He doesn’t. In fact, he’s so good at working the crowd and moving us along through countless tedious encounters, I may have to consider bringing him along to every social event for the rest of my life. Hell, I may have to marry the guy for perks like these.
I don’t need sex, love, or commitment. Just deflect the monotonous, socialite small talk away from me.
“Are you a magician?” I ask, when he somehow maneuvers us out of a conversation with Minerva Dupree, one of the most long-winded women I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting, in under a minute. In that tiny sliver of time, she somehow managed to touch on everything from my brother’s lack of interest in taking over WestTech to my spinsterhood to my father’s decision to develop the Charlestown waterfront from a crime-riddled neighborhood into a stretch of luxury green-energy condos.
Minerva has a knack for locking you into hour-long lectures, if given the chance. But Cormack brushed her off like a piece of lint, shattering Lila’s all-time escape record of five minutes at a Christmas party two years ago — and she had to spill eggnog all over herself to achieve that speedy exit.
“Nothing so exciting. I work in…” He pauses a beat, smiling to himself. “Let’s call it… investments and trading.” There’s laughter in his voice, but I’m not in on the joke.
“Oh. That’s nice,” I say politely, thinking it sounds terribly boring.
“Though…” He leans closer. “I do have a magic trick or two up my sleeve.”
My mouth gapes at the suggestion in his tone. He can’t possibly be talking about…
His lips graze my ear. “Maybe I’ll teach you a few of them, sometime.”
Oh. Yep. He’s definitely talking about sex.
I don’t know whether to laugh or choke, so I simply swallow another gulp of champagne. Cormack’s still leaning close, his mouth practically on my ear as he chuckles lowly, when my eyes cut through the crowd and find the one thing I’ve told myself over and over I haven’t been searching for all night.
There’s a man standing by the wall, practically blended into the shadows, his every muscle on high alert and his stare locked on me. His muscular body fills out a pair of dark slacks dangerously well. His biceps strain against the confines of his black button down; his tanned throat is on display with the top buttons of his shirt left undone.
My mouth feels suddenly dry.
Dark eyes meet mine, trapping me in an instant. I’m a deer in headlights, frozen, staring at him across a crowded sea of people. There must be fifty of them, standing in the space between us, but as seconds slip away with our gazes locked, every one of them simply falls away until we’re the only two in the room.
Nate, Nate, Nate.
Every atom in my body starts to sing, totally entranced by his presence. There’s something terrifying about a man who holds that much sway over you. A man who can just look at you — not even with kindness or love, but with a hard-set mouth and cold-burning eyes — and unravel you like a spool of useless thread.
One glance and I’m a goner.
I hear Cormack saying something at my ear but for the life of me, I can’t make out his words. He’s a candle throwing faint light… and Nate’s the sun — eclipsing everything else, pulling me into his orbit.
I’m not breathing, as I look at him. I can’t. Every ounce of control I have over my body is being used up with the effort of keeping my eyes steady on his face. His goddamned beautiful, haunted face. I wonder, if I ever got the chance to trace its harsh lines with my fingertips, to stroke that ever-clenched jaw with gentle hands… would it soften at all beneath my touch? Or would loving Nate be like touching stone?
You hate him. He’s terrible. Stop looking at him.