That, I had to concede. Afte
r all, if I had to marry, wouldn’t it be better to marry a friend? Someone I knew and didn’t mind sharing my body with? Hugh had money and connections, and adding those to the company would be a fantastic business maneuver. It was certainly better than marrying one of the mustachioed sops that kept calling on me at all hours of the day.
So why was I holding back?
“Is it Julian?” Hugh asked.
I glanced to him, confused for a moment. “Julian…Julian Markham?”
“What other Julian is there?” he asked impatiently.
“What does he have to do with anything?”
Hugh’s face pulled close to mine, so close that I could see the light from the chandeliers catching on his golden eyelashes. “Is he the reason you don’t want to marry me? Are you still in love with him?”
A year ago—what felt like a lifetime ago—I might have said yes. I might have thought about those long Amsterdam nights, those shady Vienna days—weeks and months going from Paris to Rome to Brussels and everywhere in between, Julian and me and our friends. I might have thought of Julian’s brooding features or the short growls he made as he came.
But the word love, the poetic, almost Biblical weight of it, revealed those faraway feelings for what they were—a schoolgirl’s obsession, though I had admittedly carried it long past my schoolgirl years.
I knew the truth, even if I tried to forget it: what I had felt in three days with Silas was infinitely more than I had felt in ten years with Julian.
“No, Hugh,” I said, meaning to sound dismissive, but instead sounding tired. “It’s not Julian.”
“Then who?” he demanded.
When had Hugh gotten so goddamned pushy? He’d only just made his sort-of proposal yesterday, and he had been the one to encourage me to take my time deciding, since there were still a few months left to the board’s deadline. Why did he feel the need to rush this all of a sudden?
I opened my mouth to deliver a sharp retort—a rebuke, really, because nobody talked to Molly O’Flaherty like that, least of all a potential husband—and then the dancers whirled, me along with them. The dance floor cleared into a pattern of even, straight rows, the kind of rows that meant you could look all the way across the ballroom and see the spectators standing at the edges.
See anybody standing at the edges.
Like, say, somebody tall, with dark hair and a dimpled smile. Somebody with wide shoulders and a narrow waist, both the shoulders and the waist hugged indecently well by a black tuxedo.
Blue eyes flicked to mine.
“Our babies would have blue eyes.”
A lone finger ran up the plane of my stomach, past my breasts, past my throat. Rested near my cheekbone.
“You think I want babies?”
That irresistible grin. “With me, you do.”
My satin heel caught against Hugh’s foot and I stumbled. “Fuck,” I swore under my breath, and then for good measure, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“What?” Hugh asked, helping me steady myself.
“Silas is here.”
Hugh’s shoulders grew stiff and his eyes narrowed. “Where?”
“At the far end of the ballroom.” I could no longer see Silas, but my heart thumped as if he were right next to me, as if he were touching me…tasting me. Every nerve ending, every pulse point lit on fire at the mere idea of his proximity, and oh God, I could hear his laugh now, that fucking contagious laugh. I knew how he would look laughing too, his eyebrows lifted slightly as if he were taken surprise at his own happiness, his teeth white and flashing, his dimples so deep and lickable.
“I have to go,” I said abruptly and pulled away from Hugh. Thankfully, he didn’t fight me, and we exited the dance floor. I was shaking with adrenaline and rage and—Mother Mary help me, lust.
Overpowering, flaming, burning, scorching lust.
Stop. Think.
