“Graham,” a known female voice called him, and he turned around to see Amanda. It had been six or seven months since he’d last seen her, and almost a year since they’d last slept together and broke off for the last time.
“Amanda,” he said, and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “How are you? You look well.”
Amanda’s smile reached her brown eyes. She wore a long black dress that suited her statuesque physique well. “Thank you. I thought you’d be here,” she said, giving him a look he preferred to ignore.
Shit. “Kate, this is Amanda. Amanda, this is Kate,” he gestured. He usually peppered introductions with snippets of information about each person but in this case, less was definitely more. He tugged at his collar.
Amanda raised her manicured eyebrow in recognition of the young woman next to him. “You look familiar, Kate. Where do we know each other from?”
“I must have one of those faces,” Kate said, smiling like she wasn’t guilty of tempting an older man. “It’s great to meet you, Amanda.” She stretched out her hand.
Amanda gave her hand the quickest of glances before taking it in hers and shaking it. “Pleasure.”
Harold Carlton, a real estate developer he’d once done business with sat at the table and called his name. Graham pulled the chair for Kate to sit before joining her at exchanging small pleasantries with the man. During this time, Amanda swayed to the music of the eighteen-piece band, a sweet melody from the fifties with jazzy notes. She also chatted with passersby, and he wondered why she lurked. She probably had a table of her own located at a strategic place. What else could she possibly have to tell him?
After Harold finally shushed, Graham excused himself and stood. Carlton’s wife Evelyn struck a lively conversation with Kate.
“Everything okay, Amanda?” he asked, the polite version of what’s your deal.
She grinned and leaned closer so others wouldn’t hear. “I know you want to snatch the ballroom parties for the coming years. I’m also a good friend of Mark Preston.”
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I want to offer the alcohol. We can sell it as a package to them. You do the hotel and food and use my distribution company for alcohol,” she said.
In one way, he should be relieved she seemed over their break-up. But would doing business with her be a good idea? “I use a different company.”
She shrugged. “Yes, but you can make the call and change your suppliers. You’re the boss.”
“I’ll double check our contracts to ensure we won’t be breaching any clauses with our current vendor,” he settled for saying. It’d be sexist to believe they couldn’t work together in a mutually beneficial deal just because they’d once dated. Yet he did need to make sure he could offer her what she wanted.
She nodded at him, then let out a sigh. “Just don’t wait too long. We don’t want anyone else to snatch the deal. Nice seeing you,” she said, then sauntered out of sight.
He sat again, and thankfully the other couples had engaged in a chat about the environment and he could just tune off.
Kate turned her face to him. “Why did you two stop dating?” she asked casually.
“She wanted to get married,” he said honestly. How convenient for him to leave out the part where he easily wrote Amanda out of his life when he discovered they’d wanted different things. He touched his collar. God, he hated suits.
She leaned in closer, her gaze darting at his lips. “I should send her a thank you note.”
“Don’t,” he hissed out. Graham watched her, and how her beautiful eyes contemplated his mouth, his neck, then she stared back at his eyes again. His groin stirred, and his body became a machine with a malfunctioning plug. He couldn’t flick it on and off, because whenever she looked at him like this, he was always on. His throat grew dry and thick. He’d wanted to make this special for her and to dance with her. To share a thousand-dollar meal and to exchange sexual innuendos during the dessert. Well, he’d have to scrap all that bullshit now. Her eyes sparked and he wondered if she knew, or even anticipated, his plan. His heart flipped in his chest and he inched closer to her ear. “Want to get out of here?”