Pregnant by Morning(2)

“Was my confusion that obvious?” he asked, his gaze firmly on her face.

She smiled. “You’re American.”

“Is that the explanation for why I don’t know what a phone party is?”

“No, that’s because you have more maturity than most of the people here.”

So she must know the guests, then. Except for Vincenzo, who had disappeared, Matthew knew no one. This little butterfly was an interesting first encounter.

Most of her face was covered, with the exception of a full mouth painted pink. Caramel-colored hair hung in loose curls around her bare shoulders. Stunning. But her voice...it was sultry and deep, with a strange ragged edge that caught him in the gut.

He’d been looking for a distraction. Perhaps he’d found one.

“Now I’m curious. Care to enlighten me?” he asked.

She shrugged with a tiny lift of her shoulders. “Women drop their phone into the bowl. Men pick one out. Voila. Instant hookup.”

His eyebrows rose. Vincenzo partied much differently than Matthew had been expecting. “I honestly have no good response.”

“So you won’t be fishing one out at the end of the evening?”

A tricky question. The old Matthew would say absolutely not. He’d never had a one-night stand in his life, never even considered it. This kind of thing had his brother, Lucas, written all over it. Lucas might have pulled out two phones and somehow convinced both women they’d been looking for a threesome all along. Well, once upon a time he would have, but in a bizarre turn of events, his brother was happily married now, with a baby on the way.

Matthew did not share his brother’s talent when it came to women. He knew how to broker a million-dollar deal for a downtown Dallas high-rise and knew how to navigate the privilege of his social circle but nothing else, especially not how to be a widower at the age of thirty-two.

When Matthew left Dallas, intent on finding a way to move on after Amber’s death, he’d had a vague notion of becoming like Lucas had been before marrying his wife, Cia. Lucas always had fun and never worried about consequences. Matthew, like his father and grandfather before him, had willingly carried the weight of duty and family and tradition on his shoulders, eagerly anticipating the day his wife would give birth to the first of a new generation of Wheelers. Only to have it all collapse.

Becoming more like Lucas was better than being Matthew, and nothing else had worked to pull him out of this dead-inside funk. And he had to pull out of it so he could go home and pick up his life again.

So what would Lucas do?

“Depends.” Matthew nodded to the bowl. “Is yours in there?”

With a throaty laugh, she shook her head. “Not my style.”

Strangely, he was relieved and disappointed at the same time. “Not mine, either. Though I might have made an exception in this one case.”

Her smile widened and she drew closer, rustling her wings. The front of her dress brushed his chest as she leaned in to whisper in her odd, smoky voice, “Me, too.”

Then she was gone.

He watched her as she swept into the main room of Vincenzo’s palazzo and was swallowed by the crush. It was intriguing to be so instantly fascinated by a woman because of her voice. Should he follow her? How could he not follow her after such a clear indication of interest?

Maybe she’d been flirting and it hadn’t meant anything. He cursed under his breath. It had been far too long since he’d dated to remember the rules. Actually, he’d never understood the rules, even then, which was saying something for a guy who thrived on rules. But this was Venice, not Dallas, and he was someone else.

There were no rules.

Matthew followed Butterfly Woman into the crowd.

Electronic music clashed with old-world costumes, but no one seemed to notice. Dancers dominated the floor space on the lower level of the palazzo. But none of the women had wings.

Along the edges of the dance floor, partygoers tried their luck at roulette and vingt-et-un, but he didn’t bother to look for his mystery woman there. Gambling was for those who knew nothing about odds, logic or common sense, and if she fell into that category, he’d rather find a different distraction.

A flash of silver caught his eye, and he glimpsed the very tips of her wings as she disappeared into another room.

“Excuse me.” Matthew waded through the dancers as politely as he could and chased after the only thing he could recall being interested in for eighteen very long, very cold months.

When he paused under a grand arch between the two rooms, he saw her. She stood at the edge of a group of people engrossed in something he couldn’t see. And he had the distinct impression she felt as alone in the crowd as he did.