dances for months. Each one was coordinated to show us off. Each one classically choreographed to stun the families who sat in the boxed seats above. And when I watched the video days later, I felt like we were spinning for Heaven. Like every move that night was synchronized for God’s pleasure.”
“It sounds lovely,” I whisper, lost in his dream.
“It was a moment of peace in a life overflowing with chaos.”
“So what happened to her?”
“What?” he asks, breaking the spell he’s put me under and stopping our dance.
I open my eyes. “Where is she? It sounds like the night of your life.”
His smile is gone and his eyes are no longer bright. “I was a few years older than her, already in my third year of college by that time. And she was still in high school. But she never finished because there was a family emergency a few days later and she left town. I never saw her again.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. It sounds like she meant a lot to you. Did you ever go looking for her?”
“No.” He sighs. “I couldn’t. I—” He stops talking abruptly and his gaze fixes on something across the room. “Sorry, I have to go,” he says, letting go of my hands and bowing slightly. “Maybe we can dance again later?”
I nod as he forces a smile, and then turns and walks off, leaving me there in the middle of the floor.
I try to follow him with my gaze as he makes his way through the throngs of dancers, but there are too many people. So I start after him, unwilling to let go of the fantasy that he put in my head and the implied tragedy he left there.
I search, pushing past the other dancers, my detective instincts on full alert for some reason. I think back to the moment I saw his face. There was something there. That bit of recognition might’ve been more.
And then I see the back of his head. He waves his hands as he talks to another man in a tux about his same height. It almost looks as if they are arguing, so I keep walking. Slower now. Taking it all in. The cathedral, the dancers, the music, the stained glass. I have that vision in my head of the debutante ball he put there, still clouding my senses. It all seems rather too romantic, considering what has happened today. Someone peeks out around Case Reider and I stop dead.
That face. I know that face. And this time it’s more than just a slight bit of intuition. It’s…
A soft kiss across my neck.
A dark place with lights and technology.
A muddy road and rain.
He looks me straight in the eyes, looks away, but his lips move and then Case Reider turns around and looks at me too. An instant later the other man turns and walks out the open back door of the cathedral, where two of Thomas Brooks’ doormen stand watch in their matching outfits. They seem militaristic in their uniforms, almost Secret Service in the way their attention focuses on the events before them.
But they ignore the stranger. Case makes his way towards me and I towards him, and when we meet a few feet apart, he’s stuttering excuses. “I’m sorry, I just—”
“Excuse me,” I say, pushing past him. “I need to talk to someone.”
I walk through the doors, the men on either side giving me only a brief glance, and when I check over my shoulder to see if Case Reider is following, he’s disappeared.
“Hmm,” I say to myself as I lift my elaborate skirts and descend the stone stairs that lead out to an expansive garden with tall hedges. It’s a cool night, and there are only a few couples milling about, but I hear laughter coming from the other side of the hedges and stop in front of a sign explaining what it is.