Chapter 31

31

FIA

I adjusted the sparkling, snug red dress I’d chosen to wear tonight, against my better judgment. While the fabric was shiny and shimmered in the light of the massive crystal chandelier hanging over Heather Schuyler’s ballroom, it also liked to slide up my hips, causing the tasteful slit up the right side to edge a little too close to my hips for comfort.

Clutching a glass of sparkling apple juice in lieu of the imported champagne being passed around by waiters wearing green and gold uniforms, I glanced down at my phone again, checking off a list of things I needed to check on before allowing myself to enjoy the party I had painstakingly planned.

Everything was going off without a hitch. It was truly a Christmas miracle.

I moved along the edge of the ballroom, eyeing the refreshment table. The caterers were keeping everything well stocked and organized. Check.

I peeked through a service doorway where a butler’s pantry, which lead from the ballroom to the commercial kitchen, was currently full of waiters pouring fresh flutes of champagne. Check.

The string quartet was wrapping up their contributions to the entertainment while a jazz band prepared their instruments in preparation to change the vibe of the party from polite greetings and mingling over bites of caviar and sips of champagne to something swanky and loud, just like Heather wanted. Check.

“My dear! Are you still triple-checking everything?” Heather’s voice drifted toward me, lifted in her practiced, elite New York City drawl. “Please, go and have a drink. A real one. I can tell that’s juice, you know.”

Wearing a gold gown, she looked like the star atop a Christmas tree, which was exactly the look she’d been going for. In fact, I had my girls at Vivaldi’s put her outfit together. She looked fabulous. Check.

“I’m managing the event, remember?” I teased as she took my juice away and replaced it with bubbly pink champagne.

“And you’ve managed it. Look at this place, darling. I’m not sure how you did it, but this party is going to be talked about for ages, long after I’m dead and buried, I’m positive. You are a talent.” She lightly tapped me on the nose, beaming past her hundred or so units of Botox, and whirled to go gossip with her friends.

I adjusted my dress again, pressing a hand to the flat of my stomach in an attempt to force myself to relax, to breathe. A hand slid onto my lower back and a familiar presence shadowed me. I looked up at Mason in relief, and he smiled down at me with a twinkle in his blue eyes. “This is…” He tapered off, looking stunned.

“This is what?” I took a step backward to stand at his side, slightly leaning into him to give my feet a break.

He leaned down, whispering into my hair. “You’re incredible. I knew you’d pull this off, and that you had an eye for detail but this is just hard to put into words. Everyone’s been talking about it all night. Heather officially owns the title of best Christmas in Manhattan this year.”

“Don’t tell Abigail,” I murmured, smiling as my cheeks began to prickle with a blush under his praise. “She’d be heartbroken.”

“She’s here, actually. That’s where I’ve been for the last twenty minutes.” He chuckled softly, his hand coming to rest on my hip as he nudged me against him. “She said she’s booking you for next year, before Heather can get her talons in your schedule again.”

I smiled and looked up at him. That weight settled in my chest again, however, that strange feeling I couldn’t ignore. Mason noticed it somehow, his eyes scanning my face. “Are you okay?”

“It was just a lot of work.” I cleared my throat and sipped my champagne. “It’s not even that it was a lot of work, per se, just I thought I wanted to do this. I thought this—” I swept my arm, motioning to party, “was what I wanted to do with my life, but it took every waking minute of my time, all of my brain space. I barely remember anything that happened over the last few days.”

“Do you still want to be an event planner?”

“Yeah but there has to be some balance. I guess that’s where I’m conflicted. I can’t imagine doing this all year around, you know? My dream…” I laughed to myself, looking down at my sparkly red shoes. “My dream would just be doing events like this around Christmas and continuing to be a photographer the rest of the year, but that’s not really feasible.”

“Why not?”

“I’d have to own my own business. I don’t have the funds for that. I don’t have an office space, storage… And don’t look at me like that,” I teased, shaking my head at him. “Don’t you even dare offer me money right now.”

He licked his lips. “I’d invest in you, Fia. If you’re serious about it, bring me a business plan, and we’ll talk.”

I turned to him, clutching his tuxedo. “I don’t want to get tangled in business with you again.”

“Again?”

“You know what I mean. I want a relationship with no paperwork.” I tilted my head toward the crowd, toward familiar faces I remembered from all the events we had to attend this season as a fake couple. Things definitely weren’t fake now, that was for sure. “I just want us to be us, no strings attached. If you invested in this silly pipe dream, we’d have that hanging over our heads and I just want you .”

His eyes darkened and his hand slid up my side. It felt like we were the only people in the room for a single, delicious moment. Then, he brought me back to reality. “Why do you believe you wouldn’t be able to pull off the kind of schedule you’re talking about?”

“Because this is the only party I have in my portfolio as of right now. I’d need to work for a bigger firm for a few years and make the right connections, you know, to start landing my own clients.”

“I guess it’s been a while since I was in your shoes.”

“Building a business in your head?”

“Having a dream,” he answered, and again I felt like the party was fading, leaving just me and Mason in the ballroom, his hands on my body, his fingertips gliding toward the low-cut back of my dress, over my skin. I held his gaze and felt an intense desire to get out of there and go home with him, or to find a secluded closet, anything, where I could kiss him without wandering eyes watching our every move.

“Do you want to go home?” I asked, stepping into him.

He tightened his grip on my waist. “Are you done here?”

I nodded. “It’s almost midnight. Heather told me I could leave whenever I wanted. I hired the cleanup crew, after all. And technically I promised her I’d come as her guest, not an employee, so…”

“So, you’re free?”

“Yes.” I smoothed my hand over his jacket, the finely made black buttons. He wore a tuxedo tonight, something Italian, I guessed. I was so used to his well-tailored suits, so this was a treat, and I’d been drooling over him since he walked into the ballroom for the first time.

I wasn’t the only one looking at him tonight. A group of women around my age walked by, tittering like little birds as they glanced at us over their shoulders, obviously disappointed Mason’s attention was locked on me.

“Let’s get your coat,” he said with a wry grin, and within minutes we were out on the street, and he was holding the limo door open for me as I slid into the backseat. He joined me and shut the door behind us.

“Where to, boss?” Rex said from the front seat.

I looked around. This wasn’t his usual car. I’d never been in a limo before.

“The long way back to Fia’s apartment,” Mason said breathlessly as he shut the door. His eyes met mine in the dark as he reached for a switch, and the partition rolled up.

A single beat of time passed between us before he was on me, clutching me around the hips and flattening me to the seat.

“Mason,” I rushed out, breathless. My eyes fluttered shut as his hand slid down my side to my thigh.

“This is all I’ve been thinking about since I first saw you tonight. This dress?” He groaned, his hand sliding through the slit of fabric to come up and cup my ass. “I think it’s my favorite so far.”

He nipped my neck as I writhed beneath him, my mind going blissfully blank. “What’s gotten into you?” I whispered, then rushed out a surprised breath as he hauled me upright, onto his lap. I straddled him, my dress bunched up around my waist.

“You,” he admitted breathlessly. “You take up all of my thoughts. I can’t get you out of my head.” He pulled me in for a kiss so deep my toes curled. He pulled the pins holding my hair in an intricate updo loose, tossing them onto the floor. My hair cascaded over my shoulders. One of his hands snaked up my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair and tugging ever so slightly.

I gasped out a breath at the pleasure rolling through me in waves. His mouth pressed kisses against my jaw, then my neck, down to the bodice of my dress where he stopped, panting, and slowly looked up at me. “I’m going to rip it off of you if you don’t tell me to stop.”

I had never heard his voice quite this low and gravelly before. It was like he’d been waiting for this, pining for me, and I loved the idea of him walking around that ballroom, drinking me in as I worked, oblivious to the dirty thoughts pinging through his head.

“I need you,” he rasped. “Right now.”

I turned toward the partition on the far side of the limo from where I was still straddling his lap. “What about Rex?”

“He won’t know,” Mason panted, kissing the corner of my mouth. He closed his eyes, his lips parted as I ground my hips against his. He hissed out a breath, arching. “Fia?—”

Any inhibitions I might have had about this slipped when I noticed the look on his face. He was obsessed. Absolutely, utterly taken with me. I’d never felt so wanted in my life. I reached between us. My fingers slipped over his belt. I almost had it undone when he gently grabbed my wrist.

“I don’t have a condom,” he ground out, opening his eyes.

“I might have one in my bathroom,” I whispered, the words slipping out. I hoped I was right.

He huffed a single, silent laugh, but the heat building between us remained. The limo rolled to a stop. “This is us.”

In a daze, he helped me adjust my dress and took my hand to lead me out of the limo. We walked in silence to my apartment door, but the tension crackled like fireworks while my trembling hands fumbled with my key. He stopped me and unlocked the door with steady hands. Then he ushered me into the darkness, the only light that of the oversized Christmas tree taking up an entire corner of my studio.

The door hadn’t even closed all the way when his mouth was on mine again, hot and open, his tongue sliding over mine as he groaned and pinned me against the wall. “Where is it?”

“The cabinet,” I rushed out.

He moved away from me, the distance between us unbearable as he walked the two steps into my bathroom. He returned within seconds, his hands finding me again in a tight embrace. His kiss knocked the wind out of me. Something crashed to the floor as he swept his hand across my tiny dining-room table and lifted me onto it.

“Wrap your legs around my waist,” he commanded gruffly.

I obeyed, whimpering as he fumbled with his belt, missing his hot touch on my body. I watched him tear open the condom wrapper with his teeth and carelessly discard it, his expression hyper-focused on my breasts, which heaved with every rushed breath I took.

Then his eyes met mine in the glow of the Christmas lights. “You have no idea what you’ve done to me,” he whispered.

My lips parted and he leaned forward to kiss me, tenderly at first and then with a lot more passion. He took my lower lip between his teeth as he reached between my legs, not even bothering to take my dress off. This was hot, this overwhelming desire for me. He slid my panties to the side and entered me with a needy, breathless groan that burrowed into every muscle in my body, igniting a fire I didn’t want to put out.