wing across still waters.
“That?” I gasped, staring up at him as he stared down at me. “That was pretty dumb and stupid.”
Ronan’s hands moved to hold me tighter against him as he shook his head. “That wasn’t it.”
I watched the words slip from his lips, watched his lips then shift slightly closer to mine. His eyes searched mine.
“I don’t know if I can be this anybody,” he said.
I could practically taste the tequila between us, the salt, the sting of lime.
“Maybe we can’t be anybody,” I whispered.
Ronan carded his fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck. His hand clutched at the material of my dress at the small of my back. Did he realise how tightly he was holding on? Did he realise how much tighter I wanted to be held?
“Then let’s be nobody,” he said.
“Nobody?” I asked.
Ronan’s fingers twisted in my hair enough to make me gasp in electric sparks of pleasure.
“Nobody,” he repeated. “Just bodies. Just us.”
My mind was flooded with images of Ronan and me naked on black silk sheets, so black, so pitch black that it felt like we were falling through a void. There was no money, no status, no expectation. There was only skin and the feather-like brush of the finest silk. It was a drunken fantasy, nothing more. But the wide blacks of Ronan’s pupils as he gazed down at me were very much real.
“Are you going to do the something dumb and stupid thing now?” I whispered, my breath alone the space between his lips and mine.
“Do you want me to?” Ronan asked.
I only hesitated a moment, only one beat of the floor-pulsing music, only one flung-back vodka shot, only one jittery flash of the broken neon sign outside. But it was a moment long enough for the lights to come on over the dance floor. It was a moment long enough for Candace to run up and ask if we were about to kiss. It was a moment long enough for Ronan to have seen it, my hesitation.
He stepped away from me and laughed.
“I guess we can’t even be nobody,” he said, lightening Candace’s tray of one half-emptied pint of beer.
I wanted to say to him that I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted to tell him I was just drunk and everything was moving slow, like thick, sweet molasses. I wanted to tell him that I hesitated because I wanted to say more. I wanted more than a kiss. I wanted more of him.
But none of the words came as the crowds pushed and shoved us on their way out of the bar and onto the smoke-filled sidewalk. Ronan reached out and messied my hair as he finished the beer.
“It’s for the best,” he said, slurring enough to make me wonder whether he hadn’t quite left his acting skills at the door like I’d thought. “It was very dumb and very stupid.”
He went to join Noah and the others at the now empty bar. I watched him go without a word.
Well, there you go.
I did something dumb and stupid after all.
Ronan
The library had been transformed into a portrait gallery with dozens of headshots hanging from the mahogany shelves by strips of blue painter’s tape. I bounced my pointer against my leg as I stared up at the faces without recognition, as if they were a group of 17th century Dutch villagers.
“Umm…” I tapped the end of the pointer on the nose of an old woman halfway up the tall shelves. “This is… Mrs… Ms… Umm… this is Ms… Mrs… would you mind?”
I whipped around to find Delaney staring at me with wide, startled eyes. She was sitting cross-legged in one of the library’s big high-backed leather chairs, the skirt of her simple sheath dress hiked up high on her long, tanned thighs. A notebook laid across her lap was just about the only thing covering her up and the breeze from the open windows rustled the thin pages oh so tantalisingly.
“Mind what?” she asked, her voice sweet as she raised an arched eyebrow.
I waved my hand vaguely at her, keeping my eyes focused on the side table next to her, on the glass of iced tea, on the cubes of ices, of the beads of condensation dripping down the glass, on anything but Delaney.
“That damned pencil,” I said irritably. “I can hear you tapping it against your lips. It’s fucking annoying.”
“I’m focusing,” Delaney retorted.
My eyes shot to hers.
“Is that what you’re doing?” I asked.
The pink eraser