Page 18 of Sinners Atone
He presses his lips to my cheek. “Looking as beautiful as ever, Wren.”
He hasn’t so much as glanced south of my eyes, so I doubt he could even tell me what I’m wearing. Still, my face turns as pink as my dress. “I’m sure you say that to all the girls.”
“I do, but with you, I really mean it.” He tugs a champagne bottle from an ice bucket on the table, winces at the label, and puts it back without pouring himself a glass. “How are you?”
Before I can answer, his gaze darts left and mine follows, landing on Tayce. She’s elbowing her way through the crowd toward us, thunder clapping under her stilettos.
Rafe stretches his arms out. “Tayce. Looking as beautiful as?—”
“Shut it, asshole. You andhim”—she jabs a finger toward Angelo—“aren’t supposed to be here.”
She yells Angelo’s name and snaps her fingers. Patience has never been one of Tayce’s virtues though, so when he doesn’t immediately stop eating Rory’s face, she barks a little louder. When that doesn’t work either, she squeezes herself into the tiny gap between them. I’ve seen her do this many times when a drunken fight spills out of a club and onto the doorstep of her tattoo parlor, but breaking up a couple in love appears to be much harder than diffusing an argument between two steroid-fueled men hell-bent on putting the other in hospital.
Rory unsticks herself from her fiancé long enough to flick Tayce a disinterested look. “They had a meeting nearby.”
“My ass they did.”
Angelo wipes amusement and secondhand lip gloss off his mouth with the back of his hand. When his gaze drifts from Rory to Tayce, it hardens.
“You’ve pissed me off. You know that?”
Tayce pauses. “Uh, is this about the pin-the-dildo-on-Angelo-Visconti’s-forehead game? If so, that was all Wren’s idea.”
It wasn’t my idea. My idea was a singalong Disney marathon and to be in bed by 10:00 p.m. so Rory gets enough sleep for the big day tomorrow. Anything mildly X-rated comes from Tayce’s filthy imagination and ridiculously high sex drive.
All eyes come to me, all three pairs flecked with disbelief. I resist the urge to tug on Tayce’s hair and instead, gaze up at Angelo with my best wounded-puppy impression.
“Please don’t shout at me, I cry easily.”
“So fucking easily,” Tayce mutters.
I bite my tongue, but only because we have this unspoken pact: she pisses people off, and I take the blame. It’s a win-win, because not only am I much harder to get mad at, I get to emotionally blackmail her about it for the next month.
“Yeah. Somehow, I don’t think the male stripper was Wren’s idea.” Angelo wraps a possessive arm around Rory. “A cop? How original.”
Tayce frowns at him, and in turn, I frown at her. A stripper? First, ew. Second, I made her pinky swear that all the penises making an appearance tonight would be plastic or, at the very least, not have a muscular man with loose hips attached to them.
She licks her lips. “Uh, a stripping cop?”
“Mm. The one hanging around in the parking lot.” Angelo flexes his fist. “Yeah. He can’t make it anymore.”
Rafe drags a hand over his mouth to hide his smirk.
“I didn’t…” Tayce turns to me, looking as confused as I feel. “Did you…?”
“What do you think?” I huff, standing straighter. Jesus, I wouldn’t even know what to Google to find one.
Several beats pass. Awkward and dense, out of sync with the bubblegum pop song pumping out from the DJ booth. Rafe locks eyes with his brother, then slowly puts down the pink fluffy handcuffs he was inspecting. A disco light sweeps over a tight muscle in his jaw, then down to his clenched fist, but by the time he looks up, he’s all teeth and charm, then I think I imagined it.
He smooths down the placket of his shirt and disarms me with a mega-watt smile. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, ladies.”
He slips into the crowd.
A fleeting unease skates over me. A feeling that something important has passed me by and I wasn’t quick enough to grab it and stay in its loop. I look to Rory for answers, but apparently, she’s looking for them too, in the bottom of a champagne flute. I glance to Angelo instead, but he’s now glaring at his cell, its screen lighting up the hard planes of his face.
Weird.
For the second time tonight, Tayce grabs my arm and tugs me sideways.
