Page 58 of Tempt My Heart

“That’s Katie, one of Rose’s friends.”

“Why is he still dancing with her? Like, I guess it’s fine but it’s weird he’s just left his date to get drunk with the likes of you.”

“I’m going to choose to ignore that,” he said politely, or slurred was more accurate. At some point he’d lost his suit jacket and his tie was hung crookedly, Ali didn’t even want to think about what she looked like right then. Especially not compared to the woman dancing with Christopher.

Ali downed the last of her wine and sighed. “Am I overreacting?”

“Yes,” Denver mumbled and she glared. “It’s only been twenty minutes.”

She sniffed in irritation and thanked the bartender when he refilled her glass. “Fine. But if he’s not back here in ten minutes I’m sleeping with you.” He choked, sending alcohol flying everywhere and she scowled. “Sleeping in your room, dumbass. I’m not going to fuck you.”

“Glad to hear it,” a dry voice said from behind her and she raised an eyebrow at Christopher.

“Oh hello, do I know you? It’s just that I had a date who looked somewhat like you, but he spent the last twenty minutes all over another woman.”

Denver cleared his throat and stood relatively smoothly considering the amount of vodka he’d just tucked away. “I’m just gonna…” He left and Ali turned back to her wine.

“Are you jealous?” There was a note of incredulity in his voice that pissed her off more.

“No, no,” she said with a roll of her eyes, “I love it when my… whatever you are, ignores me to rub up against someone else.”

To her shock, he started laughing and she could hear her teeth creak from how tightly she clenched her jaw. She downed the glass of pinot and stood to leave.

“Ali,” he said and she folded her arms across her chest, annoyed at herself for managing to pick another corker of a boyfriend. “Ali,”he said with more exasperation as she carried on walking back to their room.

The villa was mostly on one floor, so their room luckily wasn’t too far away and she remained silent the whole way, unable to stop thinking about Katie’s hands on his body.

“Will you just talk to me, please?”

She shimmied out of her dress and let it puddle on the floor as she put on her PJs and collected her bag from the floor. “Okay: I’m going to stay with Denver.”

“What? Why?”

She stopped in front of the door and spun to glare at him. “Because you ignored me to dance with somebody else and I don’t even know if I have the right to be jealous! What are we doing here Christopher? You told me it was real for you too but then tonight—”

“Tonight nothing,” he said, running a hand over his stubble. “It was real.”

Was.“I see,” she said softly. “Well, okay. You know where I’ll be.”

“Ali, wait!”

She kept going, walking up the corridor and knocking on Denver’s door. He opened it with a sigh and a wave towards his couch.

The room was dark and she normally would have smiled when Denver stubbed his toe and cursed up a storm, but she couldn’t find the humor in anything right then.

She liked Christopher. More than liked him. And she’d thought that they were on the same page—he’d told her it was real for him too, but then he’d spent the majority of the night with someone else and didn’t seem to see the problem with that. So now she wasn’t sure where she stood. Or, rather, wherehestood.

Unfortunately for her, somewhere along the line she’d fallen for her boss. The issue was that she wasn’t sure he loved her back.

“Got scared, huh?” Denver said, surprising her. She had expected he would fall straight back to sleep after letting her in. “Ran away?”

“Maybe,” she mumbled and he sighed. Yes, she’d been jealous of Katie but mostly because she’d let Christopher in and now wasn’t sure if he was hers to keep.

“Why?”

“I think I love him.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

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