“If you do well,” Mark adds. “I’m not convinced anyone can step into Crystal’s shoes. Crystal seems to believe you can.”
“Perhaps,” Kace says, “because she saved your ass with that violin.”
“She did,” Mark replies, looking at me. “A feat that should have required years of training, not a crash course with a client.”
“You know what I love about you, husband?” Crystal asks, glancing up at Mark. “Your extreme arrogance. It’s so powerful. It really turns me on.”
His lips quirk ever so slightly. “I don’t believe that’s an appropriate topic for the table, but if we must go there.”
She smirks and looks at me. “What do you say? I could send you a list of items to give this a try.”
Mark is a jerk. Crystal’s wonderful. Gio’s gone. I have to pay the bills. Opportunity is a blessing. And so I say, “Yes, please. I’ll get started right away.”
“Speaking of the violin,” Mark comments. “Why did it have your brother’s attention?”
“It had Sofia’s attention,” I say. “She had my brother’s attention.”
“That seems too simple,” Mark comments.
But it’s not simple, I think. Sex and women were always Gio’s weaknesses. I’m about to reply when the waiter offers us dessert and we all decline. Mark reaches for the check and Kace doesn’t fight him. Crystal’s phone buzzes with a text and she gives it a glance and me a grim nod. “Our doorman, Harold, doesn’t remember Gio or anyone named Sofia.”
Unbidden, another dead-end stabs me with disappointment, but I manage a tight, heartfelt, “Thank you for trying.” I set my napkin on the table. “I’m going to run to the ladies’ room before we leave. I’ll just be a moment.” I don’t look at Kace. If I do, I might get outwardly emotional when a quick freshening up will pull me back into check. I stand and catch a waiter. “Bathroom?”
He points to the back end of the bar, which requires me to walk past Savage. He rotates his stool around in my direction as I approach. “Bathroom,” I tell him but I don’t stop walking, half expecting him to follow. I hurry on my way, cutting past the bar, down the hallway, when Kace is suddenly there.
He catches my arm and turns me to him, pressing me against the wall, his fingers tangling into my hair. His masculine scent teases my nostrils and his mouth crashes over mine, his tongue doing this deep, seductive lick against mine that melts me in my shoes. The taste of him is passionate, hungry, possessive. I moan with the delicious assault, and when his lips lift from mine, he says, “You okay?”
“Yes,” I say, and I mean it. I am okay. The danger was always present, but owning it and who I am feels good. He feels good, too. “I just need a minute to freshen up.”
He studies me a moment and seems to read that need as real. “Then I’ll see you back at the table.”
He releases me and then he’s gone, and like his music, he’s left me with the simplistic beauty that is Kace August. He hasn’t told me what to feel, but he made darn sure I felt his presence.
I head into the bathroom, lock the single-stall room, and stare at myself, guilt stabbing at me. I’m living my life, expanding my horizons, being kissed by a rock star in a hallway, and opening business doors while my brother is missing. Maybe he’s even dead. My phone buzzes with a text message. I pull it from my purse and find a strange number with too many digits. It looks like spam, but I click on it anyway. It reads: Look for the daisy in the wind. Be careful or you’ll end up dead.
My heart starts to race and my gaze jerks to my daisy ring, a memory piercing my mind. I click on the number, but it’s not a real number at all. I rush to the bathroom door, jerk it open and hurry into the restaurant. Kace and Savage are standing at the bar, and Mark and Crystal appear to have left.
One look at me and Kace heads in my direction and in a matter of seconds his hands are on my arms. “What is it?”
“This. Read this.” I shove my phone at him.
He reads the message and I say, “It’s not a real phone number. And the words, a daisy in the wind, that is something my father—”
“—used to say,” he supplies, looking up at me, his eyes shadowed. “I know.”
There is something in his voice, and beneath the shadows of his eyes. Something that radiates and overflows into me, and that I can only describe as tormented.
“What is it?”
“I’m the daisy in the wind.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
He’s the daisy in the wind? I blink, confused. “Kace, I don’t understand. You’re the daisy in the wind?”