“Be right back. Stay here.” Her stranger vanished into the crowd.
Maybe she could quietly gather her things and check into Hotel Danieli, with no one the wiser.... She groaned. As if. She had a better chance of finding solid gold bars on the street than an empty hotel room in Venice during Carnevale.
The stranger returned quickly with two champagne flutes, and she smiled brightly, clinking her rim to his in a false show of bravado. Yes, he was gorgeous and intuitive, but she wasn’t going to be good company tonight. She nursed the drink and tried to think of an exit strategy when over his shoulder, she caught sight of her worst nightmare.
It was Rory. With Sara Lear.
Of course he was with Sara Lear. Sara’s debut album full of bubblegum pop and saccharine love songs had burned up the charts and was still solidly at number one. The little upstart hadn’t worn a mask, preferring to bask in the glow of stardom. Rory was also unmasked, no doubt to make doubly sure everyone knew who was with Sara. He was nothing if not savvy about his own career and his band Reaper made few bones about their desire to headline one of the major summer concert series. Hitching his wagon to a star was an old pattern.
Evangeline had flushed his engagement ring down the toilet after he dumped her and gladly told him to go to hell when he asked for it back.
Rory and Sara strolled through the main room as if they owned it, and why wouldn’t they? Both of them had functional vocal cords and long, vital careers ahead of them. Six months ago, Evangeline would have been on Rory Cartman’s arm, blissfully in love, blissfully at the top of her career and still blind to the cruelty of a world that loved a success but shunned a has-been.
The headache slammed her again.
She knocked back the champagne in one swallow and tried to figure out how to get past Rory and Sara without being recognized. Sara, she wasn’t so worried about; they’d never officially met. But her ex-fiancé would out her in a New York minute without a single qualm. A mask only went so far with someone who knew her intimately.
She couldn’t take the questions or the pitying looks or the eyes watching her navigate a very public meeting with the guy who’d shattered her heart and the woman who’d replaced her in his bed. And on the charts.
“More champagne?” her companion asked.
Rory and his new Pop Princess girlfriend stopped a few yards from the shadowy alcove where she stood with the masked stranger. She couldn’t step out into the light and couldn’t risk standing there with no shield.
Desperate times, desperate measures.
Praying she’d read him right, she plucked the half-empty flute from her savior’s hand, set both glasses on the ledge behind her and grasped the lapels of his tux. With a yank, she hauled him into a kiss.
The moment their lips connected, the name Rory Cartman ceased to have any meaning whatsoever.
Matthew had only a moment to register her intent. It wasn’t long enough. When the winged woman pressed her lips to his, his body lit up and flooded with heat. She was like a conduit to a nuclear reactor, and the shocking sensation of her warm mouth on his threatened to bring on full meltdown.
He knew precisely what Lucas would do in this situation.
Cupping her face with both palms, Matthew tilted her head to slant his mouth against hers at a deeper angle. Her lips parted on a sigh, and the hands holding his lapels tightened, drawing him closer.
Nearly groaning, he kissed this nameless butterfly until he couldn’t think, couldn’t stop, almost couldn’t stand. The shock of awareness and incendiary carnal lust picked up where his brain failed.
Shocking. And yet familiar. As if they’d done this before, exactly this way, pressed against each other in the shadows. Their lips fit, their bodies slid together with ease. He was kissing a stranger—a nameless stranger—and it should feel wrong, or at least odd.
It was so very right.
This woman was not at all his type—too glittery, too sensual, too beautiful. He couldn’t imagine introducing her to his mother or taking her to a museum opening where they’d rub shoulders with the elite of Dallas.
But he didn’t care.
For the first time since Amber died, he felt alive. His heart beat in his chest and blood flowed through his veins and a woman was kissing him. He reveled in these small clues that he hadn’t been buried alongside his wife.
After an eternity passed in a blink, she broke away and stared up at him, her breath coming in short gasps. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
He hadn’t kissed a woman other than Amber in five years and as a reintroduction to the art, it was off the map. Surely she’d felt some of the same heat.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” she said.
“Yes, you absolutely should have.”
He might be out of practice, but she was still firmly in his arms, and a woman who hadn’t just had her world shaken to the foundation would have stepped away by now.
She inhaled sharply, her chest pushing against his and stroking the flame higher. “Not under false pretenses. I have to come clean. My ex is here, and that was a poor attempt to hide from him.”
“I beg to differ. As attempts go, I thought it was pretty good.”
A quavery laugh slipped out from her kiss-reddened lips and then she did step away, out of his embrace. But not too far.
“Just so you know, I don’t go around kissing random men.”
“There’s an easy way to fix that. I’d be happy to introduce myself and thus eliminate the randomness.”
“That would be awesome because I’m pretty sure I’m going to kiss you again.”
She had felt it.
The thrill swept all the way to the soles of his feet. Tonight, he was someone else, and as it seemed to be working out well so far, why screw around with it?
“Matt. My name is Matt.”
It flowed from his mouth effortlessly, though he’d never been Matt in his life. But right here, right now, he liked Matt a hell of lot. Matt wasn’t bogged down in inertia and terrified he’d never find his way out. Matt hadn’t walked away from all his responsibilities at home or lain awake at night, eaten with guilt over it. Matt hadn’t drifted around the world in search of something he suspected didn’t exist, only to land in Venice holed up in a cold, lonely palazzo.
Matt had fun and kissed costumed women at parties and maybe got to second base before the end of the night.
She smiled. “Nice to meet you, Matt. You can call me Angie.”
Angie. It was too harsh, too common for such a delicate and ethereal woman. The careful phrasing tipped him off that it wasn’t her real name, but since he’d similarly hedged, he couldn’t exactly complain.
“Which one is your ex? So we can steer clear.”
Since she’d been trying to hide, he assumed the breakup had been nasty and not Angie’s choice.
Surreptitiously, she glanced behind her, then faced him again. Her soft brown eyes bored into his, luminous with appreciation. “He’s over there, on the couch with the little blonde.”
Matthew located what had to be the couple she meant. They were locked in a torrid embrace, and the guy’s hands were down the blonde’s dress. Ouch. Not only was her ex at the same party but also not much for public decency.
“They didn’t get the memo? This is a masked ball.”
“I