Carter rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Champagne fountain or bar?”
“Bar,” Landon said. The champagne fountain would put him in Kait’s sight, and he wanted something a little stronger.
After they’d ordered two whiskey tonics, Carter spotted Alexis Banks, and Landon found himself standing with a group of actors. They weren’t his favorite crowd, mostly because he didn’t get it. Why would you want to spend all your time pretending to be someone else?
“Not everyone was born a gorgeous billionaire,” Lucy had told him once. “Some of us have to pretend.”
But the spot gave him the advantage of being able to keep an eye on Kaitlyn. In his opinion, she and Marjorie were standing too close to the champagne fountain. It was making it too easy for Kait to keep dipping her flute in every time she got low.
His eyes narrowed as she talked animatedly to a tall, fair-haired man with an unnaturally deep tan. She and Dom clearly knew each other, and though they’d started off with a foot or so between them, he’d steadily moved closer. Now the two of them had their heads bent together and Marjorie had broken off into a cluster with two others.
“Landon?” Carter prompted, pulling his attention back to the group. “You were asked a question.”
Landon dragged his eyes back to the beautiful people he was standing with and frowned, trying to rewind the chatter that had been going on around him.
“How’s it going in New Canton,” Carter supplied.
New Canton? Oh right, the restaurant. “It’s great,” Landon said. “You should all come to the opening.”
He’d tossed it out there offhandedly, hardly expecting a crowd that spent their time in Cannes and the Caribbean to be interested in New Canton. Still, some of them agreed with what seemed like genuine enthusiasm. Huh, Landon thought, no wonder they were actors. They were damn good at it. Maybe he’d actually send out the information when LeClarks was ready. He’d ask Gray and Kait—
Kait. His head whipped back to the fountain. He found Marjorie instantly, but it took him another moment to find the back of Kait’s head. She was arm in arm with Dom, and he was leading her to one of the private alcoves partially obscured by filmy curtains.
“Excuse me,” Landon said abruptly, cutting someone off mid-sentence.
He heard Carter apologize for him as he walked away, but he didn’t bother to listen to whatever half-assed explanation his best friend came up with. Since he came to Marjorie first, he asked abruptly, “Where are they going?”
Marjorie looked up, startled. “Landon? What the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m a friend of Dom’s,” he said shortly. “Where is he taking Kait?”
Marjorie glanced after her friend as though she hadn’t noticed she’d gone off. “What business is it of yours?”
Landon didn’t bother to answer. He could only catch occasional glimpses of Kait’s flame-colored hair in the melee now. Luckily, Dom stood nearly a head above most of the crowd, and Landon was able to keep an eye on him.
“Landon,” Marjorie called after him. “Don’t bother her. She’s having fun for once.”
Nothing was bothering Kaitlyn at the moment. Her whole body felt light and sparkly, and everything was so funny. Dom had never been funnier, she was sure of that. His light gray eyes were sparkling like the champagne flowing in the fountain, and he was telling her about all the ridiculous things that had happened on his latest book tour.
“And then Tony said—”
“Excuse me,” a cold voice cut him off.
Kait’s head shot up at the sound of the familiar sound, and she turned in bemusement to see Landon standing at the entrance of the little alcove they’d taken refuge in when she couldn’t stand her heels anymore.
“Landon,” she gasped, wishing she hadn’t kicked them off and curled her legs up beneath her on the divan. “What are you doing here? Is something wrong at the restaurant?”
She fumbled for her phone to see if she had missed a call from Gray, but there were no notifications.
“I need to talk to Kait if you don’t mind,” Landon was saying to Dom, who was already getting to his feet, grinning.
“What if I do mind?”
Landon kept his face tightly controlled. Dom would love a scene with the founder of Rathskeller, the antithesis of everything the famous chef stood for. He had to offer him a bigger scene. “Then stick around, but Carter is out there claiming you don’t make your own pasta sauce.”
Dom’s eyes lit up. “I’ll call you, Kaitlyn.”
When the chef was beyond the flimsy curtains, Landon snapped them shut and turned on Kait.
“You’re drunk,” he said flatly. “Sit down and drink this.”
He handed her a bottle of water he’d snagged from a silver tray on his way over.
Kait stared at it, then at him. Some of the pleasant fizz was turning to a dangerous boil. “I’m an adult,” she enunciated slowly. “I’m allowed to have a drink with an old friend.”
She wasn’t sure if he was moving with uncanny speed or if her reflexes were just slow, but suddenly Landon was standing over her, pushing her back onto the divan, and then unscrewing the cap from the bottle of water.
“Then have a drink with me,” he said and took a swig from the bottle before handing it to her.
Kaitlyn pushed it back. “You were never a friend of mine, Landon. And you’re not my big brother either, so back off.”
Landon agreed that would have been the wise choice. He wasn’t feeling friendly toward her, and he definitely wasn’t feeling brotherly. But the anger had brought a flush to her cheeks and a dangerous sparkle to her eyes that he couldn’t walk away from now. Maybe if he’d tried sooner, if he’d never invested in LeClarks or if he’d never kissed her. Maybe it had always been too late.
It didn’t matter now.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even. “And neither are you until you drink this fucking water and agree
