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“So, how’s Luna?” she asked, feeling a pang of loss as she thought of the sweet dog.
“She misses you. Almost as much as I do.”
“Where is she now?” Iris asked, hoping to divert him.
“At home. She’s tired and a little grumpy. We did a lot of flying over the last thirty-six hours.”
A brief, uncomfortable silence settled between them.
“What did you mean when you said you have a disguise?” she asked, keen to keep things as impersonal as possible, even though she knew it couldn’t possibly stay that way. She lined the glasses up in neat little rows in front of her. Trystan followed her lead and did the same.
“Oh,” he said, his beautiful, big hands pausing in their movements while he reached into his chest pocket and produced—a pair of black-rimmed glasses. He propped them on his nose and gave her that famous, mischievous, heart-stopping grin of his.
“Clear glass, see? Et voila! Trystan Abbott is no more,” he said, lowering his hands with a flourish.
Iris choked back a chuckle and shook her head with a roll of her eyes.
“I’ve got news for you there, Clark Kent. That disguise is not as effective as you may believe.”
“You’d be surprised. Add a baseball cap to these and it’s like I disappear.”
“My father would kill you stone-dead if you wore a baseball cap at this event.”
He held up his index finger, and then smoothed his disheveled hair into the semblance of a conservative side-parted style.
“Luckily you won’t be interacting with the guests,” she said with another head shake.
“Pity, because you’d be amazed at how effective this can be.” Another devastating smile that quite literally stole Iris’s breath away. She didn’t know how the silly man could think he could ever simply disappear thanks to a pair of fake glasses.
“Anyway, the timing needs to be perfect for this,” she said, keen to change the subject. Her voice low, rushed, shaky and breathless. God, why’d she have to sound so damned breathless? “We need to have the champagne glasses filled, on trays and ready to be served in time for the toast.”
Trystan eyed the sea of gleaming glasses—two-hundred-and-fifty of them to be precise—skeptically and asked, “How long do we have?”
Iris glanced at the clock.
“Fifteen minutes, according to the wedding planner’s schedule, but these things rarely go according to plan. Still, we work according to the schedule. Everything else is out of our hands.”
“I reckon we’d better get to pouring then,” Trystan said, picking up a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and spinning it on his palm like a professional bartender.
“Don’t show off,” Iris warned. “My dad will lose his shit if you break a bottle. And he’s on the verge of a meltdown already.”
Trystan slanted a wary glance toward her father, who was reprimanding one of the younger waitstaff for not paying attention—Iris was very aware of the fact that many of the staff were still openly staring at her and Trystan—which was exactly the type of distraction she’d feared his presence here would create.
“He is a little terrifying,” Trystan admitted beneath his breath and Iris’s eyebrows rose to her hairline, shocked to hear him say that.
“My dad? The scrawny, balding guy over there?”
“He’s your father, Iris. I’m trying to make a good impression.”
Iris—who had been reaching for a bottle—froze at that admission and stared at him.
“Why are you here, Trystan? Aren’t you supposed to be heading to New York today?”
“I cut the tour short.” This bit of news stunned Iris and she wondered what Hunter Quinn’s reaction to that had been. “And I think I made the why of this more than clear during our last phone call.”
“But—”
“And on the Mike Holmes show.” He poured while he spoke, keeping his gaze on the flute instead of her. Iris watched him while he did that, and that grave, studied concentration somehow gave him a devastating, boyish appeal . He glanced up at her, a devastating stare through that fall of hair. “I want you back, Iris.”
