When Vernon had left, he’d broken his ability to trust. And his brothers had trampled on the pieces on their way out of Falling Brook. Even his mother had abandoned him. Not physically, but definitely emotionally. When he loved people, when he let them in, they left. They eventually abandoned him.
They eventually devastated him.
No, he couldn’t trust Sophie. Leaving himself vulnerable again came at too high a price. And he had nothing left to pay it with.
“Okay, I’ll head to the office now. See you in a few.” Sophie ended the call and faced him again. “Sorry about that.” She cleared her throat, twin flags of pink staining the slants of her cheekbones. Left over from their kiss—if that was what that clash of mouths, tongues and teeth could be labeled—or from the phone call. “I need to go into work for a few hours.”
“I heard,” he said, deliberately infusing a sheet of ice into his voice. As if just seconds ago it hadn’t been razed to hell by lust. He glanced down at his watch. “That’s fine. I have to leave, too.” While he’d been taking her mouth, time had raced by, and he was due to pick up his mother in five minutes. But the errand was just a handy excuse to put distance between him and Sophie. Because in spite of his resolve and the reminder of why he couldn’t become involved with her, he still had to threaten himself with self-harm to avoid staring at her mouth like a marauding beast. “Have a good weekend, Sophie.”
Not waiting on her reply, he pivoted on his heel and strode back in the direction they’d come. And if that cloak of loneliness settled across his shoulders again, well, it was preferable to pain.
Preferable to betrayal.
And Sophie smacked of both.
Six
Sophie wove a path among the many businessmen, socialites, philanthropists and even a handful of celebrities crowded into the Ronald O. Perelman Rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. The annual Tender Shoots Art Gala brought all the tristate area’s glitterati out in support of the New York–based arts program.
Taking a sip of her cocktail, she dipped her head in a shallow nod at a woman whose diamond necklace and ruby-red strapless gown could probably pay off the entirety of Sophie’s student loans. She held her head up, meeting the assessing gaze of every person she had eye contact with. Or maybe it just felt assessing to her. As if they were attempting to peer beneath the expertly applied makeup and strapless, glittery, floor-length dress that she’d needed a crowbar and a prayer to squeeze into in order to determine if she belonged.
Well, at an invite-only event that required fifteen thousand a plate fee plus a hefty donation for entrance, she didn’t belong. She’d grown up in Falling Brook, one of the most exclusive, wealthiest communities along the Eastern Seaboard, but her family had been among the few middle-class residents who either owned businesses in town or worked for Falling Brook Prep, the independent K–twelve school. The kind of excess and luxury represented in the grand, open space surrounded by the spiral-ramped architecture capped by a gorgeous skylight exceeded her imagination and bank account. Thank God, Althea’s partner was a stylist who had let Sophie borrow a designer gown for the night. And didn’t that just increase the surreal feeling of Cinderella attending the ball before her carriage turned back into a pumkin that had filled her since stepping onto the curb outside the famous museum?
If not for Althea receiving an invitation because of the paper’s piece about the event, the organization and the underprivileged youth it benefited, Sophie would be home, catching up on season two of The Handmaid’s Tale. But since it’d been Sophie’s article that had garnered the invite, Althea had convinced her to accept and attend. She should be grateful and flattered. But while she had no problem reporting on the country’s wealthy elite, she drew a line at socializing with them. It reminded her too much of a time in her life when she’d been blinded by their world and the man she’d once loved who’d belonged to it.
Too bad she hadn’t remembered not to cross that line that morning with Joshua Lowell.
A convoluted mixture of embarrassment, self-directed anger and a relentless, aching need jumbled and twisted deep inside her. Just thinking of how he’d cupped her jaw, gently caressed her face and then claimed her mouth had her shouting obscenity-laced reprimands at herself...even as she pressed her thighs together to fruitlessly attempt to stifle the throbbing ache in her sex. And all that led to her embarrassment. The man had sexed her mouth, then walked away from her without a backward glance. As if that devastation of a kiss hadn’t affected him at all. If not for the insistent, commanding grind of his thick erection against her belly, she would’ve believed he hadn’t been.
But no matter that he’d moaned into her mouth and had granted her a clear premonition of what it would be like to be controlled and branded by that big, wide-shouldered body, he had transformed from the approachable, almost vulnerable man who’d strolled down Main Street with her, licking ice cream in a way that had her sex ready to throw itself at his feet, to an iceberg who’d dismissed her as if their connection had been of no consequence. As if she were of no consequence. And hell, maybe to him, she wasn’t.
Staring down into the glass, she didn’t see the pale gold champagne but his shuttered expression and flat stare as she’d ended her phone call. A shiver ran through her, as if the ice that had entered that measured inspection skated over her exposed skin now. She didn’t believe in deluding herself; she acknowledged that it’d been Althea’s call that had changed him. He’d
