The Rivals - Dylan Allen Page 0,451

I’d insisted on a driver. Every time I look into those rich brown eyes, I feel safe. And right now, I need that desperately.

“And pray tell, what are you saying to your reflection?”

“I’m practicing my speech.”

“Speech? I thought we were going to Christmas Eve lunch with your family.”

“We are.”

“And you’re giving a speech?”

“No. But I’m introducing you to my children.”

“And you’re practicing what to say?”

“They don’t really like surprises, given all the ones they’ve had in the last two years.”

“Well we’re here, so I hope you’re ready.”

I look up as we turn in to the driveway of the Riverses house and my stomach plummets to my toes. “How did we get here so fast?” I groan.

“Faustina Jordana Campbell Wilde., look at me”

I shake my head. I don’t know why I’m acting like this. I said yes to everything he asked yesterday because as soon as he made his wild proposition, I knew I’d been waiting my whole life for a moment like this.

So how is it that I feel wholly unprepared to meet it?

“Darling, look at me.” His voice is patient but insistent, now.

But I can’t look him in the eye and not come clean. “I haven't told them about you. Or us. At all, ” I confess.

He flinches. “I see,” he clips and turn to looks straight ahead again. A muscle in his jaw tightens. And I want to reach over to soothe it. But I know him well enough to know that nothing will soothe him but the absolute truth.

I met him at a party I attended at the American Embassy in London last year. I ordered a glass of white wine and was handed a Dark and Stormy instead. Annoyed, I looked at the bartender for the first time, and almost swallowed my tongue.

It wasn’t just that he was ridiculously handsome and grinning at me like a cat who’d just found a bowl of cream. There was something in his eyes that I hadn't seen in anyone else’s for a very long time –curiosity. The whole world thinks they know everything about me. And, for the most part, I tend to agree. After all, what could be left, after fifty something years of life, to discover?

But seeing his curiosity made me wonder if maybe there was something left, after all.

When I picked up my drink, I found his name and number scribbled on the napkin.

It was an impertinence; one I’d never countenanced before. I followed very strict rules of engagement when it came to picking my lovers. And strangers at bars was a major breach of protocol.

But as I turned to walk back to my table, I slipped the napkin into my clutch. As the night wore on, I could feel his eyes on me, and I found myself preening under his gaze. And every time I looked at him, there wasn’t anything– his bright, easy smile, his large elegant hands, that supple full mouth, the expanse of smooth dark brown skin and those eyes - that didn’t make me wonder, what if?

So, I got back to my hotel room and texted him my particulars and waited for him to join me. I had my rules ready to lay out and my checkbook ready to pay for his discretion. It turns out I wasn’t ready for Max, at all.

His daring didn't end with mixing drinks I hadn’t ordered. He also ignored my very rule first rule and kissed me.

I’d slapped him and then, my lips burning for more, dragged his mouth back to mine and took it. That night was an opus to new pleasures. He flipped me around in bed, pounded me into the mattress, wrapped his hand around my throat and slapped my backside like he was in charge. And for the first time in more than thirty years, I fell asleep with a man's heavy thigh slung across mine.

When the sun came up, instead of leaving like I expected, he ordered breakfast, not from the hotel, but from a café around the corner.

He climbed into bed with butter drenched slices of white toast that barely contained the grilled sausages and eggs stuffed between them. It was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted. While we wolfed down our food, we talked.

He confessed that he’d been a server assigned to a table across the room from where I’d been seated. Then, he saw me and asked his friend behind the bar to trade places with him It was ridiculous and romantic and so charming, that