Page 73 of Don't Remind Me
She glanced up, her eyes amazingly calm given the situation, not a trace of fear there even after referencing what I assumed was the note on her car. Then her gaze shifted below my jaw, running down my chest all the way to my toes. Her brows pulled together.
“What are you…?”
Oh, yeah. That.
“I, uh—” I cleared my throat, once again painfully aware that I was in a suit for the first time since my brother’s wedding five years ago.
Her gaze met mine, this time with a mix of curiosity and affection. It was the latter that calmed my nerves enough for me to speak.
“I wanted to dance with you too,” I said softly.
It was the simplest truth I knew. I wanted to dance with her here, tonight, where she looked like a goddess, even with paint dripping down her dress. I wanted to dance with her tomorrow morning in my kitchen as I made her crepes with caramelized plums and vanilla cream, listening to her moan in my arms with each bite. I wanted to dance with her on lazy Sunday afternoons with Baxter cradled in our arms, and at the restaurant after close, and on holidays, and birthdays, and to cheer her up when she was sad, and to celebrate with her when she was happy.
I wanted to dance with her always, in all ways, to every single song.
Her brows lifted, tears gleaming in her eyes as her lips rose and her fingers threaded with mine. She squeezed them tight. “I hate that I have paint on me right now,” she said through a laugh. “I want to kiss you so badly.”
I couldn’t care less about paint. I cupped her face in my hands and dropped my mouth to hers, easing her body against me as if we were dancing right now. My lips brushed softly over hers, sinking everything I felt into the kiss. She gripped my waist, her smile continuing to grow until she couldn’t kiss me back anymore, setting my chest on fire. I opened my eyes but kept her close, sweeping my gaze over her face.
She peered up at me, eyes bright. “Hi.”
My lips tugged up.
“Jase?”
Cold shocked my system like I’d been blanched in an ice bath. My brain froze too as the last voice I expected to hear echoed through my ears and landed like a meat hammer against my stomach.
He shouldn’t be here.
Not at this hotel, not in this city, and definitely not at this event.
Not at this moment of all moments that was supposed to be about Dani and me and the months we’d put in to get to this place—at the finish line of a successful event and the start of something so much more.
Something I’d had to push him aside in my mind to convince myself I could have in the first place.
Yet as I dragged my gaze over Dani’s shoulder, there he stood, wearing his own perfectly tailored suit, his pregnant wife’s hand clasped in his.
The ultimate Beauford in the flesh.
My brother.
Chapter Thirty-One
Dani
Alec was here.
In person. At the symposium.
Alecwashere, with Stephanie, his extraordinarily pregnant wife who, wearing flats and a simple black gown, managed to look more elegant than any person of royalty I think I’d ever seen.
The two of them stood at the entrance to the bathroom hallway with identical looks of open-mouthed surprise on their faces, which, if my inability to move my jaw was any indication, perfectly matched the expression both Jase and I wore.
Jase, whose arms I was still in after he’d told me he wanted to dance with me, only I’d heard something entirely different in those words, felt it in his kiss, just before Alec—his brother and my ex—interrupted.
Alec washere.
Howwas Alec here?
