Getting Even

He looked around as though Felicity had just materialized. Bad sign. “How do you know that?”

“I had a quick look around all the tables and found her on Table Two.”

“Ah! Maybe we need to do a few more place card swaps in that case—trade Sally and Lloyd for her and Rafael Velez.”

“A fan, are you?” Veronica said, abandoning hope of using him as her Husband No. 3 masquerader.

“Of hers? No. Of his? Most definitely.”

Damn, definitely no use to me, she thought, then wondered if she’d said those words out loud because Phillip laughed. “No, I’m not gay,” he said. “I just want his next book, Stomp.”

“His next...? Ah! You’re in publishing!”

“I am! Smythe & Lowe.”

“Me, too—Johnson/Charles. That explains why Romy has us on the same table.”

He looked her up and down, plucked her card back up off the table and read the name. “You’re that Veronica Johnson?”

“If you mean Veronica Johnson, editor, then yes.”

“More than an editor with that surname.”

“The name doesn’t carry as much weight as you’d think—and definitely not since the merger.”

“Do I scent dissatisfaction? If you’re contemplating a move, we’re looking for a Publishing Director for our new romance imprint.”

“That’s two moves—presuming it’s in London?”

“You’d love London.”

“I do love London.” Veronica laughed. “So thank you—I’ll take that under advisement.”

“I mean it!”

“So do I.”

“No you don’t—you New Yorkers are bloody hard to extract—but I’m a firm believer in the old adage ‘there’s many a slip twixt cup and lip,’ so I’m not giving up.” He put her card back on the table. “So—shall we do the card swap?”

“Hmm...” she said, pretending to think about it. “It would mean crossing out and rewriting names on Romy’s seating plan or there’d be pandemonium in here. If you’re willing to do that when Romy’s had the thing done by a calligrapher in gold ink, you’re much braver than I am!”

“Gah! Okay, stand down. Romy’s such a stickler for...”

But Veronica knew all Romy’s stickler-isms and tuned out to estimate how long it had been since she’d left Rafael at the mausoleum. Surely he and Felicity had to have made it to the marquee by now.

She tuned back into Philip to catch “...and that way we can leave the seating plan as is—so what do you say, shall we risk it?”

“No, I think it’s a recipe for disaster,” she said, assuming he’d come back to the subject of place card tampering. And then she smiled sweetly at him. At least, was it sweet? Her smile? She hoped it wasn’t as Sharknado-ish as she felt. “But if you escort me to the marquee for a glass of champagne, I’ll introduce you to Rafael.”

Phillip blinked at her. “You know him?”

“I do.”

“But he’s published with—”

“I know him personally not professionally. Johnson/Charles isn’t interested in publishing him.”

Phillip was looking at her curiously now. “So you’re not interested in acquiring his next book? It’s going to go to number one on the New York Times bestseller list without even trying, you know.”

“You mean Stomp? But I thought that was already—”

“Nope. I hear his deal has just fallen through.”

“Oh. Well. I see. But still...no,” she said. When Phillip blinked at her in disbelief, she added, “We’re over-inventoried. In that...er...area.”

“In the unbelievably fantastic, must-read, going-to-make-a-fortune area?”

She had no answer to that. Her boss, Melissa Charles—nickname “the Attack Dog”—would never understand a withered romance getting in the way of business. Veronica had had to lie when Melissa had asked her if she’d known Rafael at Capitol U. Melissa had been desperate to land Liar, Liar for Johnson/Charles and Veronica had known that any hint of familiarity let alone a full-blown, live-in love affair would have seen her pimped out to get it PDQ.

She hated to think what her reception would have been. She had, after all, refused to take his calls then blocked him, burned the letter he’d sent her via Matt and banned their mutual friends from telling him anything about her (and she knew he knew about that ban because she’d dispatched Teague to tell him so). So for her to come sniffing around begging for his book...?

No.

No, no, no.

She tried another smile—knew this one was definitely struggling to get anywhere near sweet. “If you’d rather I don’t introduce you, that’s fine by me. You can ask Romy to get you two together.”

“Romy knows him, too?”

“Romy, Matt, Rafael and I went to Capitol University together. We shared a house.”

“Good God! Why hasn’t she ever introduced me?”

“Maybe because he lives in LA,” she said through slightly gritted teeth. Did he want to meet Rafael or stand around talking about him? “But he’s here, and we’re here, so the offer’s...there...?”

He held out his arm. “An offer I can’t refuse.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“WELL, FUCK,” RAFAEL SAID under his breath as a triumphant-looking Veronica headed for him, accompanied by a guy who was a carbon copy of both her trust-fund-lugging husbands.

She stopped to take a glass from a passing waiter, then laughed at something Preppy Boy said as he grabbed his own glass. And in that instant Rafael may as well have been nineteen again, in that first year at college, about to go feral because some random dick of a guy had hit on her.

His hand jerked, champagne sloshing out of the glass and onto his shoe. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from cleaning that off, but the thought that Veronica would spot it, and in the process see that his shoes were handmade, stopped him. Not that he wanted to show off—she had a whole closet full of designer shoes—he just wanted to show her that he’d come a long, proud way, and the shoes were a symbol she’d understand.

Felicity gave his arm a warning squeeze. “You’re not going to strangle the poor man, are you?”

His lips twisted—half smile, half grimace. “I’m more likely to wring her neck.”

“You guys must have had fun at college if she can’t even walk beside another man without winding you up! Get it together, will you?”

And then Veronica was there, flashing a smile—what she called her finishing school smile—and he wanted to grab her by the arms and shake her and tell her not to use that smile on him. He wanted to kiss her, rip those uptight pins from her perfectly coiffed silver-blond hair and tear off her perfect dress and rattle her easy grace. He used to be able to do it. Make her as desperate and deranged as he was. Strip the cool off her just by touching her, so that she was hot and disheveled and gasping and throbbing.

And by God, he was going to do it again.

But to get her to lose her cool meant keeping his. So he quirked up an amused eyebrow, inclined his head toward the guy she thought she was waving in his face like a victory flag, and said, “Number three?”

“How’s the hip?” she quipped back, inclining her head toward Felicity.

“Unattached,” he said. “Needing a replacement. Interested?”

“Is it the balls giving you trouble?”

“It’s the socket. I need a new one, but I can use an old one in the meantime.”

At which point Felicity cleared her throat and he became conscious that he and Veronica were exuding enough heat to light a furnace.

Veronica stepped forward, that smile replastered to her face as she held out her hand to Felicity. “I’m Veronica Johnson, an old college friend of Rafael’s.”

Felicity gave her fake smile for fake smile as she took that hand, shook it. “Felicity.”

“Oh, I know who you are—my sister, Scarlett, is your biggest fan!” Veronica laughed—like sweet bells on a clear night—but it was as fake as her smile; he knew because there was no snort to it. “Not, I promise you, in a Stephen King Misery kind of way.” She pulled Preppy Boy fully into the circle. “And this is Phillip Castle.” Back to Rafael, with her eyebrows set to go-fuck-yourself. “You know how we were talking about your next book? Stamp, is it?”

“Close enough,” Rafael said as Phillip choked on his champagne.

“Well, Phillip’s with Smythe & Lowe, and he’s very interested.”

“Oh, he is, is he?”

“Yes—go figure. And since you seemed so keen to tell me about your books when we had that delightful chat earlier, I knew you’d jump at the chance to speak to someone...impartial? Meanwhile, if you can spare Felicity—” turning to Felicity “—I hope she’ll regale me with all the salacious details about what happens next with Beth and Braxton in This Time Forever so I can fill Scarlett in once I’m back home in New York.”

Felicity waved an airy hand. “Oh, Beth’s going to have a wonderfully tragic soapy end I’m afraid,” she said, and narrowed her eyes ever so slightly. “I’m leaving the show to play Julie in Catch, Tag, Release—didn’t Rafa tell you?”

Veronica’s smile slipped, which told Rafael she didn’t like what she’d just heard. The news, or the name, or both? No time to work it out, because the slip was microscopic and transient and Veronica was bouncing right back hard.

“Oh well, I’m dying to hear all about that,” she said and, before he knew it, the women were separated from the men. She’d done it, of course. A society-girl skill of hers he’d never been able to demystify. Correction—he’d never had to demystify, because she’d never used it against him before.

Well, whatever she’d done, it had worked: he was out of earshot.

Phillip—poor, clueless bastard—was paying the price for that, because valiantly though he tried to engage Rafael in conversation, Rafael simply didn’t give enough of a fuck to listen. The guy deserved better than monosyllabic nonresponses but that’s what he got. He had to know something was seriously awry by this point, but Rafael was too busy straining his ears toward Veronica to care.

Rafael finally shot Felicity a look he hoped she’d interpret correctly as Get Veronica back here now.

Felicity double-blinked at him—her way of saying she understood—and not only steered Veronica back into the circle but, like the trouper she was, engaged Phillip in a conversation about Liar, Liar.

He saw that Veronica’s champagne flute was empty and reached out to take it—just one second too late to stop a passing waiter from stopping beside her and proffering his tray. She smiled at the waiter, swapped her empty glass for a full one, then angled her body away to say something to a nearby guest.

Shit!

He kept his lips curved in a slight smile, pretending to listen to Felicity and Phillip while his nerve endings zapped, his blood simmered and his scalp twitched at the proximity of Veronica’s small, slender fingers, which used to twine tightly in his hair when she came. Unbearable to have her so close after all this time and not be able to touch her.

She timed, perfectly, the return of her attention to when there was a lull in the conversation between Felicity and Phillip, casting a sweeping glance around the marquee and saying, “Everyone’s moving in.” She made a graceful hand gesture. “See? The doors are open.” She turned to Phillip. “Shall we, Sir Galahad?”

“We shall indeed, milady,” Phillip responded promptly, and gallantly held out his arm for her to take.

She flashed her Stepford Wives smile somewhere between Rafael and Felicity. “Maybe we’ll run into each other on the dance floor later.”

And that was it. She was gone.

“Run into each other on the dance floor?” Felicity said. “That’ll be interesting!”

“Don’t worry, it won’t happen. She’s already made her point.”

“Which was?”

“That she’s over me.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Prove that she’s not.”

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