Page 44 of Twisted Shot
“Give us the tea. Who is he?”
Naomi’s voice cuts through Mila’s daydream like a splash of cold water.
She blinks at her from behind her laptop screen, caught mid-stare into the nothingness of her desktop calendar. “Excuse me?”
Naomi, sleek in wide-leg trousers and a cropped blazer, arches an eyebrow and saunters into Mila’s office with a travel mug of coffee and drops into the plush visitor chair. Her long auburn hair is styled in immaculate waves, lipstick sharp, mood nosy.
“You’ve been staring into space for a solid five minutes with your ‘I got kissed’ face. So. Details.”
Mila exhales and leans back in her chair. “I do not have an ‘I got kissed’ face.”
Naomi sips her coffee. “You absolutely do. I’ve seen it once before, and it was when we went to that conference in Montreal and you hooked up with that bartender. The one with the jawline that could cut steel and a vocabulary of four words.”
“That man had a PhD in body language,” Mila mutters.
Naomi wiggles her eyebrows. “Exactly. So? Spill.”
Mila hesitates. She might be back in her office in Toronto, high above the city’s endless sprawl of glass, concrete, andtraffic, but her mind hasn’t quite caught up with her body. The skyline outside is crisp and cold, the autumn sun flashing off the CN Tower in the distance. But none of it registers.
She’s still in the dark.
Still in Hartford.
Still pinned to the slatted wall of a cedar gazebo by a man she didn’t recognize but somehow felt known by.
Her phantom. Her man in black.
The scent of him still lingers somewhere in her memory, woodsy and spiced and delicious. The way he’d looked at her, like he already owned every part of her before they’d even touched.
She had planned to get something done today. Follow up on a couple of community sponsor leads. But Naomi’s not going to let this go. And honestly...she kind of needs to talk about it. She doesn’t want to tell Natalie and risk freaking her out. Her best friend is far too responsible to understand Mila’s thirst for the man in the dark.
She sighs, dragging a hand through her hair. “Something happened in Hartford.”
Naomi gasps. “Tell me it was a hockey player.”
“I don’t know. Possibly?” Mila admits. “He was in a costume.”
Naomi’s eyes light up like it’s Christmas morning. “Oh my God. Was it weird? Like a furry thing?”
“It wasn’t weird, it was...mysterious. And hot.” She leans forward, whispering. “He was dressed all in black. Suit, cape, half-mask—think Phantom of the Opera meets tall, dark, and sexy. He didn’t tell me his name.”
Naomi’s mouth drops open. “You made out with a stranger in a mask at a Halloween party?”
Mila makes a face. “It was...more than that.”
Naomi stares, stunned into rare silence. “Well, damn.”
“I know.”
“Was he a good kisser?”
Mila looks down at her hands, cheeks flushed. “He kissed me…like he wanted to ruin me. Slowly.”
Naomi fans herself with a stack of post-it notes. “Oh my god, you’re so lucky.”
Mila ducks her head, fiddling with her rings, the memory replaying whether she wants it to or not.
“You’re thinking about him again,” Naomi says.
