Owen shot him a sour look. Then his eyes settled on me again. I could feel a connection crackling between us as the rest of the crowd fell away and silence covered us like a dome.
“More importantly, I was scouting you. The offer is real, Brienne. The fellowship, your paper on modern structures in medieval tapestries--”
“You read that?” I choked out.
“Well,” he chuckled humbly. “I muddled through what I could understand. Truthfully it was way over my head. I don’t know if you realize this, Brienne, but you’re… extraordinary.”
“Absolutely,” Lyle whispered behind me. I felt his breath fall on me like a cloak.
“I’m not, uh--”
“Of course you are,” Owen interjected seriously, his brow slightly furrowed.
Run with it, Bree. Do not cave in now. Remember the bombshell! Breathe or something!
“And when we felt the way you responded to us, to both of us yesterday,” Lyle breathed in a hot whisper that sizzled straight from my ear to the pit of my humid, throbbing…
Woman overboard!
My head started to swim and I realized I had gotten the in-out-in-out breathing pattern all wrong. The room started going fuzzy at the edges.
What am I doing here? Pressed in between them like, like…
“You’re practically too good to be true…”
I’m not, though… You don’t even really know me...
“Bree?”
The voice cut through the fog like a knife and I took a choking breath, confused and gasping.
My eyelids fluttered as I gained composure. Echoes of thoughts bounced around my skull: what am I? What do they mean? Isn’t it hot in here? Is that--
Fucking Whitney?
I seemed to slip outside my body for a moment as I turned to face her and some part of me realized that I actually didn’t look like the shipwreck that I truly was. Through a weird coincidence of still being breathless and confused by what the Jack brothers were really implying, when I turned to her it was with a completely inappropriate facial expression.
I didn’t look horrified or devastated by a) what she had done to me or b) the fact she was now standing in front of me jibbering and wet-eyed in what looked like a pair of my own shoes.
No. Through some miracle, I turned to her with completely the wrong expression for the occasion. I still had the Jack brothers firmly in mind. I looked flustered and overwhelmed by flattery. I looked half-drowned in compliments.
I looked like I had my sex face on.
My hand waved out toward Owen and he caught it smoothly in mid-air along with the again-empty champagne glass, steadying me instantly. Lyle took a half-step behind me, pivoting gracefully and applying a discreet pressure to the small of my back with the heel of his palm. Nothing could knock me down from there.
They’re like fucking ballerinas, is what they are. Sexy fucking man-ballerinas.
“Oh, Bree! Oh, oh... I am so glad you’re here. Bree, we have to talk--”
“No.”
“But,” she objected, her eyes wide and frantic. Her gaze darted from Owen to Jack and back again in rapid succession. “I want to explain…”
“Ms. Avery,” Owen replied smoothly in a voice that slammed an invisible wall between us, “I’m sorry, we were just headed for the ballroom.”
His hand tugged on mine like a dancer’s. All I had to do was follow his lead.
“Bree, wait!” she squeaked, panting. Her fingers plaited the air between us like she was trying to dig her way through.
And then he was there. Carl slid right up next to her, his face swiftly transforming from an expression of bland event-appropriate duty to a horrified scowl of shame and rage.
“Oh my god, Brienne,” he grunted as his knees buckled. He couldn’t change directions fast enough. He was on a collision course with my personal space and looked like he might burn up on re-entry.
“No,” I said again, dazzled and impressed by the confidence in my voice.
Who is that? Is that me? Can I possibly be that fabulous?
I felt it again, Owen’s hand just under mine. He tugged slightly and all I had to do was give in. He turned my whole body that way as though we had rehearsed it. Lyle stepped up at the same time, his palm guiding me from the base of my spine. The ballroom was just ahead and I knew I’d make it there, leaving Carl and Whitney behind me panting and sputtering in confusion.
I was picked up and carried away like a leaf swept off a beach by the tide. It was so easy.
CHAPTER 9
“I have no idea what just happened back there,” Owen muttered in my ear as we glided into the ballroom, “but you were magnificent.”
“That was nothing,” I breathed casually, dragging another champagne off a passing tray.