Page 114 of One Wrong Move

Watch as her hand tightens around the glass of champagne.

“You live together?” Sarah Fulton says. She’s good friends with Mads Knudsen, part of a semi-incestuous group of rich Europeans who frequent London, Paris, and Berlin. All potential important allies for Contron.

I incline my head. “Yes, Harper recently moved here from New York to work at the Sterling Gallery.”

“We’re friends,” Harper clarifies.

I increase the intensity of the toy by two measures at that comment. A gasp escapes her, but she quickly tries to cover it with a cough and braces her free hand on the nearby tall table.

“Very good friends,” she adds. “He’s the best.”

I smirk behind the phone in my hand. Slide it back into my pocket and give Sarah a wide smile. “I apologize. Urgent questions from the team in New York. You know how it is with the time difference.”

She waves it away. “Of course, of course. Bane of our existence. Our youngest daughter is spending a semester in Sydney. Eleven-hour difference. It’s inhumane.”

“Sydney? Is she liking it?” Harper asks. She’s good at this. Talking to people and taking a genuine interest… even if her expression is currently more pinched than normal.

“Yes, she certainly is. Do you know what—our oldest son is good friends with Mads’s nephew, Willard. They went to school together,” Fulton says.

Her husband nods rapidly. “Yes, Willard mentioned that he was introduced to a new arrival into the art world. Could that be you, Harper?”

“Must be,” she says happily. “He actually dropped by the gallery two days ago, to admire the selection of American impressionists we have and to speak with my boss.”

“He’s a good boy,” Sarah Fulton says warmly. “So clever. He brought a previously unknown Covey to the market just a few months ago. Did you know that?”

“He told me about that, yes,” Harper says.

The fucker, I think. He had monopolized her time for an entire evening at my party. They have art in common. He’s a handsome European man of her own age. And he visited her at the gallery?

I turn the intensity up by another degree.

Harper sways on her feet and turns to glare at me.

I smile serenely back.

It takes us another five minutes of small talk before she makes our excuses. I follow along, a smile threatening to break out.

It isn’t until we’re a few steps away that she grips my forearm like a vise. “Nate,” she says. “Please. I can’t… I can’t talk to any more people.”

“It’s getting too much?”

“Yes. I feel like I’m about to explode.”

I run my thumb along her jaw, stopping on her lower lip. “That’s sort of the point, baby.”

Her eyes narrow. “I can’t come here!” she whisper-shouts. “Everyone will see.”

“Mm-hmm,” I say. The idea of taunting her with it some more is fun… but I don’t want to risk that happening. The jealousy of earlier is still lingering in my system. It’s not a noble emotion. But it’s there, and right now, the idea of other people seeing her as she comes is out of the question.

I wrap my arm around her waist. “Let’s get you out of here, then.”

She nearly sags into my side. “Thank God. I feel like… like… I’m made out of electricity.”

We walk toward the exit, past the playing band and the open bar that will keep flowing well into the morning hours. These kinds of events always have a high risk of getting very wet.

“Poor girl,” I whisper against her temple. But on my phone, I change the vibration to one without oscillating pulses.

It’s a steady throb.

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