Page 62 of Our Chaotic Love Affair

She reached up and wiped the corner of my mouth with her thumb. The casual intimacy of the gesture had me wanting to tell Rossi to fuck all the way off. That plans had changed.

She disappeared inside. I stood on the balcony alone for a moment and let my pulse settle back toward something normal. I adjusted myself, silently apologizing to my dick for the false start.

Five minutes later, we were put back together and making our way out of the suite. The car was waiting in the courtyard. The driver held the door while Cleo and I slid in. She was very graceful when she wasn’t in tornado mode.

The gala was at a hotel twenty minutes across the city. It was the epitome of old wealth. Grand facade. Stone steps. Uniformed staff at every door. We pulled up and I came around to her side to help her out of the car.

She took my arm like we had done this very thing a hundred times before. Again, I was surprised by how easily she slid into the role of a regal queen. Shoulders back. Chin up. A woman who owned her space. She knew she looked beautiful. I didn’t have to tell her.

Should I tell her? Shit. I had been so caught up I’d never actually said the words. I would remedy that soon.

We walked in like we owned the place. I was used to moving through rooms with the confidence of the Bancroft name. Cleo matched my energy flawlessly.

The ballroom was exactly what I expected for such a massive event. High ceilings and massive chandeliers. Significant flower arrangements. A string quartet making itself unobtrusive in the corner. Two hundred people dressed in their finest with enough diamonds and gold to buy a small country.

Every head turned when we walked in. Not quickly. It wasn’t that kind of crowd. But I felt it. We dominated the room. Conversations paused. Eyes tracked our movement.

Cleo moved closer to me. Her hand tightened fractionally on my arm.

“Is it always like this? Do people always look at you like this?”

I looked down at her. At the huge earrings dangling and catching the soft overhead lighting. The black silk draping her body.

I chuckled softly and settled my arm around her waist, drawing her closer.

“Cleo,” I said, my mouth near her ear, “they’re not looking at me.”

CHAPTER 22

CLEO

The moment we walked into that ballroom, something happened to my nervous system that I’d prefer not to admit. It wasn’t the room itself, though the room was extraordinary. It wasn’t even the people, exactly.

It was the other women. They were immaculate. Aristocratic.

I walked into the gala with the confidence of twenty supermodels. It only took a few whispers to pop the little bubble I had apparently been living in.

They looked at me the way I’d been looked at before. In high school. In every room I’d ever walked into with beautiful people. Society’s version of beautiful. To me, that version was fake. But fake was the standard.

I was too much. Too loud in my choices. The earrings, the rings, the dress that had seemed exactly right now felt like a declaration I hadn’t intended to make. I was Cleo Quinn from Queens who’d worked for everything she had and carried most of it visibly. I was standing in a Roman ballroom full of women who’d inherited their elegance and were not especially interested in my version of it.

These women had been doing spa days their whole lives. They probably had plastic surgeons and estheticians on speed dial. They never had to dye their own hair, and yeah, there was a lot of coloring happening in the room. I knew a bottle job when I saw one. I didn’t care if it cost thousands of dollars and was done by some guy named Jean Luc.

I could see right through them, but in their world, they were the beauty standard. It didn’t matter that every inch of their beauty was bought and paid for.

Something in me went very quiet. My confidence failed me. I was sixteen years old again.

The ugly duckling, said a voice I’d spent years trying to talk over. The one who was never chosen.

I kept my smile in place. I might have been dying on the inside, but I wasn’t about to let it show. Cash was there. His hold on me changed, like he was picking up on the negative energy swirling around me.

His hand moved to the small of my back. He was guiding me through the room and then there was a glass appearing in my hand before I realized I wanted a drink.

“I think I forgot to mention how beautiful you look tonight,” he whispered close to my ear. “Sadly, I don’t think beautiful is the right word. Think about the way I kissed you. Think about how hard you made me in under a minute. Use that, Cleo. That’s yours. Don’t retreat.”

My sixteen-year-old self morphed into the needy, wanton woman that had practically mounted him in the hotel room. That woman was all fire and passion. She felt good.

“Thank you,” I said.