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flattered, easily wounded and easily cowed,” she
concluded.
    “You’re killing me.”
    Just then, the bride brushed past giving them an absent
smile, her train flowing over one arm, as she apparently tried to keep it off
the ground. “Brendan, can you do me a favor and find Allie? Send her up to my
room. I need some help with my dress.”
    When she was gone, Brendan said, “I guess I have my marching
orders. Stay right here until I get back?”
    “I don’t know. We’ll just have to see if I obey orders as
well as you seem to.”
     
    A passing waiter leaned in to offer Sophia a glass of
champagne from his tray. She took one as he softly said, monotone, “You’re
supposed to be flirting with him, not driving him away.”
    “He’ll be back,” she murmured and Arthur moved on.
    He was. Two minutes later.
    “Did you find your sister?”
    “What?”
    “Wasn’t that what you went off to do?”
    “Oh yeah. No, better than that, I found the groom. He
doesn’t like to let Virginia out of his sight for more than a minute, so he was
happy to go up to her. He’ll take care of whatever she needs.”
    “Some men are like that.” She sipped her champagne. “Others,
not so much.”
    “I could give you what you need.”
    Give her what she needed? Why didn’t he just whip out his
penis and get it over with?
    She stared at him without responding, deadpan. Not that she
was trying to play hard to get here. Or at least she wasn’t supposed to be.
It’s just that she had expected a little more from the man she’d met in the
hallway of that Four Seasons hotel. The one who had spoken in Spanish to a
nobody maid. The one who wrote the kind of thoughts—the kind of poetry,
really—she had read in his journal.
    “I’m sensing here that my charm isn’t winning you over,” he
said mildly, reading her accurately, which in itself was frightening. She
better put her game face on, and pretty soon too. “Okay, I’ll let up. How do
you know who I am, by the way?”
    “You were giving away the bride, remember? Not hard to
figure out you’re the only son of the illustrious Beckett family.”
    “Yep. That’s me all right. So are you here with someone?”
    “Why?”
    He laughed. “You’re not big on questions, are you? I was
just asking because I was hoping I might give you a call sometime and I was
wondering whose toes I might be stepping on if I did.”
    “Give me a call?”
    His sensual mouth tightened. “You know, for a date maybe.”
    A date. Such a convenient all-purpose euphemism. What a
surprise.
    She was suddenly feeling very testy indeed, but she had a
job to do. Fine, she’d do it. “Well, I always say there’s no time like the
present. We could have a date right now. Do you have a room here?”
    He eyed her. “Sure I have a room. This is my home.” She had
expected him to counter that he could take her to his apartment instead and
she’d have to pretend her urgency was such he should just take her upstairs.
She hadn’t expected him to call this estate home or, for that matter, to
hesitate the slightest bit in taking her up on her offer.
    “You grew up here?” she found herself asking, even though it
had nothing to do with anything except her own curiosity. That hadn’t been in
the file she and Arthur had compiled on him.
    “As much as anywhere, I guess. We had a family apartment in
Manhattan too, which Virginia lives in now. Or I guess she did, since she’ll be
moving in with Aaron now. Formally. His apartment’s in the same building as our
headquarters, which is perfect for a workaholic like her.”
    “Formally?”
    “Moving in with him formally. They’ve kind of been joined at
the hip for the last year.”
    “Oh. In love, I guess you mean.”
    “I guess.”
    She was getting off track. “So anyway, why don’t you take me
upstairs then?”
    There was that hesitation again.
    “Unless you don’t want to.”
    “What’s your name?” he asked.
    “Sophia.” No reason not to give him her