“Except you aren’t hideously scarred.”
“My scars are metaphorical in nature.”
“The same can be said for most of us, I suppose. Though scarring is kept to a minimum when you spend most of your time in the library.”
“I knew my lack of a library would become problematic one day.”
“Right now, the only problem we have is a lack of a painting,” she said, gently steering the conversation back to the reason for all of this.
She was good at that. He was losing the plot. Completely. For a moment he had forgotten that he had a goal that extended beyond dancing with her tonight. A goal that went past seeing her in this gown and that mask.
Time moved a strange pace here. It was slower. Being away from his phone, his desk, being outside of his world, was doing strange things to him. He wasn’t entirely certain he disliked it.
“Then I suggest we get a move on. The painting will wait for no man. Except it has done exactly that for the past fifty-plus years.”
This time, she did take his hand. And he was the one tempted to pull away. From the heat. From the silken quality of her touch. He didn’t. He was the experienced party. The touch of a woman’s hand against his should not be cause for any reaction whatsoever.
He knew that. Repeated it over and over as he led her from their quarters down the long hall and toward the ballroom.
No matter how committed he was to understanding it on an intellectual level, he could not convince his body to agree.
So he did his best to concentrate on the feeling of his feet making contact with the marble floor. One step, then another. When he focused on that, the burn, where her skin made contact with his, lessened.
A bit.
They approached the doors to the ballroom and two elegantly appointed staff, not wearing masks, opened the double doors for both of them. “I feel like I should bow,” he said, leaning in to whisper the words in her ear. “But at my age it might be bad for my back.”
She looked up at him, dark eyes glinting from behind the mask. “Stop that.”
“But it’s so much fun.”
She rolled her eyes and he led her into the ballroom where couples were already dancing. “This room… It’s amazing,” she said, looking about them at the high, painted ceiling before her eyes fell to the pale walls, made ornate by sconces and crisp white molding.
Nothing about the designer dresses the other women were wearing. Of course not. Gabriella preferred art and architecture. Always.
“Gabby,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. She didn’t look nearly as annoyed as she typically did when he used the nickname. She looked… There was something strange in her expression. Something he feared he understood. Something he wished he hadn’t seen. “If you keep staring at the walls with more admiration than you afford me no one will believe it when we slip away.”
He led her deeper into the ballroom, toward the dance floor, and her attention drifted from him as she continued to stare at the walls, at the art, probably at particularly historically significant dust motes, knowing her.
“That could be a problem,” she said, distracted.
“Yes. One I will correct.”
He chose that moment to pull her into his arms, into a closed hold. Her attention snapped back to him. “What are we doing?”
“Dancing,” he said as he led her into the first step.
“So we are,” she said, one hand caught up in his, the other resting on his shoulder.
She curled her fingers in a fist, as though she were afraid to touch him too much so she needed to minimize the amount of skin making contact with his jacket.
“I feel tonight we might be very rude.”
“Will we?”
“Yes. We should socialize with everyone. You should approach the women and ask them who they are wearing and I should try and forge as many business connections as I possibly can with everyone in attendance. But I’m not going to. And neither are you. Because tonight we are only going to look at each other. We are only going to stay for the minimum amount of time and we’re going to make the world believe that I could not wait one more moment to have you in my arms.”
He could feel the breath leave her entire body, could feel her limbs go stiff. “I’m in your arms right now.”