“Mason is always full of surprises,” he says with a wry tilt of his head, one eyebrow lifted at me.
“We met in LA,” I explain. “She’s my M—my Aunt Marcella’s doctor.” I grit my teeth at the near-miss, but am too thrilled to see her to care all that much.
Callie’s cheeks are pink, her pretty bow of a mouth open in shock, but she blinks and regains her bearings, nodding as she straightens. “Right!” she says a little too quickly. “But I didn’t expect to see you until I got back to LA. This is a nice surprise.”
“Riiight,” Nina drawls, eyeing us both. “You met in LA. Mmhm.” She takes a sip of her bubbly, suppressing a smile. I narrow my eyes at her, then glance at Callie, who flushes even redder. I take it she told her friend about our little mile-high adventure. The realization makes me rock back on my heels a little, my smile growing.
“It’s a very nice surprise.” I hold her stare for a beat, then let my gaze take in the rest of her. She was pretty in her lab coat and scrubs, and later in her leggings and sweater. Tonight she’s a fucking goddess in a red dress, and I can’t quite believe my eyes. Or my fucking luck.
Callie seems to recover, because she gives me an irritated look. “We were also on the same flight to Denver. I asked if you wanted to come to a New Year’s Eve party and you said you wouldn’t be in town. Yet here you are.”
“Are you disappointed?” I ask, holding her stare. She spears me so hard with those blue eyes I couldn’t look away if I wanted to. Here I thought I’d be lucky if she even said “hello” the next time we saw each other, or if she’d just chalk up our encounter to a crazy rebound stunt.
“No. Disappointed is not the word I’d use.” Her gaze roams my face, lingering for only a second on my fading bruises. Then she does a slow perusal of me from head to toe. “You clean up quite nice, Mr. Black. I didn’t recognize you at first.”
Nina clears her throat and we both tear our eyes away from each other to the other two, who are grinning at us like we are the night’s entertainment instead of the band.
“Have a seat,” Nina says, waving at the two unoccupied barstools. “So are you two on the money side or the government side of the senator’s guest list?”
Booth and I share a look and I nod to him. I’ll let him field this one, since he’s more or less in charge and I’m not sure how he wants to play this in social settings.
“Definitely not the money side,” he says. “We’re government employees.”
“Oh? What department?” Nina asks, and both women stare at us harder. Nina’s eyes narrow on Booth, then she gives me a once-over. “You two are not staffers. I’m guessing Defense or Homeland Security. Maybe Justice. Am I warm? I should warn you that this is not the party where claiming you’re an FBI agent is going to work as a pick-up line. Been there, done that.”
Booth grins and lets out a laugh, his eyes sparkling with mirth. Now it’s my turn to be entertained watching him spar with Nina, who is smart as a whip.
My attention gravitates back to Callie, who seems content to observe, a gorgeous smile on her face the entire time. I didn’t have a chance to really look at her during any of our three original encounters. Now that I have nowhere else to be, I can finally take her in, and Christ is she gorgeous. Her blonde hair is loose in shining waves around her bare shoulders, and she wears only enough makeup to accent her already stunning features, including the slightest shimmer of gloss on her perfect mouth.
When she catches me looking, her cheeks turn pink again and she takes a sip of her drink to cover up how flustered she seems to be. I lean in and say, “You clean up pretty damn nice too, Doc. But for the record, you’re gorgeous in scrubs.”
“Thank you. That is very sweet.”
“So this was the party you were trying to invite me to, huh?”
She glances around the big ballroom, her eyes shining enough to make it clear how much she loves this event. “Yep, this is it. I’d have tried harder to sell it, but we’d just met and I didn’t want to be pushy. I just figured you were letting me down easy.”
“Booth didn’t exactly make our plans clear, so I didn’t find out until I landed what the timeline was. But I guess I’m here for a few more days. Another week, at most. When do you head back to LA?”
“My flight leaves Monday night. And I promise, your aunt will be at the top of my list to check in on when I get back to work.”
“Just so you know, I’d have said yes to your invitation in a heartbeat if I’d known I would be staying longer. And I had every intention of finding you in LA if you wanted to be found.”
“I’d have liked that,” she says. “I did find your note, by the way.” She twists her champagne glass on the table, her gaze slipping from my eyes to my mouth, then back.
The elephant in the room is trumpeting at us both, and I can tell she isn’t any more oblivious to the memory of our mile-high adventure than I am. I lift an eyebrow at her, amused by yet another round of blushing, but she holds my gaze, only glancing once at her friend, who seems too engrossed in conversation with Booth to notice.
“The right offer is hard to turn down,” I say in a low voice. “You didn’t even need to ask for the other thing you wanted that night. I hope your disappearance after
