Tori’s head jerked, her eyes widening for an instant before she pulled her ice princess mask back into place. Delon tried to do the same but the air had solidified into chunks that stuck sideways in his windpipe. They exchanged a quick, questioning look.
Did you tell him?
Tori gave a slight shake of her head.
Delon had a horrifying vision of a secret surveillance camera planted in Tori’s apartment. Dear sweet God. That one afternoon alone, with the fudge cake and whipped cream…
A sliver of sanity worked its way through his buzzing panic. No politician with a lick of sense—which, granted, left out a sizable number—would want video of his daughter’s private affairs floating around. Richard Patterson was not stupid. Besides, if he’d had any idea what had gone on in that apartment, Delon would’ve disappeared years ago, his mangled body dumped in a canyon on the Patterson ranch for the coyotes to snack on. He definitely wouldn’t be invited to join them for dinner.
The poor woman had no choice. She dodged the flaming skewers tossed at her by the woman at the end of the table and escorted the three of them to their seats. Tori avoided meeting Delon’s eyes as he held her chair, her dress and silvery lace shawl requiring her full attention as she sat.
When they were arranged to her satisfaction, she leaned sideways and muttered, “What are you up to, Daddy?”
He disengaged from conversation with the man on his left and smiled first at Tori, then Delon, his blue eyes clear as a summer sky. “I’m saving you from that battle-ax in the purple dress, and Delon from the windbag next to her. With any luck, they’ll murder each other before the end of dinner and neither of them will ever darken the door of my office again.”
Another wealthy constituent approached the front of the table, hijacking Richard’s attention. He greeted her with that same guileless smile. “Joan! Good to see you. You know my daughter, of course, and her friend Delon Sanchez. What have you done with that husband of yours?”
And so it went, the senator holding court as his minions lined up to pay their respects, so smoothly polite it took Delon a good ten minutes to realize that Richard Patterson had created a force field of cordiality around his daughter. No one was given an opportunity to engage her in conversation. Questions about her whereabouts over the past years were deftly redirected. Neither her husband nor her married name were mentioned. And the senator accomplished it all with such warmth and charm the curious walked away unaware that they’d been ruthlessly thwarted.
Delon tilted his head close to Tori’s ear to avoid being overheard. Her perfume tickled his nose—something tart with a hint of lemon, nothing like the sultry stuff she’d worn before. But still his body tightened, recognizing the warm scent of her skin beneath it.
“How is he not president by now?” he asked.
Tori’s mouth flattened. “I’m sure they’ll corner him eventually.”
“But you’re not in favor.”
She wrapped the fringe of her shawl around one slender forefinger. “I have no desire to watch my father age twenty years in his first term. And being a first daughter is not appealing.”
Of course it wouldn’t be. Not if she wanted to continue her current career, which she seemed to love. But the president’s daughter treating patients in a public facility? The security issues alone would make it impossible.
“How does your sister feel about it?” he asked.
“Elizabeth is ambivalent. She doesn’t deal with the public, and it would mean an inside track to funding for her research.”
“Which is?”
“Currently? Inserting pieces of DNA into immune cells to teach them to attack and kill cancer.”
Delon blinked. “Wow.”
“Yep.”
“Is she married?”
“No. But she has a partner, a computer programmer who is possibly even more brilliant. I suppose they might get married someday, if Pratimi can haul her out of the lab long enough, and my father’s handlers decide a gay marriage in the family would help him gain ground with the independent voters.”
Delon studied her expression, looking for any sign that she was joking. There was none. “Isn’t that sort of…cold?”
Tori shrugged one lace-covered shoulder. “We Pattersons prefer to call it practical. Somebody has to save the world. Without people like my father to woo donors and my mother and sister to devote every waking hour to their chosen fields, children in this country would still be dying of the measles. My father would make a very good president.”
“But it would suck for you.”
“Yes.”
“You could do something to scandalize the voters and ruin his chances.”
She lifted an eyebrow. Her eyes glowed like arctic ice against the pale gold of her skin. “Are you offering to help?”
Their gazes caught and held. Heat flared between them like a flash of summer lightning, the resulting thunder rumbling through every fiber of Delon’s body. A flush rose in Tori’s cheeks.
“Well, that was stupid.” She pasted a smile on her face and turned to greet the latest of her father’s worshipers, leaving Delon to stew in his own simmering juices. When she eventually looked back at him, her face was once again calm and composed. Her gaze drifted down to the open collar of his shirt and he wondered if she could see his pulse pounding.
“No tie,” she said. “Wardrobe malfunction or fashion statement?”
“Both. I hate them, and I don’t know how to make them work. Is it still black tie without the tie, or is that a violation of the rules?”
“Beats me. If the fashion police are on patrol, I’m in big trouble.”
He gave himself the luxury of examining her. The swept-up hair exposed the back of her neck, where he knew she was especially sensitive. Bare shoulders played a game of peekaboo beneath the lace shawl, making him want to pull it aside, preferably with his teeth.
“You look fine to me.” The understatement of the decade.
“I had a small problem with my shoes.” With one of those wicked dare-you smiles that had always ended with him wondering if they might actually kill themselves this time, she lifted her skirt. “I forgot I needed some.”
Delon burst out laughing. Underneath all her glitz and glamour, Tori was wearing scuffed cowboy boots.
Chapter 18
That laugh. Tori’s whole body went hot just from the echo. Delon Sanchez laughing was enough to smoke a girl’s thong—assuming she still owned one. That little lack had turned out to be troublesome, since her stupid dress didn’t allow for anything else. Going commando in this stuffed-shirt crowd had seemed mildly amusing until Delon showed up and filled her head with thoughts of what could be done given ten minutes and an empty back room. Tori pressed her hands to her flushed cheeks and blew out a long, heated sigh. If she didn’t vacate this bathroom stall soon, rumors would be flying that she was doing something illegal in here, and if she looked as glassy-eyed as she felt, she’d confirm their suspicions.
She stepped out and immediately regretted her decision. The battle-ax in purple was at the sinks, making an elaborate show of freshening her lipstick. The click of the tube of lipstick snapping shut sounded like the cocking of a pistol. Potential gossip in sight. Ready, aim, fire!
“Victoria. Darling.” The woman laid a manicured claw on her arm. “What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Oh, you know. This and that. Keeping busy.”
“And you’re living in…” She trailed off, waiting for Tori to fill in the blank.
She shifted away to bend over the sink and crank the tap. “Farfromyou, America,” she said, too fast and quiet for the woman to make out.
The purple people-eater stared at her for a beat, not quite ballsy enough to ask Tori to speak up. Finally she said, “Well, you look wonderful. The climate there must agree with you.”
“Yes. It’
s so much like being here at home, some days I can barely tell the difference.” Tori punched the button on the hand dryer, the roar drowning out conversation and leaving the human eggplant no excuse to linger.
Damn, this brilliant plan of her father’s might just work. But wow, did she need a drink. An hour of sitting next to Delon, trying to ignore the hum of awareness between them, had drained her dry.
She had, as Shawnee said, really fucked him up, if only indirectly. The knowledge had snuffed out her anger at him for the scene at the clinic. All this time, Tori had assumed Delon had been, at most, disappointed when he found her gone. Maybe a little annoyed that she hadn’t kissed him good-bye. But he’d been upset enough to get roaring drunk and make a mistake that had changed his entire life. Considering it had resulted in Beni, she wondered if Delon cursed her, or thanked her.
With a quick sidestep, she angled through the crowd toward the closest bar. She should make boots a permanent fashion statement. For the first time in history her feet didn’t hurt at one of these dress-up things, and she could move fast enough to dodge most of the vultures. And it had made her father smile through whatever was drawing those tight lines around his mouth.
Her father…honestly, she appreciated his concern, but what was he thinking, putting her and Delon side by side, on display at the head table? Delon had handled it, though. He was used to the spotlight, and the boy who’d thrown temper tantrums had learned all too well how to play nice. Tonight, his public face was plastered on thick, glossy and impenetrable.
Tori slithered around a cluster of men debating what kind of quarterback Romo might’ve been if Landry were still coaching—dear sweet Jesus, it’d been damn near thirty years since the man stood on the sidelines, let it go—and arrived at the bar a few paces ahead of Delon. He’d been waylaid by two elderly women decked to the nines in rhinestones, fringed leather skirts, and white hats. The Goodacre sisters liked to go the full Dale Evans whenever the situation warranted. They also had hands like a two-headed octopus and were old enough to get away with it.
Tori couldn’t blame them for wanting to get Delon in their clutches. Dinner over, he’d retrieved his cowboy hat. Combined with the white shirt, black jacket, and those dark eyes, it sent her tumbling down a rabbit hole of memories. He smiled, nodded, and tried to ease away from the sisters, but they clung like horn flies. As he freed his arm from one, the other clamped a bony hand on his butt. To his credit, he barely flinched, but his smile was getting tight around the edges.
“Give me two Shiner Bocks,” Tori told the bartender. When he handed her the bottles, she caught Delon’s eye and held one of them up.
He grabbed at the invitation like a drowning man, gesturing in her direction and dodging greedy fingers as he—wisely—backed away. He plucked the bottle from Tori’s hand and chugged down a third of it, then whooshed out a breath.
“I always thought the Let ’er Buck Room at Pendleton was the worst for getting mauled, but those two make it look like a junior high dance.” He watched her take a swig from her own bottle. “Beer doesn’t really match your outfit.”
“Does so.” She lifted her hem and stuck one boot out as proof. “Besides, I never could develop a taste for wine. Or whiskey. But if you don’t like Shiner, I’m not sure we can be friends.”
He studied her for a beat, then took another long pull off his beer before lowering it to meet her gaze, his expression complicated. “Is that what we are? Friends?”
“Do you have a better definition?”
He thought about that for another excruciating moment. “I guess not.”
She breathed out a sigh that should have been relief, but tasted uncomfortably like disappointment. As if she’d wanted more. How stupid was that? Anything else—well. Even if she had been ready to get involved—especially with someone who was permanently tied to the Panhandle—she couldn’t imagine how she would fit with this older version of Delon. He was so contained. His emotions so carefully shielded. Exactly the opposite of Willy. Plus, there was Violet. According to Shawnee, Delon had all but lived at her place, pre-Joe Cassidy. And he was Beni’s father. He had serious responsibilities. No longer the kind of man to spend the better part of a weekend wearing nothing but a cocky grin.
Damn, she missed that grin. A cold ache settled around her heart. She missed laughing. The unbridled, joyful kind that left you giddy and breathless, as if your soul was doing loop-de-loops in a clear blue sky. The first thing she’d fallen in love with was Willy’s big, booming laugh, how easily he shared it. But he hadn’t been the one to teach her to let go and fly.
Odd that she’d forgotten how much she and Delon had laughed together, like a pair of kids giggling in their secret clubhouse. And that, she realized with a start, was why she’d never pushed him for more. Even if her demands didn’t scare him away, she’d feared reality would ruin their fun. So many times she’d felt as if he was teetering on the edge, a step away from saying the words that would have changed everything, only to pull back.
And she’d never nudged him. Never risked popping their shiny bubble and letting the world inside. She’d chosen the euphoria of stolen hours over something more substantial, and when her heart refused to be satisfied, she’d kept her feelings bottled up until they congealed into resentment.
She’d set a deadline without ever giving him a clue that the clock was ticking down. If he doesn’t do something, say something, before I have to leave for my clinical rotation…
Of course he’d failed. He’d never even known there was a test. And now life had stomped the laughter out of both of them.
“Tori?” he said, and she had to blink to bring this older, serious face into focus even though she’d been staring at him.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted, but of course he didn’t know she was apologizing for so much more than her rudeness. She pulled her gaze away, down to the bottle in her hand. “This is why they don’t drag me to these social things much. I can only hold the pose for so long, and then…”
She was babbling. And he was looking at her as if he also wondered whether she’d snorted something while she was in the ladies room.
“Never mind,” she said. “Can we just—”
She had no idea how she might have finished the sentence, because a man stepped between them. Tall. Blond. Gorgeous. And built. His face was familiar. A person she knew in passing, but from where? He wasn’t exactly forgettable, which meant she must have met him in circumstances very different from these.
“Delon,” he said, with a nod and the kind of smile only a certain class of people had reason to learn, mockery wrapped in such impeccable manners you might not even realize you’d been insulted.
Delon knew. His body went rigid, his eyes hardening to obsidian. “Wyatt.”
Ah. Yes. Wyatt Darrington. Bullfighter extraordinaire, rebel spawn of an East Coast dynasty that would sneer at upstart ruralites like the Pattersons, whose serious money had only been made since the turn of the nineteenth century.
More to the point, Wyatt was Joe Cassidy’s best friend. He turned a laser-sharp gaze on her. “Tori. It’s good to see you again, though I wish the circumstances were different.”
She assumed it was a reference to Willy and not the Buckaroo Ball, since Wyatt was apparently attending of his own free will. From what she’d seen and heard, Wyatt rarely felt compelled to do anything that didn’t serve his needs. Which led to the question—
“What brings you all the way from Oregon to our little soiree?”
“I flew Joe down to visit Violet, but they had plans for the evening.” The slight emphasis on plans was deliberate. Salt, meet Delon’s wounds. His animosity toward Joe had been obvious, even in that brief encounter at the clinic. And there had been that moment, when he watched his son pour affection on his mother’s new man…
His face darkened a shade as Wyatt blatantly ignored him, choosing to run a desultory ga
ze around the ballroom before saying, “I make a point of supporting the Cowboy Crisis Fund whenever possible.”
“And you just happened to have a tuxedo along.” Tori slathered on the Texas socialite drawl, insincerity dripping from every long, lazy vowel. “Aren’t we the lucky ones?”
His eyes narrowed and she felt herself measured, assessed, her usefulness calculated. Then he smiled and she was reminded of a shark, gliding graceful and silent beneath the surface of eyes the color of a Caribbean sea. Out on the floor, the band brought the obligatory rendition of “Cotton-Eyed Joe” to a thrumming crescendo, then launched into “Waltz Across Texas.”
Wyatt held out a hand. “Dance?”
“So sorry.” She stepped around him, looped her arm through Delon’s, and smiled a toothy smile of her own. “This one’s spoken for.”
She had to tug on Delon’s arm to uproot him. He took two steps and stopped. For an instant, Tori thought he was going to refuse to dance with her.
Then he waved the Goodacre sisters over. “I hate to run off and leave you lovely ladies. Have you met Wyatt Darrington? He was voted Bullfighter of the Year last season…”
Tori and Delon were both smirking when they reached the dance floor. And, Tori realized, still holding their beers. Lovely. But if it was good enough for John Travolta and Debra Winger…
Delon swung her into his arms. Despite his firm lead, she shuffled and nearly tripped. Her feet were still set to Willy’s boisterous rhythm, and she kept overstepping Delon’s more precise pace. They did a disjointed push-pull halfway around the floor before he paused by the head table to set down his beer, then take hers from her hand.
“Maybe that will help.”
As he gathered her close, his hand slipped beneath the loose drape of her shawl and found bare skin. His fingers were cold from the bottle, and she shivered. She rested her hand on his shoulder, felt the flex of muscle, and her mind obliged by providing detailed, graphic images of all the times she’d gripped those very excellent, very naked shoulders, his skin gleaming with a sweat she’d helped him work up.
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