Page 45 of The Billionaire's Second Chance
I always have.
It hadalwaysbeen her. Sebastian’s little sister, with the pink sweater and a tattered copy of a Jane Austen novel, eating in the library instead of the cafeteria, leaving her friends to ask her where she’d disappeared to during lunch.I was trying to read, but Charlie Martin kept bothering me.
I’d spent fifteen years without her, and now she stood beside me, beautiful and perfect, the memory of her soft, soft smile imprinted on my eyelids.
Ilovedher.
“Hey,” I said. “Do you want to dance?”
Her expression didn’t change. “We’re supposed to be pretending towork together, not pretending todate.”
“Weareworking together, Sami,” I corrected. “Look at this.” I tilted my head at the crowd. “You said it yourself. This is going really well. Your publishing contacts really turned out. I talked to James, he said some woman namedMillsis bidding up the diamond necklace a ridiculous amount.”
“Millicent O’Connor,” she smirked. “She would. The woman can’t resist a diamond, and her husband can’t resisther. She’s smart, too,” she added, looking over at me as if I had been about to challenge her friend’s frivolity. “She’ll tell everyone she knows where she got that necklace and guilt them into donating, too.”
I chuckled. “Superintendent Lawson will be thrilled.”
“Don’t you meanElena?” she said. It was really amazing that despite being a half-dozen inches shorter than me, she could so competently look down her nose.
“God, no–she’s always telling me to call her that, but…” I bent closer to whisper in her ear. “It’s so awkward. She’s still, like… ateacher, you know?”
Samantha’s eyes crinkled slightly, her smile curving up a little more.
“Andhowold are you again?” she asked.
Shining brown eyes, looking up at me in the dark, nervous anticipation sparking like electricity between us. Are you sure, Sami?I had been terrified. And with good reason, it turned out. But… that had been a long time ago. Maybe it was time for a second chance, one that wasn’t restricted to suites at the Sterling Hotel. Maybe tonight…
“Tonight?” I asked. “Twenty-two.”
Samantha looked up at me, those same brown eyes ringed with dark lashes that had never once fluttered. “Oh,” she said, simply.
I took her hand in mine, pulling her into the circle of my arms on the dance floor.
Pretending to work together, not pretending to date, she’d said, and yes, anyone who looked at us dancing together now would see a pair of well-dressed people standing an appropriate distance apart–we were dancing like colleagues, or family friends, and in fact we were, on both accounts. Oh, they would speculate, of course they would–as they did when I lingered too long chatting with the caterer, or smiled at a pretty girl at a dinner party. I was used to that–my romantic life being the topic of overblown gossip. I was theWeek’s Most Eligible Bachelor, was I not?
But our friends–James, Edie, Ryan and Flora–they would see something different, I just wasn’t quite sure what. A truce, perhaps. A detente. Would they suspect? Would the people who knew us best be able to see my heart pounding in my chest at the thought of holding her in public? I smiled as I looked out over the assembled guests–had it just been a few months ago that she and I were here celebrating Ryan and Flora? That I’d seen her standing alone and been drawn to her? That we’d goaded each other around the block and into that now-familiar hotel room?
Samantha could go ahead and add selfish to my list of flaws alongside jealousy and envy because I wanted them to know, desperately. I would never tell them–of course I wouldn’t, I couldkeep a fucking secret–but my chest hurt with wanting them to know. Wanting them to look at Samantha, Samantha Scott, distant and untouchable, and know that she was mine. That she melted for me, and me alone.
This is when you kiss her, I thought, my gaze falling to her pink lips. We were so close I could feel her chest rise against mine as she breathed, could smell the faint scent of her perfume, her skin. The temptation was overwhelming.
I wrenched my eyes away, over her shoulder, forcing my heartbeat to slow, my brain to regain control of my impulses.
I wouldn’t do that to her.
“Hey, Sami,” I whispered in her ear. A slight crowd had gathered by the doorway, and I focused on that to keep my mind off the way her hair brushed against my lips, the way her arms looped around my neck. The way my cock was reacting to the closeness of her body to mine, the way my stomach tightened when I thought of what I wanted to do to her tonight. “I know you don’t care what I think, but I feel like I should tell you, just for your own knowledge. Your ass looks amazing in that dress.”
“Oh?” she said, angling her head to look up at me through her black lashes.
“Yeah,” I said. “And there’s a hotel around the block I happen to– Oh.”
I fought the urge to jerk away, moving back slowly instead.
I could feel her gaze on my face as I stared over her shoulder.
“Don’t tell me your caterer is watching,” Samantha interrupted, one eyebrow raised, a slight smile dancing on her lips.
I wished it was that.
