Still, she didn’t slow down in her quest to get off the dance floor and around to the other side of an enormous pillar that would shield her from Kaspar’s view. No easy feat in the ridiculously high heels Katie had insisted on lending her to go with the seriously sexy metallic number her friend had also talked her into buying this afternoon.
It was years since she’d been out so called clubbing it—not that she’d ever had the time or inclination to go out all that often, neither was this charity wrap party exactly clubbing it—but, still, she hoped she hadn’t looked too awkward and robotic out there on the dance floor. She’d felt fine...right up until she’d seen him watching her.
The minute she’d spotted him, her body hadn’t quite felt her own. As though it wasn’t completely under her control. Even now the memory of his eyes scanning over her left her blood feeling as though it was effervescing through her veins, making her entire body hum.
It was an unfamiliar, but not altogether unpleasant sensation.
Ducking behind the pillar, Archie pressed her back against the cool, smooth concrete and rested her hand underneath her breastbone. She could feel the tattoo her heart was drumming out, leaving her unable to even catch her breath. And it had nothing to do with the dancing. Oh, she’d tried to ignore him, especially when his usual harem had draped themselves around him and he’d barely had the decency to offer any of them the time of day.
But who could ignore Kaspar Athari?
‘So, if you’re getting a drink why are we the other side of the room from the bar?’ Katie bobbed under her nose, her brow knitted.
‘Hmm? Oh. I just...needed to catch my breath.’
It wasn’t exactly a lie, but she might have known her old friend would see through it.
‘Archie, you’re about as jittery as a beachgoer trying to get across hot sand.’
‘No, I’m not.’
Katie’s eyes narrowed sharply.
‘Is this about “the Surgeon Prince of Persia”?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she managed loftily, only for Katie to snort in derision.
‘Yeah, sure you don’t. He’s been devouring you with his eyes all night and you’ve been lapping it up.’
‘I have not,’ Archie spluttered, her knotted stomach twisting and flipping. ‘And it hasn’t been all night. It has been half an hour at most.’
‘Aha!’ Katie declared triumphantly. ‘So it is about the perennially sexy Kaspar Athari.’
‘No...not at all...well, not really. That is... Why are you frowning? Aren’t you the one who said I needed to get back out there and have fun, like we used to in uni? Like I did before my dad...died? Before I married Joe?’
She tailed off awkwardly as Katie pulled a face.
‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I always hated the way you changed when you married Joe. You went right into yourself. Nothing like the fun, sassy Archie I’d come to know.’
‘It wasn’t Joe who did that.’ Archie wrinkled her nose. She’d tried a hundred times to explain it to Katie, but her friend had never quite understood. Still, she couldn’t help feeling she owed it to Joe to try again. ‘He was exactly what I needed at that time in my life.’
‘I disagree.’
‘I know you do. You remind me often enough.’
Still, there was no rancour in Archie’s tone. In many respects it was buoying that her friend cared enough to do so. And Katie’s wry smile of response revealed that she knew it, too.
‘I just feel that, while he may not have intended to, Joe took advantage of the fact that you were young and naïve. You were grieving for your dad, and your brother and his new wife were half a world away.’
They were falling into a conversation they’d had a hundred times before, but it was impossible to stop.
‘He didn’t take advantage. It was mutually beneficial.’
Katie’s eyebrows were practically lost in her hairline, but at least she had the tact not to bring up any painful reminders of more than three years of failed pregnancy attempts. The miscarriage at eighteen weeks.
Agony seared through her. Black, almost debilitating.