And that was when Garrett decided it was time they made their exit before he did the man serious bodily harm. He cupped her elbow in his hand, helping her from her chair. The applause was thunderous.
‘Garrett.’ She spoke between clenched teeth. ‘What the hell are you doing? We can’t leave before the press conference. Garrett!’
‘Fuck the press conference,’ he growled. ‘We’re leaving now, before I kill the bastard.’
For a split second he was sure she was going slap him. Her eyes blazed blue fire and her lips were parted, to make room for each accelerating breath.
‘Now,’ he said, tightening his grip on her arm.
She blushed ever so slightly, made a little curtsey to the applauding crowd, then yielded to Garrett’s none-too gentle tugging. As the room fell silent, all except for the sputtering and cursing of Barker Blessing, who was now being ministered to by a couple of the male wait staff wiping at his bemoussed crotch with white linen napkins, the two walked out of the room with all the dignity of royalty. Without a word, they quick-marched down the stairs into the foyer and out into the warm summer evening, where Garrett practically shoved her into the waiting limo, the Golden Kiss Award still suicide-gripped in her hand.
Chapter Ten
He held the remote so tight that his fingers hurt, but he didn’t care. He slid from the chair onto the floor, as close to the TV screen as he could get. With the back of his hand he wiped tears. It was her! Dear God, it was her, there on national television. There for all the world to see. He had pictured her a thousand ways in his mind. He had imagined a thousand ways she might look, a thousand personalities she might have, but he knew that when he saw her he would know her like he knew himself. He would feel her like the other half of him. He knew it, and he’d been so right.
He ran a trembling hand along the image of her bright cinnamon hair piled high on her head, along the soft curve of her cheek, along the full red of her lips as she opened her mouth to thank everyone for the Golden Kiss Award. Tess Delaney, close up and personal, shining like the sun all new and bright. She was exquisite in ways he could have never imagined, even in the very best of his fantasies. She took his breath away. She made him ache all over with longing. She was a religious experience, too sacred for someone like Garrett Thorne to be pawing at. And yet she felt so comfortable, so familiar, like he’d always known her.
The fact that she was with Garrett Thorne tied his gut in a burning knot. It didn’t matter, he tried to convince himself. Thorne wasn’t known for staying with one woman for very long. And who could blame him for wanting to stand in the radiance of Tess Delaney’s light? But he was certain Tess couldn’t really feel anything for someone as shallow as Garrett Thorne. She would see right through him and it would end soon enough, and even if it didn’t, it made no difference to him. He hadn’t come this far to be denied the prize.
He listened as she made her little speech. Her voice was like the music of the angels to him, flowing from her lips honeyed and sweet, and flooding him with such ecstasy; not what she said, but that it was she who spoke it, breathed it, willed each word of it into the world. Dear God, how had he survived all of this time outside her radiance, outside her beauty? He watched as she waltzed down the aisle like the queen of the world before her adoring public. He watched as she returned to her seat. He watched as Garrett Thorne stood and took her into his arms like he owned her, like she belonged to him, like he could fuck her with his mouth right there in front of everyone.
The flash fire of rage in his belly felt like it would burn him to a cinder. There was a sharp pop and crack as the plastic casing of the TV remote shattered in his vice grip. Slivers of hard plastic sliced into his palm. He felt the warm wet of his blood flowing from the wound down his wrist. He smelled the sweet-metal scent of it and was instantly hard, imagining that it was her blood. Imagining that it was her blood mingled with his own, imagining the pleasure of the pain he could share with her, and how much more intense that pain would be for the way she allowed Garrett Thorne to slobber all over her, to grope at her like some animal in rut.
He ignored the soft drip, drip, drip of the blood on the carpet as he watched the beginnings of the musical number through a hot haze of tears, impatient for more of her, impatient for the press conference that was to follow, impatient to hear what she had to say for herself, for allowing Thorne’s behavior, even inviting it. He watched as that damned Barker Blessing mauled her. Fuck, had she really fallen so far? Had she really lost her way so badly that she had become nothing more than a whore for anyone to fondle and rut with?