His Mistress with Two Secrets(14)

Why? Such a ridiculous question to clog up his brain.

And yet, weeks later, as he entered a party he had no desire to attend and spotted her, his first thought was so far so good. She was alive and well, not having succumbed to fruit poisoning.

Her blond hair was gathered in a knot and held in place with a couple of sticks, but a few delicate spirals fell around her face. Her shoulders were bared by her white summer dress, her heels an attractive spike that showed off her legs. She wore only a pair of silver hoop earrings for jewelry.

She was as casually beautiful as he remembered, her expression serene as she listened to a man who wasn’t her date, but looked like he wanted to be.

As was his habit, Henri had insisted his security be given the finalized guest list before he accepted the invitation. If people wanted him to show up to their affairs, they complied. That’s how he had known Cinnia would be here and he’d made himself take a full ten minutes of sober second thought before he’d accepted the invite himself—without a plus one, as she had also done.

His heart started to thud with male need as he looked at her. He knew what lurked beneath that air of containment and he’d be damned if that gangly pontificator would discover it, as well.

* * *

Cinnia had convinced herself this engagement party for her friend from uni was yet another good “networking opportunity,” even though she knew why she’d been invited. Once Vera’s photo of the two of them with the twins had made the rounds, Cinnia had been inundated by old acquaintances eager to reach out. She was part of the “it” crowd now and her mother couldn’t be happier.

If only she was in a position to decline, but she was too practical to be proud. Her friend was marrying into a very wealthy family from New York and their circle of friends included the types of fortunes that were just complex enough to need a qualified manager.

Unfortunately, you couldn’t reply to casual questions about your career with “I’m drumming up biz for the agency I’m opening.” Evenings like this were about making introductions and impressions, keeping the talk light yet memorable, then somehow finding an excuse at a point down the road to contact the same people and ask, “Do you have a plan for your eventual death?”

Since she didn’t have a man in her life who was eager to put on a tie and show up to a stranger’s engagement party, she had come alone and was now a target for the stags in rut. Gerald, here, was a perfect example, shadowing her through her last two attempts to ditch him. She swore if he asked for her number, she would give him her business card and tell him to call when he was ready to discuss his final wishes.

“Don’t look now, but guess who just walked in,” the woman across from her said with a sparkle in her eye. “I think you know him, Cinnia.”

Of course Cinnia looked.

And promptly felt stretched thin as a strand of glass, so brittle she would break if a wrong word was breathed in her direction. Her throat closed and her chest stung from the inside. It took everything in her to keep a look of nonchalance on her face while her heart bolted for the nearest exit.

He was looking right at her, gorgeous in tailored grey pants and a black shirt sans tie, hat or suspenders. His forest green linen jacket should have looked affected, but, of course, it was a simple statement that he was gorgeous and stylish in modern garb as well as vintage.

“Not really,” she said, turning back to her group, begging her cheeks not to go hot with betrayal. “I only met them briefly,” she lied. For the millionth time.

It was an open secret that Vera had slept with Ramon. She hadn’t just notched her bedpost, but had engraved the words A Sauveterre Slept Here on her headboard. Everyone assumed Cinnia had put out as well and it had taken her weeks to convince the world at large she hadn’t.

Because, when a man could walk into a room and create a stir without doing a damned thing, what red-blooded woman wouldn’t sleep with him the first chance she got?

Guilty as charged, obviously, but Cinnia was far too mortified to admit it. Why, why, why had he affected her so strongly she’d gone against her basic principles? She could already feel him creating the same wicked stir in her—which was unconscionable now she understood he hadn’t just been availing himself but cheating.

“Friends with the groom, I guess?” Gerald murmured. “Looks like it. Not your date then, Cinnia?”

“No,” she asserted, refusing to look at Henri again. Refusing. Burning inside with rejection. “I’m not even sure which one that is,” she said, utterly bald-faced.

But she knew that was Henri. It didn’t make sense to her that her body recognized him at a basic level while regarding his brother like any other man, but there it was. She was attuned and susceptible to this twin.