LITMIR.BIZ

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if an aneurism hadn’t killed her. Commitment made him tick.

      Angie might discount the idea of signs, but he couldn’t. This wasn’t meant to happen and probably for a very good reason. Did he really want a one-night stand with some woman he’d met at a party? It just wasn’t his style.

      The empty palazzo next door called his name, offering a place to retreat and lick his wounds. Where he would go to bed alone, dream about Amber and wake in a cold sweat. If he slept. Sometimes he lay awake, racked with remorse over leaving his family in the lurch.

      That was his real life. This interlude with a winged woman at a masked ball was nothing but a fantasy born of desperation and loneliness. It wasn’t fair to use Angie to appease either.

      But God Almighty, it was difficult to walk away from her. When she’d been in his arms, pliant and sizzling, he heard the distinct sound of his soul waking up.

      Angie’s kiss-stung lips and luminous brown eyes nearly did him in. She’d asked him to be her fake boyfriend at this party, a role he’d stepped into with ease and enthusiasm, but without really considering what enormous pain must have driven her to ask.

      He couldn’t abandon her.

      Matthew might not hook up, but neither did he have to listen to Matt, who despite Angie’s belief, was very much thinking with the bulge in his pants. He needed to cool down and evaluate his goal here before he got carried away by the fantasy.

      So he’d split the difference.

      “Let’s dance.”

      Wary surprise wrinkled her mouth. “At the party?”

      “Sure. Why not? You haven’t had a chance to throw your new boyfriend in lover boy’s face yet.” Neither of them had done much spelling-it-out and some clarity might be in order. “And I’d like to take a step back. Make sure we’re both headed in the same direction.”

      “I hear you. The balcony is cold and I do like to dance,” she mused. “How about this? I’ll dart into Vincenzo’s room and stuff my clutch with as many condoms as it’ll hold. We’ll dance. If you move to music like you do on a speed date, we’ll be headed in the same direction all right—back upstairs and into my bed.”

      His pants grew tighter. Exactly how many times did she envision having sex? He shook his head to clear the erotic images she’d sprung loose in his brain. It didn’t work.

      “I’ll consider myself warned.”

      She smiled and it was a whole lot wicked.

      Matthew took her hand and led her toward what promised to be a provocative round of dancing. At least in a room full of people, the temptation to dive under Angie’s skirt would be lessened.

      If he did that again, he’d like to be much more clearheaded about it.

      Unbelievably, more people had gathered in the rooms downstairs, filling the dance floor to overflowing. Couples swayed and dipped to the slow song. Matthew drew Angie into the sea of dancers, carefully navigating to protect her wings. He hadn’t danced in a long time but the ballroom classes he’d let Amber drag him to came back in a rush.

      He positioned his arms and prepared to try some semblance of a modified waltz, or at least do the best he could in such a crowd. Angie melted against him, undulating her hips against his in a hypnotic, sensual rhythm. A hot lick of need coursed through his gut. She hadn’t attended the same classes. Obviously.

      He held her close, mimicking her moves. All he could think about was the scrap of silk underneath her skirt. And the foil packets rounding the sides of her clutch. He wasn’t doing a very good job of splitting the difference.

      Angie’s ear was right by his mouth, and he had the most insane urge to nibble on it. Instead, he cleared his throat to ease the knot of sexual tension that had stiffened everything in his body.

      “What if we continue our speed date but take it down a notch?”

      She repositioned her head so it was lying in the hollow of his shoulder. The feathers anchored in her hair brushed across his neck. “I’m listening.”

      “What’s your favorite color?”

      “That’s more like forty-seven notches. I don’t have a favorite color. I like the rainbow.” Someone bumped into her, shoving them closer together, not that he minded. “What’s yours?”

      The smell of her hair weakened his knees. Outside, it hadn’t been so noticeable, but in the close, heated confines of the room, the exotic scent curled through his nose. Even her shampoo was unearthly, as if he needed another reminder they came from different worlds.

      “Black. It goes with everything.”

      “How practical. I like that in a man. Where were you born?”

      “Dallas. And please don’t ask me if I’ve met J. R. Ewing. I’ve never been to Southfork, and I don’t watch the TV show.” That was one constant about Europe. Everyone knew Dallas from either reruns of the old drama or the reboot version on cable. “What about you?”

      “Toronto. My mom moved to Detroit when I was a baby and became a U.S. citizen. That’s where I grew up.”

      So maybe their worlds weren’t as far apart as he’d assumed. “You’re American?”

      The silence stretched long enough for Matthew to wonder if he’d said something to offend her. But she had to know her ragged voice didn’t carry a discernible accent and was unusual enough to warrant such a question.

      “I’m nothing and everything,” she said with a laugh that wasn’t a laugh. “Usually I tell people I’m French Canadian. But I haven’t been to Toronto in years. Or Detroit for that matter.”

      “Is your mom still in Detroit?”

      “She lives in Minneapolis, for now, working on her fourth marriage. I have fam—other people in Detroit.”

      Other people? He didn’t ask. The undercurrent of pain in her voice had been strong, and if she’d wanted him to know, she’d have said.

      “Your home is in Europe then?”

      “Or wherever the wind takes me.” She injected a note of levity, but he wasn’t fooled. Nowhere felt like home and it bothered her. “Do you still live in Dallas?”

      “No.” Lack of a home was something they shared. He’d sold his house, his car, everything. The only possessions he had to his name were the clothes in the closet at the palazzo and a few childhood mementos stored in his parents’ extra bedroom. “I’m going where the wind takes me, too.”

      At least until he found the way home.

      She stopped dancing and collided with the next couple, earning a dirty look from them. Impatiently, she pushed Matthew off the dance floor toward the side wall and peered up through her mask, eyes liquid with sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

      “For?”

      “For whatever happened.”

      She didn’t question him,, though she could obviously read between the lines as well as he could.

      A wave of understanding rippled between them. Both of them were searching. Both of them carried secrets full of pain and misery and loneliness.

      They weren’t different at all.

      She whispered, “I’m glad the wind blew us to the same place.”

      All pretense of speed dating evaporated. Something much more significant was happening.

      “Me, too.”

      Amber’s death had broken his heart, nearly broken him entirely, and he couldn’t fathom feeling that strongly about anyone else. For months and months, he’d despaired of ever feeling anything again, and like a foghorn echoing through the mist of his grief, this gravelly-voiced fantasy had appeared.

      She

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