everything that separates us—not just time, but old sins, and incessant responsibilities, and the many lonelinesses that creep in with age…the lonelinesses that not even friends and pretty subs can keep at bay.
And then Caroline is greeting another guest and Mark is sweeping me off to get a drink. Which is when I realize that the slightly uncomfortable parts of my dress are now suddenly very uncomfortable. Several spots across my ass are stinging and hurting. Almost like the atelier left pins in the fabric. But tiny, tiny pins.
“Are you okay?” Mark asks as we walk. There’s no real concern in his voice, only a kind of wolfish amusement. “Your eyes are looking a little bright.”
“Fuck you,” I say instinctively.
“I would, but we’d tear each other apart, my old friend. I’ll take your bag—tuck your phone into that handy pocket of yours, yes, there’s a good girl. Now you should go drink and dance. I see some people I’d like to talk to.”
I finish slipping my phone into the dress pocket—it’s almost as if my date knew I’d need to keep it close—and hand my clutch to Mark. “Talk to about murder things?”
“I don’t do murdering anymore,” Mark says. “And even when I did, it was all with the approval of people like you.”
“Officially, the White House doesn’t condone—”
My voice falters and I pause, blinking into the crowd.
“Morgan?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, clearing my throat. “I thought I saw... It’s nothing. Never mind.”
Except then I see the silhouette again. Broad shoulders. Powerful build. Arms and thighs that even the best tailoring in the world can’t diminish. (And why would any tailor want to?)
I see the dark hair, the dark stubble, all of it liberally threaded with silver. Olive skin and bright amber eyes. A strong nose and a full, well-formed mouth.
It’s him.
“Mark, don’t go,” I whisper, but Mark is already gone, that whoreson bastard prick asshole—
He is walking toward me, the last man on earth I want to see, ever, ever, and I think I have to escape, I think I have to run away. Where to, I don’t know, and how, I don’t know either because this lavish ballroom is wonderful for hiding in but maybe not for running, and definitely not for running in while wearing fairy wings—and why I am wearing fairy wings at all? I’m forty-two and a grownass woman and—and I decide to flee to one of the mossy alcoves. I’m already trying to slip away when I feel a hand at my elbow. Warm. Large.
I turn to see my ex-husband staring down at me with an amused expression.
“Hello, wife,” he says.
2
“Ex-wife,” I say faintly, my breath caught somewhere in my chest.
He nods, that full mouth tipped up at the corners.
The stubble on his jaw is…edible. There’s no other word to describe it. I have the strange and dismaying realization that I could spend hours licking his face.
“Ex-wife,” he repeats, and for some reason, it sounds just as intimate as when he said the word wife. Maybe it’s his voice, which has always been husky and deep, or maybe it’s the way he’s looking down at me, his eyes searing hot trails down my dress and then back up again. “You look lovely tonight.”
“You look handsome.”
It’s true. Even with a white mask over the top half of his face, he is the handsomest man I’ve ever seen. He’s always been the handsomest man I’ve ever seen.
I try to regain my footing. “Lorne. What are you doing here tonight?”
“What, a simple lawyer can’t come to the Constantine masquerade?”
“You’re not a simple lawyer,” I reply. “You work for an environmental nonprofit that’s probably sued half the people here tonight.”
He lifts a shoulder in a rakish shrug, still smiling. “I’ve never minded mixing business with pleasure.”
“I seem to remember a lot less pleasure when we were married.”
I’m too busy arguing about this to argue about him leading me onto the dance floor, which is how we end up facing each other in the rustling whirl of dancers.
“And whose fault was that?” he murmurs, pulling me into his arms. His hand settles on the small of my back—intensifying the prickling there—and I’m so close to his chest that the fabric of his tuxedo lapels glides against my bodice. Under the tulle, my nipples harden. “Hmm?”
I want to say it was his fault, but of course, I can’t. I was the political one, the ambitious one, the work all day and work all night one. I was the one too haunted