stumbling out at dawn. But here I was lost. If I paid Bridget here, that was approaching something closer to prostitution. Prostitution was simple at least, a mere transaction. This social situation was the furthest thing from simple to me. So I searched her face because I was trying to figure out what she wanted from me here, if it wasn’t, if it couldn’t be money…
Could it be money?
Bridget laughed at my awkward, stiff silence. “It seems like you could use a drink,” she said, eyeing Delaney and exchanging a secret message I knew I would never decipher.
She tipped her beer toward me, offering it with an amused grin. A panic went through me and I reached with fumbling fingers toward my wallet in my back pocket. Delaney’s hand around my wrist stopped me before I could pull it out.
“Trust me, we need more than her backwash,” she joked, shouting over the pounding music. “We’re going to make our way to the bar. We’ll see you in a bit.”
Bridget nodded.
“Nice to meet you, Ronan,” she said, raising her beer to me.
I expected to hear something like sarcasm or thinly veiled disdain or annoyance in her voice but didn’t find any. I thought maybe it was just too loud and it was there, but I simply missed it. It had to have been there.
“Have you forgotten all your lessons already?” Delaney asked, tucking my held hand behind her back.
“Douche canoe,” I recited with a wry grin.
Only with my eyes locked onto hers was I able to feel comfortable, to feel like I had a clue in hell what I was doing with myself. But the moment she looked away, I reverted right back to a stiff spine, a churning stomach, and darting eyes. I briefly wondered if this was how Delaney felt at the Solstice Ball. A pang stabbed at my heart to know that I flung her to the sharks and when the tables were turned, she refused to let me go.
Delaney stopped behind a petite girl whose thick head of springy black curls accounted for at least half her height. The girl was clearing pint glasses from a tall table, the tower of them wobbling over her shoulder. Delaney slapped her ass and the girl whipped around, fire in her eyes, free hand held up ready for a strike in retaliation. The ire from her dark features disappeared when she saw it was Delaney.
She dropped her glass, not caring that the entire stack shattered on the dirty floor, to launch herself at Delaney in what sounded like a lung-crushing hug.
“Delaney, where have you been, amiga?” she asked, her Portuguese accent thick as her dark eyelashes. “It’s been like forever.”
Delaney pried herself from the girl’s pincer-like arms, gasping for breath.
“I’ve been in school,” Delaney said, eyeing me. “My teacher has been a serious hard-ass.”
The girl rested her elbow on the table and assessed me. Here we go. Someone was finally going to judge me. Someone was going to sniff out my money and tell me to get the hell out of here, to go back to where I belong.
I was surprised when she lifted her hand, fingers out like claws, and went, “Rawr, Senhor.”
Delaney stepped between us and laughed.
“Easy, Candace,” she said. “Easy.”
Candace looked between Delaney and me. “He’s yours, D?” she asked.
I felt Delaney’s fingers twitch against mine. She scratched at the back of her neck and moved out of the way.
“Well, no,” she said, for the first time looking uncomfortable inside the bar. “Yeah, no. I mean…”
Candace stuck out her arm and nudged Delaney aside to step up close to me, shoes crunching on the broken glass, and run her finger down my chest.
“You can be mine, o amor,” she said as I stood petrified. “If you want.”
Did she know I was rich? In the dim light of the dance floor, I wasn’t sure you could tell my designer tuxedo from one from the bargain bin at Goodwill.
“I, um, I have a mansion,” I said, thinking that this was what the girl wanted to hear.
Candace just laughed.
“Okay,” she said, not seeming to care at all before adding, “but do you have a mansão in your pants?”
I practically yelped when Candace’s small fingers groped at the front of my pants. I moved to cover my groin as Delaney pulled Candace away.
“You’re absolutely feral, you horndog,” she laughed before turning to me. “Let’s get you away before she attacks again.”
I hurried away with Delaney, glancing back warily at Candace, who