“To Louie and Lisa,” Delaney toasted with the other guests. She cast a glance upward and watched Nick tip back his head and drain his wine. Then he sat once again, relaxed and easy with his hands in the pockets of his wool pants. He pressed his leg against the length of hers, as if it were as unintentional as breathing. She knew better.
“Ongi-etorri,” Josu echoed, then unleashed a Basque yell that started out like mocking laughter but quickly changed into a cross between the ooh of a wolf’s howl and the expiring ahh of a braying donkey. Other male relatives joined Josu and the dining room reverberated with the sounds. While each family member tried to outdo the other, Nick leaned in front of Delaney and grabbed her glass. He filled it and then his own, in typical Nick style: he didn’t ask first. For one brief moment, he enveloped her in the smell of his skin and cologne. Her heart beat a little faster and her head got a little lighter as she breathed him in. Then he was gone and she could almost relax again.
Lisa’s father hit his spoon against his glass and the room fell silent. “Today my little girl…” he began, and Delaney shoved her plate away and folded her arms on the table. If she concentrated on Mr. Collins, she could almost ignore Nick. If she concentrated on Mr. Collins’s hair, which was a lot whiter than she remembered, and his-
Nick lightly brushed his fingers over the top of her thigh, and she froze. Through the sheer barrier of nylon, his fingertips swept her from knee to the hem of her dress. Unfortunately, it was a short dress.
Delaney grabbed his wrist beneath the table and stopped his hand from sliding up the inside of her thigh. She looked into his face, but he wasn’t looking back at her. His attention was focused on Lisa’s father.
“… to my daughter and my new son, Louie,” Mr. Collins finished.
With his free hand, Nick raised his wine glass and toasted the couple. As he took two big swallows, his thumb stroked the top of Delaney’s leg. Back and forth his fingers caressed over the smooth nylon. Sensation she couldn’t ignore settled low in her abdomen and she squeezed her legs together. “Aren’t you going to toast the happy couple?” he asked.
As carefully as possible, she shoved his hand, but his grasp tightened. She pushed a little harder and accidentally bumped Nick’s aunt.
“What’s that matter?” Narcisa asked. “Why are you wiggling around?”
Because your libertine nephew is inching his hand up my thigh. “No reason.”
Nick leaned toward her and whispered, “Be still or people will think I’m copping a feel under the table.”
“You are!”
“I know.” He smiled and turned his attention to his uncle. “Josu, how many sheep are you running this year?”
“Twenty thousand. Are you interested in working for me like when you were a boy?”
“Hell no.” He slanted her a look from the corner of his eye and chuckled deep in his chest. “I have my hands full right here.” His hot palm warmed her flesh through her pantyhose, and Delaney sat perfectly still, trying to appear as if the heat from Nick’s hand wasn’t pouring through her body like a warm flood. It swept up her chest and down her thighs, tingling her breasts and pooling desire between her legs. Her grasp on his wrist tightened, but she was no longer sure if she was holding his hand to keep it from moving further up her leg, or to keep it from moving away.
“Nick.”
He tilted his head toward hers. “Yes?”
“Let go.” She pasted a smile on her face like she and Nick were chatting up a good time, and let her gaze skim the crowd. “Someone could see you.”
“Tablecloth is too long. I checked.”
“How did I end up sitting next to you anyway?”
He reached for his wine and said behind the glass, “I switched your little name card with my Aunt Angeles’s. She’s the mean looking lady sitting over there clutching her purse like someone’s going to mug her. She’s a Rottweiler.” He took a drink. “You’re more fun.”
Angeles stuck out like a storm cloud on an otherwise sunny day. Her hair was scraped up into a black bun, and her scowl lowered her dark brows. She obviously didn’t like being stuck among Lisa’s family. Delaney moved her gaze down the table, past the bride and groom to Nick’s mother. Benita’s dark eyes stared back at her, and Delaney recognized the look that used to unnerve her as a child. “I know you’re up to no good,” it said.
Delaney turned to Nick and whispered, “You have to stop. Your mother is watching us. I think she knows.”
He looked into her face, then gazed past her to his mother. “What does she know?”
“She’s giving me the evil eye. She knows where you’ve got your hand.” Delaney glanced over her shoulder at Narcisa, but the older woman had turned and was talking to someone else. No one but Benita seemed to be paying any attention to them.
“Relax.” His palm slid up another half an inch, and the tips of his fingers drifted along the elastic leg of her underwear.
Relax. Delaney wanted to shut her eyes and moan.
“She doesn’t know anything.” He paused a moment, then said, “Except maybe that your nipples are hard and it isn’t cold in here.”
Delaney looked down at her breasts and the two very distinct points in the red velvet. “Jerk.” She shoved his hand at the same time she shoved her chair backward. Grabbing her velvet handbag, she walked from the dining room and hurried down two different narrow hallways before she found the women’s restroom. Once inside, she took a deep breath and looked at herself in the mirror. Beneath the fluorescent lighting, her cheeks looked flushed, her eyes overly bright.
There was definitely something wrong with her. Something that made her brain-dead where Nick was concerned. Something that allowed him to caress her in a room filled with people.
She tossed her red velvet handbag on the counter and ran a paper towel under cold water. She pressed it against her warm face and sucked in a breath. Maybe she’d been on the wagon so long, she was suffering from sexual deprivation. Starving for attention and affection like an abandoned cat.
A toilet flushed behind her and a hotel employee appeared from a stall. As the woman washed her hands, Delaney opened her bag and pulled out a tube of Rebel Red lipstick.
“If you’re with the wedding party, they’re cutting the cake now.”
Delaney looked at the woman through the mirror and smeared red across her bottom lip. “Thanks. I guess I better get back then.” She watched the hotel employee leave and dropped her lipstick back into her little purse. Using her wet fingers, she smoothed the front of her hair and fluffed the back.
If Lisa and Louie were cutting their wedding cake, then dinner was officially over and she wouldn’t have to sit by Nick any longer.
She grabbed her bag and swung open the door. Nick leaned back against the opposite wall in the narrow hallway. The sides of his tuxedo jacket were brushed aside, and his hands were buried in his front pockets. When he saw her, he pushed away from the wall.
“Stay away from me, Nick.” She held out a hand to hold him off.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her against his chest. “I can’t,” he said softly. He crushed her to him, and his mouth slashed across hers in a fiery kiss that left her numb. He tasted like unchecked passion and warm wine. His tongue caressed and plundered, and when he pulled back, his breathing was uneven, like he’d just run the mile.
Delaney placed a hand over her racing heart and licked the taste of him from her lips. “We can’t do this here.”
“You’re right.” He grabbed her arm and propelled her down the hall until he found an unlocked linen closet. Once inside, he pressed her backward against the closed door, and Delaney had an impression of white towels and mop buckets before he was on her. Kissing her. Touching her anywhere his hands landed. Her palms slid up the pleats of his shirt to the warm sides of his neck, and she combed her fingers through the side of his hair. The kiss became an avaricious feeding frenzy of mouths and lips and tongues. They tore at each other. Her handbag fell to the floor, and she pushed at the shoulders of his jacket. She kicked the little velvet pumps from her feet and raised onto the balls of her feet. Like a complete wanton, she hooked a leg over his hip and strained against the swollen ridge of his erection.