Distracting me from my sexual awareness of Mac, the familiar young woman sneered at me. “Excuse you.”
I raised an eyebrow at her churlishness. “I’m sorry. I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Mac’s date.”
“Uh, I don’t care who you are. We were talking, and you rudely interrupted. Do you not know who I am?”
I chuckled at the cliché arrogance. Sometimes it was hard to believe people like her existed, but I’d witnessed outrageous superiority complexes at university when I met a particularly entitled son of a British lord. While many of Lachlan’s club members seemed nice enough, there were the odd few who thought themselves God’s gift to mankind. “Sweetheart, I don’t care who you are.”
The girl dragged her gaze down my body and back up again. “Does Lachlan know someone let the riffraff in?”
Mac tensed against me. “Ms. Benning, your continued membership to this club is contingent upon your good manners. You do not insult Ms. Adair, period, never mind inside her ancestral home.”
Ms. Benning. Ah, now I recognized her. Iris Benning.
Och, damn it. I’d liked her in her last movie too. See, this was the problem with Lachlan running a club for Hollywood people. Sometimes it ruined the illusion. This was why the old saying “Never meet your hero” was often true.
Her chin snapped back, but that disdain never left her face. “Oh, right. Sorry. I didn’t know you were, like, Lachlan’s sister.”
It annoyed me she kept calling my brother by his first name. She hadn’t earned that intimacy as far as I was aware.
“Well, now you do. Enjoy your evening.” I offered a saccharine smile.
“Yeah, whatever. I’ll catch you later, Mac.” She winked before stalking off.
Fucking winked.
Like it was a code I couldn’t decipher!
Hearing his beleaguered sigh, I reluctantly released him. His fingers curled into my hip as if to stop me, but then he caught the gesture and let me go.
“What the hell?” I scowled up at him. “What is she? Twelve?”
Mac glowered. “Twenty. And a pain in the arse. I don’t see her lasting long. We’ve already had one staff complaint about her poor attitude.”
“Is she harassing you?”
He shook his head, staring down at me with such tenderness, such—
Want.
Mackennon Galbraith didn’t just love me … he wanted me.
Suddenly, it was difficult to draw in a full breath.
My dress, bra, even the straps of my sandals felt too tight.
“So … Grayson Evans?”
Thankfully, there was no judgment in his tone, or I might have killed him. But the twitch in his jaw told me he hated the idea of me and Grayson.
I could’ve been a right cow and gone down the revenge route by allowing him to think I’d had sex with the actor.
But I wasn’t the tormenting kind. “Nothing happened. In fact, that night I burst into tears in his room, and he held me until I fell asleep.”
Mac’s eyes filled with regret. “Darlin’, I’m so sorry.”
I knew that.
I believed it down to the depths of my soul, and while a lingering voice in my head warned me to be careful, a bigger part of me who had loved Mac for so long wanted to ease his pain and remorse.