Maaka had been interested, I could tell. He’d danced closer, and his smile had been hopeful, his conversation leading to personal questions. But then I’d caught an exchange of looks between him and Titus, and suddenly, Maaka had vanished, and I saw him now making conversation with Seven as they stood off to one side, sipping at drinks and laughing.
The evening wore on, and Titus kept playing, and we kept dancing and drinking and eating. It was a small, intimate party, only a dozen or so people and all of them the closest friends of Autumn and Seven, and it was all the more fun and lovely for that. There were no awkward conversations, no stilted moments with strangers. Granted, most of Seven’s friends were strangers, but they were all polite, easy to talk to, handsome, funny, and interesting.
None of them openly hit on me. None of them informed me I was theirs.
Titus played for almost two hours, and even though I was wary and suspicious, I could allow myself to be amazed—he played a dizzying array of instruments—if it had strings, he could play it, and then some. He had a ukulele, a twelve-string acoustic, a big bass, a mandolin, a violin, an electric cello, and even a didgeridoo, plus the keyboard, several electric guitars, and two acoustic guitars. And he played them all beautifully, with skill and talent, using his loop pedal to layer them until it sounded like he had a full band with him.
Finally, he set all the instruments aside, and stood empty-handed in front of the mic. We all stopped, faced him.
“Seven, my man. We’ve been friends for almost twenty years. I remember the day we met like it was yesterday. It was this big tournament, you were this young guy, hungry and kinda crazy, and everyone was talking about you. You’d just KO’d Marius Milley in the second round, and you looked so amped up that you coulda fought another four rounds without breaking a sweat. I was there because they wanted Bright Bones to play between matches, right there in the ring, so we had this ghetto-ass mobile setup, a shitty amp, a shitty electronic drum kit that Tommy fuckin’ hated with a passion. It was just him and me. We played our set after you kicked Milley’s ass, and then there you were, in your boxing robe, hands taped, pacing around like a caged wolf, waiting for your next match. You were just the fuckin’ coolest, man. I knew then, the moment we talked for the first time, that I just had to be your friend. And here we are, eighteen, almost nineteen years later, and I’m playing your fuckin’ wedding, man.” He accepted a pint of beer from Maaka, and held it up. “Here’s to Seven, and to his beautiful bride Autumn, and to the start of their lives together. Congratulations, you two. I’m happy for you, more than I can say. You guys, and that little seed of a life you’ve got going, you’re gonna be so fuckin’ happy. I can tell.” He gestured at the minister, who had been invited to stay and celebrate. “Reverend LeShae, that was some beautiful shi—stuff you said. The ribbon, the handfasting? Just beautiful. And with that, folks, I’m done for the night. I’m gonna get myself a beer or ten, and some food. Seven, Autumn, congratulations. Seven, brother, I’m happy for you, I’m proud of you, and I love you, man. Peace, ya’ll.”
There was applause, whistles, and cheering and then Titus connected a cord to a laptop and turned on a playlist from his sound system, and he wandered away toward the bartender, and I lost sight of him as he was surrounded by Autumn, Seven, Frederick, and couple other friends of Seven’s.
After Titus had started his speech, I’d lost my conversation partner, Seven’s agent, Jonathon, so I went in search of my friends.
Lizzy was deep in conversation with Braun and Lon, Teddy and Kat were dancing with the other boxer friend of Seven’s, Vincent, and Zoe was standing at the bar.
She was alone.
Autumn and her husband were now swaying alone off near the arch, clutching flutes of champagne and looking more in love than ever.
I watched them, feeling a twinge of jealousy.
Or, more than a twinge. A big, fat, vicious bolt of it, lancing into my gut.
I wanted that.
Deep down, where the feeling was vague and ephemeral and slippery, under the surface of years-long suppression, I wanted it.
To dance like that with someone, to be looked at like that by a man.
“Laurel McGillis.”
I jumped a foot in the air, shrieking, spilling most of the glass of chardonnay I been sipping for the past hour. I whirled, and there was Titus, hands in his back pockets.
“Titus Bright,” I said, ignoring the thump of my heart.
He didn’t say anything else. Just looked at me, eyes searching mine. His eyes didn’t waver from mine, didn’t lazily slither down my body, didn’t fasten on my cleavage. Just seared into mine, boiling with a thousand thoughts and emotions I couldn’t decipher and which he didn’t elucidate.
I huffed. “Well, as fascinating as this conversation has been…”
His hand caught my arm, gentle but firm—his hands were gargantuan, with long fingers and a wide palm. His hand wrapped easily around my bicep, held on. “Dance with me.”
I stared at his hand, then up at him. “Let go.”
His grin was dark, wolfish. He let go of my arm, but his hand instead slid around my waist and his other neatly twisted my empty wineglass from my fingers and tossed it off into the grass, then clasped hands with me. We were dancing, then, swaying to a Jason Derulo song.
He was so tall. Even if I’d been wearing my heels with their four-inch stiletto spikes, he would still tower over me, which meant barefoot in the grass, my face was chest height. I wondered at our joined hands: mine seemed so tiny nestled within his, so pale, so delicate. I could feel the guitarist’s calluses on his fingertips.
He swayed with me in his arms, stared down at me. “You’re beautiful, Laurel.” His speaking voice sounded like the contented purr of a lion.
I hated the way I was instinctually inclined to preen, to feel seen. “Thank you, Titus.”
He stepped back and held my hand, and the years of ballroom dancing lessons I’d been forced to take at the private European academy had me moving automatically into a spin, left me pressed back to his hard lean front.
“You dance amazingly well,” he murmured.
“A solid decade of ballroom classes every single day will do that,” I said.
“Really? Every day for ten years?”
“I went to a boarding school in Switzerland. You had a certain number of elective classes, and the options were ballroom, gym class which meant, like, soccer and whatever, and choir. There were others, too, but the only one that appealed to me was dancing, and I just stuck with it.” I smirked up at him. “What’s your excuse for being able to dance?”
He laughed. “Boredom.”
I frowned in confusion. “Boredom?”
He nodded. “Yup. Long story, so the short version is that I spent what the media called my vanished years in Brazil, in Rio. I was playing in this shitty fuckin’ local band who had no fuckin’ clue who I was, and I liked it that way. But I could just never sleep. It was two solid years of insomnia, so to just fill the time with literally anything except more drugs and alcohol, I did all sorts of crazy shit. Like ballroom classes. I can do a hell of a samba, let me tell you.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t see you doing the samba.”
He stopped moving, stared down at me. “No? How about the rumba? That shit is downright sexual.”
I shook my head, snorting. “There’s a big difference between being able to sway around in a lazy four-step, and being able to properly samba.”
“And you don’t think I can?”
“No, I don’t.”
He stepped closer, so our bodies were less than an inch apart. “Care to wager?”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure. Put on a song we can samba to, and if you fail to impress me with your magical samba skills, you have to leave me alone.”
“And when I prove you wrong, you sexy little doubter, you go on a date with me.”
“Deal.”
I had no doubt he could samba. But samba well? What he didn’t know
was that I still danced regularly. It was my second favorite way to work up a sweat, the first being sex, obviously. I had a ballroom group I danced with down in the valley every Monday night, and these were not casual dancers, these were semi-pro, the kind who brought their own special dancing shoes. And they always fought over who got to be my partner.
Impressing me wasn’t easy.
He tapped me on the nose. “It’s a wager, then. Stay here.”
He went over to his laptop, spent a moment finding and cueing up a song, and then swaggered back to me. He had my shoes in one hand.
“Can’t samba barefoot,” he said.
“No, I guess not.” I slid my feet into the shoes, and then gestured at the paved area. “Grass, or flagstones?”
“Up to you.”
“Grass, then. Less of a risk of tripping on the cracks.”
He slid his vest off, folded it, tossed it aside on a nearby chair, and then tugged a braided leather cord from his hip pocket, used it to tie his hair back. The pop song that had been playing ended, and the distinctive Latin rhythm of a samba started.
I felt the eyes, knew everyone was watching.
Shit, this had been a mistake. Big, big mistake.
He was gorgeous. Fucking perfect, is what he was. Every line and curve and angle and plane of his body was hewn as if from marble by the hand of da Vinci himself. Bare-chested, wearing those ripped, faded black jeans tucked into knee-high biker boots with buckles and straps running up the front, the top several buckles left undone, hair bound back to emphasize his sharp cheekbones and deep-set tawny eyes and chiseled jawline…
Fuck me.
It was hard to breathe, to swallow, being this close to him.
The music was in full swing, now, and he held out his hand to me, waiting.
My downfall was the rhythm. I couldn’t not dance. My feet took over, put me into motion. Immediately, within the first few movements, I knew I’d lost the wager.
Titus could dance.
He led me, effortlessly.
His posture was perfect, his turnouts crisp and precise. His rhythm was flawless. What was more, he was enjoying it. He knew the dance well enough that he didn’t have to think about the movements, he could just focus on me.
Fuck it.
I threw myself into the moment, abandoned my intent to dislike him and let myself be led through the samba. His hands were everywhere, his body, his eyes. His smile was broad, contagious, and cocky. He knew he’d won, and he’d known he would.
As we danced, I saw the whole wedding party in a crescent around us, clapping to the beat, watching us move together in complete harmony, as if we’d danced the samba together a million times.
Finally, the song ended, and we were both out of breath, panting and sweating, and there was cheering and whistles.
“Laurel!” Lizzy was laughing as she came over to me. “When the hell did you learn to dance like that?”
Titus snorted. “You keep your ballroom skills a secret from your best friend?”
“Hush you, it’s none of your business,” I said, then faced Lizzy. “I’ve always danced. I still do, every Monday, with a club down in the Valley.”
Lizzy gestured at Titus. “So, I’m with him on this. You keep these incredible dancing skills a secret from me? I’ve known you for damn near fifteen years, and I don’t know you’re a master ballroom dancer?”
“It’s not a secret,” I protested. “It’s just something I do. It’s fun, I enjoy it, and it keeps me in shape.”
The whole group of girls was around me, then.
“Aren’t you the one who said you don’t get sweaty and out of breath unless there’s a dick involved?” Kat asked.
“You also said your only form of exercise was walking around while squeezing your butt cheeks,” Teddy added.
Titus was watching this exchange with a grin. He said nothing, though, just bit down on laughter and listened.
I huffed. Tried to ignore him. “Sex is still my number one exercise. I do walk almost every night, and I do squeeze my ass cheeks while I walk. I just also happen to belong to a ballroom club. It’s not a big deal.”
“It is, though, kinda,” Zoe said. “I feel like there’s a lot about you that we don’t know, and that we don’t know we don’t know.”
“Except now,” Autumn said, “we’re starting to figure out how much we don’t know that we don’t know.”
I blinked. “Wait, what?”
“You have a lot of secrets,” Kat said. “That’s our point.”
I waved them off. “Not a secret.”
“We’ve been your best friends since college. We’re all just about forty,” Lizzy said. “At this point, anything we don’t know about each other pretty much counts as a secret.”
“What, you guys are legit upset about this?” I asked. “It’s ballroom dancing, not a secret divorce.”
Teddy cleared her throat. “Um, I suppose now might be a good time to come clean on the secret divorce front.” We all pivoted to focus on Teddy; she lifted her shoulders and grinned sheepishly. “I was actually married to Thomas.”
We all just blinked.
I frowned at her. “Thomas, your ex-boyfriend, who hit you, whom Lizzy’s Magnum P.I. buddy beat up? That Thomas? You were married to him?”
She nodded. “I was. For six months. And that wasn’t actually the first time he’d hit me—but it was the last. After Lizzy’s friend worked him over, I had a client of mine who was a lawyer draw up divorce papers, and I got a sheriff friend to serve them. And then that same private investigator friend of Lizzy’s intimidated him into signing them without contest. And then another friend, this one a judge, got the divorce pushed through in record time.” She sighed. “I called in pretty much every favor I had saved up.”
“And you didn’t tell us?” Kat asked. “We’re so fighting.”
“I was embarrassed,” she said. “And scared. And confused. Thomas had me so mixed up. Unless you’ve been in a situation like that, you don’t know what it’s like. How easy it is to…to get mixed up, in your head, thinking it really is your fault. And then trying to get out of it, to get away from him without dragging you guys into it?”
Lizzy hugged her. “We’re your friends. It’s our job to get dragged into things like that.”
Autumn was on the other side of Teddy. “Honey-bunny. We would have gone to war with that asshole for you. You should’ve told us.”
Titus had his arms crossed over his chest. “You guys are something else.”
“Titus!” Seven’s voice boomed from across the yard. “Come do a shot with us, dancin’ man!”
Titus waved at us, and strode—swaggered, really—across the yard, catching his vest off the chair and shrugged it back on, joining the circle of guys around the bar, his long sculpted arms slinging across the shoulders of Seven and Lon as he leaned between them.
Lizzy watched me watching him, smirking. “You like him.”
I ripped my gaze off of him. “Do not.”
Kat socked my shoulder. “Do too. You guys look good together.”
“Yeah you do,” Zoe said, eyeing him appreciatively. “I mean, I know you’ve got dibs, but that man is sex on a stick.”
“He’s a dick on a stick, is what he is,” I snapped.
“Good kind of dick or bad kind of dick?” Kat asked.
I groaned. “The bad kind, Katja. Obvi.”
“Why?” Kat asked, her expression a mix between a confused frown and an amused grin. “Because he has the utter, unmitigated gall to be an incredible musician, a great dancer, sexier than socks on a rooster, and likes you? The asshole. How dare he?”
I shook my head. “You guys suck.”
“No, but I bet you will before the night is out,” Kat said, wiggling her eyebrows. “Him, that is.”
Autumn held up a hand. “Actually, if you’re going to do any sucking or any other sexy time activities, you’d better do it soon, because our party bus to the hotel is going to be here soo
n.”
“There’s no hanky-panky happening tonight,” I said. “Zip, zero, zilch, nada.”
“Maybe not tonight,” a leonine voice said, behind and above me. “But you do owe me a date.”
I turned slowly to look up at him. “You played me.”
He smirked. “How? I told you I was good at the samba. You’re the one who didn’t believe me.”
I huffed. “Fine. One date. Let it never be said I don’t honor my wagers.” I glared up at him. “What’s the date, big fella? Sex party in your fancy penthouse condo?”
He just laughed. “You think you know, but you don’t know.” His gaze heated. “The one thing you’d better learn now, Laurel McGillis, is that nothing you think you know about me is going to be accurate. Being able to samba is only the first and smallest of the ways I’m going to surprise you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, sure, whatever. Just name the time and place.”
“Titus!” Seven’s voice again. “The limo is here, buddy. Time to get lit the fuck up!”
Titus grinned down at me. “You’ll find out. It’ll be what you least expect, and when.”
I sighed, annoyed. “And I hate surprises. So this will be fun for one of us.”
He stepped into me, hips to hips, chest to chest, his hot tawny eyes on mine. “You’ll have the best time ever, Laurel.”
His big callused hand went to my cheek, thumb brushing my cheekbone, while the other wrapped with possessive, casual familiarity low around my waist. As if I really was his. As if we were an item, a couple, a thing.
“Every single fuckin’ second we spend together will be a second you never forget.” He bent down, nose slanting across mine, and his lips slid over mine in a teasing whisper of an almost-kiss. “I promise.”
And then he was gone.
And I was dizzy, my lips still tingling where his had not exactly touched, my hips tingling with leftover electricity where his hands had been.
“Goddammit,” I hissed, watching him swagger around the side of the yard to where the wrought iron gate opened to the front yard and driveway, breaking into an easy trot as Seven leaned on the horn of the party bus. “I am so fucked.”
Laurel's Bright Idea (Billionaire Baby Club Book 3) Page 4