Marianne took another sip of her neon cocktail and shifted into her best Marilyn pose, shoulders back and down, one foot slightly in front of the other as if ready to step out and sashay. Despite the pose, a modicum of panic took residence in the back of her throat, but she refused to fall to pieces. If the cake jumping was her subway grate moment, then right now was Some Like it Hot, and she was ready to show her miserable cheating ex what he’d let go.
Jason worked his way across the lawn—without the dominatrix, she noted—and Marianne adjusted the sweetheart neckline of her light blue sundress to accentuate her sans-cardigan curves. Not flirting. Just underscoring her point.
Jason closed the last of the distance between them and, as the multicolored circus lights twinkled down from the palm trees, he leaned in and kissed her cheek.
An old reflex reared its ugly head, and she closed her eyes and breathed in his Dial soap and musk scent. But she felt nothing. A twinge of annoyance or irritation, maybe, a bit of curiosity about the missing dominatrix, but otherwise…nothing. Even the desire to stab him with the cocktail umbrella had evaporated into the night air. Certainly, there was none of the panting, desperate heat she felt when she looked at Nick. None of the longing that accompanied even his simplest kiss. With Nick, the world fell away.
Right now, Marianne knew exactly where she stood—across from a man who’d stolen a part of her. A part she hadn’t known was missing until her time in close proximity to Nick. A part she was ready to reclaim.
“Hello, Marianne.” Jason smiled, attractive in his polo-shirted, moneyed way. “You look…different.”
“Different?” Not exactly the when-did-you-get-so-smoking-hot/I-was-a-fool-to-let-you-go reaction she’d been imagining, but she tried hard not to let him crawl under her skin.
“Different,” he said, lowering his voice to the level of secrets. “And amazing.”
“Thank you.” Marianne offered a tight smile. The past ten months, all she’d wanted was to prove him wrong—prove she wasn’t an ice queen—maybe hear him say she looked amazing. But now that he’d said it, she simply wanted to forget the past and move on. Even if he’d failed to be loyal to her, he’d been an invaluable asset to her father. “Thank you for helping my dad. I understand you worked to secure his early release.”
He buried his free hand into the pocket of his Jack Spade Bermudas and eased back on his leather sandals. “The least I could do for my mentor, a man who was like a father-in-law to me.”
Almost exactly like a father-in-law. The thought provided more relief than regret.
“Where is your new girlfriend?” Marianne asked, raising her hand to gossip behind the tips of her fingers in the way she’d seen people do, as if the existence of a dominatrix was too hush-hush to say aloud.
He raised his glass of white wine in a kind of mock good-bye. “No longer my girlfriend.”
Funny, how she’d never noticed his white wine fixation before. Never red wine or tequila or dark beer, nothing to stain his designer clothes. “Decided she preferred a different kind of kinky?”
He raised his eyebrows in an expression filled with humor and surprise. “Listen to you, kitten. Less than a year away from the Street and you’ve got claws.”
Marianne circled her vodka-based carnival-in-a-cup with the red and white striped straw. “Oh, I’ve learned a few tricks since you and your ex-dominatrix sent me packing. More than a few, actually.” Her gaze searched the starlit patio for Nick and found him walking toward her, leaving behind her father and his parole officer, each one of them holding an extra-large cone of cotton candy. She glanced back at her ex. “And for the record, I never liked being called kitten.”#p#分页标题#e#
A misty-eyed, almost pleading look ambled across his face, and he reached for her elbow, only to be edged out of the way by her bigger, brawnier fiancé.
“Hello, gorgeous,” Nick said, dropping a lingering kiss on her mouth before handing over the sugar-spun candy. “Your dad’s been showing me around the place.”
Flushed and unreasonably pleased to see him, Marianne smiled up at him, lifted a couple inches of the pink confection from its cone, and settled a bit on her tongue. She let its sweetness melt in her mouth, and imagined licking the tasty treat from her fiancé’s lips. Or other less accessible places. A warmth that had nothing to do with vodka stole through her system and she pulled more candy from the cone as her gaze drifted south along the line of Nick’s body.