But she’d already turned away from me and was kissing her husband on the cheek.
He returned her kiss with a fond one of his own and then extended his hand for me to shake. “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Bradford,” he said smoothly. He was white as well, tall, and handsome in a dad kind of way. There was something familiar about the line of his jaw and the fullness of his mouth, but I couldn’t place it. “I saw your other two colleagues on my way in, so they should be here shortly.”
“And the boys?” Elizabeth asked, taking a sip of wine. “Can we expect they’ll grace us with their presence or are they waiting until the champagne starts pouring?”
“With Felix, you never know,” Jasper said jovially. “But Owen is always punctual and present.”
Felix?
Owen!
With a slow-dawning horror, I turned to the dining room’s door just in time to see my enemy stroll in wearing another impeccably tailored suit and a scowl that made him look unfairly hot. He jolted to a stop when he saw me, and we stared at each other for a long moment, a thick, angry hunger stretching between us.
I thought of the unread email in my inbox.
I thought of his awful words on Christmas Eve.
I thought of his warm, drugging lips moving over mine, his mouth hot around my nipple, his muscled frame toiling to give me the most intense orgasm of my life.
“Miss Bradford, meet Owen Montgomery,” Elizabeth said. “My son.”
Chapter 12
Owen
Dinner was excruciating.
The two other interns joined us before we could speak to each other, and that seemed to suit Tanith just fine. She chose a seat as far away from me as possible, and then fucking Felix ambled in—ten minutes late—and sat next to her, clearly making her uncomfortable.
She mostly ate in silence, only talking to my parents or the other interns, and so I ate in silence, too, since I had no interest in talking to anybody but her. And the minute my mother pushed her chair back and we were free to go, I was on my feet to get to my elusive goddess.
But as fast as I was, she was faster. By the time I left the dining room, she was already gone.
No matter. I knew she must be in the guest wing, and I had zero fucking qualms about pounding down her door.
But my father grabbed me on my way out. “Your mother expects you to help greet the guests as they come in,” he said in that cool, hard your mother’s career comes before all else voice. Unlike my mother, my father was American, but they both had a deeply inculcated sense of class, ambition, and familial duty. “Be at the front door in fifteen minutes.”
I closed my eyes for a brief second, wanting to scream.
Tanith was one of my mother’s interns; Tanith was here. There was no way I deserved this stroke of good fortune, but I didn’t care. If she was here, then I had a chance, but I had to get to her first. Find her and explain to her how it was going to be.
But I also knew the rules of the game. I knew what was expected in my role.
“Yes,” I said, opening my eyes. “I’ll be there.”
* * *
“Well done,” my mother said to me nearly two hours later. Guests had mostly all arrived and had been duly shepherded into Bay House’s ballroom. They were now sipping champagne and nibbling on luxurious treats from the buffet as they began their usual social ballet of flattery and gossip. “You may go mingle.”
I knew that wasn’t a suggestion, but my marching orders for the night. It rankled beyond measure; Felix had fucked off after only twenty minutes of greeting duty, and if I didn’t go find Tanith right this fucking minute, I was going to crawl out of my skin. But there was no point in arguing with my mother. The same cold drive that guided her career decisions underpinned her parenting style. I didn’t exist to her unless I was serving a purpose, and I’d rather exist to her than not, I guessed.
And anyway, there was a way around this.
“Yes, Mum,” I said, kissing her cheek before I went to the ballroom. She hadn’t specified how long I should mingle, and with whom, specifically, I should mingle. I’d make some polite small talk until I found a certain bespectacled blonde, and then I’d mingle very hard. Hopefully for the rest of the night.
It took me longer than I thought it would to find her—long enough that I began to worry that she hadn’t come out for the party at all and instead had holed herself up in her room to hide from me. I’d had to chat with enough editors, photographers—and worst of all—ad executives to last me a fucking lifetime. It wasn’t until near eleven that I saw a glimpse of blond hair moving toward the ballroom doors.
“Excuse me,” I said abruptly to the newspaper publisher I’d been charming on behalf of my mother. “I’ve just seen something needing my attention.”
“Such a good host,” he said, with enough jolliness to indicate he hadn’t waited until midnight to dip into the champagne. I nodded and gave him as much of a smile as I was capable of, and then I stalked after my obsession, chasing her into the dark recesses of my house.
The noise of the party faded behind me as I strode across the large central hall outside the ballroom. There was a chance she’d gone to the guest wing, but for some reason I doubted it. I had a feeling she was escaping in a way that would allow her to make an easy reentry when it was time to ring in the New Year, and so she’d pick one of the rooms that was nearby. The library or the den, perhaps. Maybe my mother’s office.
I tried the library first, equal thrums of victory
