He couldn’t have surprised me more if he would have told me he was about to fly to the moon. “You don’t have to—”
His hand covered mine that still happened to be on his chest. “Come on,” he said, cutting me off. Then he stalked off toward the dance floor, tugging me after him.
I just managed to set my champagne on a table we passed before I was swept up on the dance floor with him and all of the other guests. I caught Vera’s dad’s eye as he sat at a table with a few other people his age. He waved at me and smiled. I think I managed to look panicked in return.
Ezra‘s free hand settled on my waist and he stepped into me so that our chests brushed. I felt the press of his muscular thighs against my bare legs thanks to my mini dress. He towered over me, making me feel small, delicate… feminine.
One of the corners of his mouth lifted in a confident smile and I realized there was no running away without making a ridiculous scene. I was trapped.
I was stuck dancing with one of the world’s crankiest, hottest, most difficult men.
Chapter Seven
Surreal.
That’s how I felt. Wrapped in Ezra’s strong arms—the softness of his clothing a distinct contrast to the muscles beneath—was absolutely surreal.
All around us the music pulsed and the atmosphere bewitched, friends laughed and dishes clinked, and I stood there frozen with confusion. I blamed the champagne.
Henceforth, I would avoid expensive, delicious, hypnotizing drinks and stick to the cheap grocery store bargains I was used to.
Goodbye, Dom Perignon.
Hello, Martini and Rossi, my old friend.
Because obviously the better brands got me into trouble!
To be honest, I could hold my own on the dance floor. I’d even been on enough blind dates to navigate any enthusiastic fondle with ease. But this was an entirely new level of stressful firsts.
I stood, stiff as a board, in Ezra’s arms. And he wasn’t any better. We swayed back and forth like thirteen-year-old strangers forced together by well-meaning teachers at a middle school dance. I half expected my seventh grade science teacher to lay her hand on my shoulder while she measured the distance between Ezra and me with a ruler.
Except there was also this air of adult awareness that made things bizarrely and sexually intriguing. Ezra’s thighs brushing mine. His hand pressed against my lower back. The occasional resting of his jaw against the top of my head. I felt every single inch of him and not one part felt lacking or less than. Ezra was completely, wholly, utterly man. He made every other past dance partner and blind date feel like the junior high cesspool I’d ridiculously compared us to.
He wasn’t a thirteen-year-old boy enslaved to hormones and braces. Ezra Baptiste was smooth, successful and so freaking sexy I felt jittery with anticipation. He didn’t jolt me back and forth or step on my toes. He moved me around the dance floor with grace and skill, wowing me, charming me… seducing me.
Even if his seduction was accidental.
He cleared his throat and I fixated on the long, slender column of his neck. I was constantly, and possibly weirdly obsessively, trying to figure out how to paint his face. Trying to figure out how to get his expressions just right and bring out that something invisible I couldn’t explain. And yet he had so many other parts and pieces I hadn’t even begun to dissect yet.
Like his throat. Or the width of his shoulders and the alluring way his clothes hung off them. I glanced at our entwined hands and tried to memorize the way mine looked so delicate and small compared to his. I wanted to draw the way his tie cinched around his collar or laid against his solid chest. I wanted to measure the width of his shoulders so I could recreate them on paper, canvas or a bathroom stall.
I felt like throwing back my head and screaming at the top of my lungs, Fine, I’m attracted to him! Are you happy now?
It was yet to be determined exactly who I would be yelling at. The universe? God? Cupid? It didn’t matter. Whoever they were, they were to blame for this inconvenient attraction to one of the world’s tersest men.
Yep. Tersest.
“Are you okay?” he asked with that smooth, even voice that could not be ruffled or perturbed.
Ever so elegantly, I pulled myself from my tangled thoughts and replied, “Huh?”
“You seem tense,” he added.
Champagne forced the truth from my lips. “You make me nervous.”
His concentrated gaze found mine. “Why?”
Oh, how to answer that loaded question. I tilted my head to the side, my long hair fell over my shoulder and I confessed, “Probably because the first time we met, you told me my style was juvenile at best.”
His eyebrows drew down. “I didn’t say that.”
The truth strengthened my courage and I added, “You also said that your clientele was too wealthy for my cheap taste, and that if I ever wanted to make it in this city I was going to have to try harder.”
His eyebrows dipped further. “That doesn’t sound like something I would say.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. He looked so… affronted! “Are you serious? That sounds exactly like something you would say!” I felt myself loosen up in his arms. His hand pressed tighter against my back, drawing me closer to him. “You asked me for advice and then hated everything I had to say.”
“That’s not at all how I remember it,” he countered, referencing the first time we’d met. Vera and I had made reservations at Lilou and then waited six weeks to get in. When we finally did, Killian had given us the five-star treatment, but Ezra had stopped by our table for all of five minutes. Just long enough to insult me. He continued, “I distinctly remember you calling me an old man with dated taste and a tacky dinosaur of a website.”
I was positive my expression was a mirror image of his, insulted, outraged and maybe, possibly a little ashamed. “I wouldn’t say those things,” I countered. “I’m not that bold.”
His laugh was hard, bit out with the barest amount of real amusement. “Molly, every single thing about you says otherwise.”
Stepping back, I pulled my hand from his and dropped my voice. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He didn’t tolerate the space between us, lunging forward and crowding me once again. “That you’re not only bold, you’re also a snobby know-it-all.”
My chin trembled once, betraying me. I took another step back and willed my spine to straighten and my nerves to steady. It wasn’t that his insult had wounded me so severely or that I really cared all that much what Ezra thought of me. But I had never been great at conflict. Actually, I was kind of the worst at it.
Regardless of how right I felt or how zingy my insults were, the few confrontations I’d braved in my life had always ended in tears—my tears.