The Billionaire Bargain #1(23)
Grant’s mouth twisted upwards in a smile, but the light seemed to go out of his eyes. What had I said wrong?
“No,” he said softly, looking away so I could no longer see his face.“I suppose you can’t.”
TWELVE
Grant’s moodiness passed within minutes, though, and soon he was laughing again, fetching me drinks and whirling me about on the dance floor, introducing me to so many important people—who knew there were even this many important people in the world?—that their faces started to blur together, feeding me bonbons with his fingers when he knew Jennings was looking…well, I assume only when he knew Jennings was looking. After all, why else would he do it?
I tried desperately not to think about other reasons why Grant Devlin might like feeding me bonbons.
Or other places he might like feeding me bonbons. Like his bed. With red silk sheets. With both of us lying naked and spent on those silk sheets, and him feeding me one sweet at a time, his eyes darkening with lust as I licked my lips, his hands tracing my lips, sliding downwards to trace my curves, his hands—
Er, never mind all that. Carry on. Nothing to see here.
Despite my overactive libido and colorful imagination, I managed to have a good time. It had been nerve-wracking at first, trying to play it cool in front of all the movers and shakers of San Francisco, but Grant was right about one thing—we made a hell of a team. We teased, we schmoozed, we networked—sweet Lord, did we network—and I felt confident that before the night was through, we’d have converted quite a few of these folks into bringing their business to Devlin Media Corp.
Also, the bonbons were really ridiculously delicious.
A little before midnight, I excused myself to powder my nose. It took me awhile to find the bathroom—mostly because I kept assuming it was another ballroom, as that much polished marble and gently piped waltz music is wont to make you assume. I was so busy gawping at the sinks that I didn’t notice the woman behind me until she spoke:
“Well, well, well. So you’re the girl making an honest man of Grant Devlin.”
I jumped, saw her face in the mirror as she suddenly stepped out from behind me, and jumped again. Holy mother of horror movies, Batman! She was lucky she hadn’t sent me into the stratosphere.
“Oh dear, did I startle you?” she drawled coldly, her tone making it obvious that when it came to caring whether she had startled me, she fell somewhere on the continuum between ‘completely indifferent’ and ‘maliciously amused.’
She wore a silver slip of a dress. Her grey hair marked her as being in her late fifties, but she was incredibly well-preserved—plastic surgery had tightened her pale, blue-veined skin and made her look even more like a literal ice queen, sharp-nosed, hatchet-chinned, eyebrows that could cut diamonds. Eyes like blue lasers cutting right into me.
“Uh, uh, yeah,” I said. “Grant Devlin. Me. Making a—honest, yeah. We’re going out! We are. That’s what we’re doing. Him and me.”
I was not exactly going to sweep the Oscars with this performance, but I feel like even Katherine Hepburn would’ve gotten thrown by the Snow Queen doing a Jack-in-the-box act over her shoulder.
“‘Going out,’” she repeated, drawing out my words incredulously as though I’d said ‘snorting cocaine’ or ‘making a snuff film,’ or ‘selling my panties to Japanese business to finance my dream of opening my own fried chicken franchise.’ “How…interesting.”
She managed to infuse the word ‘interesting’ with an entire epic saga’s worth of doubts, suspicions, and general disdain.
“Lacey,” I said, belatedly remembering that humans introduced themselves to people they hadn’t meet. “My name. I’m Lacey Newman. Nice to meet you, Ms., uh…”
“Dalton,” she said with a sniff. “Portia Dalton. Grant’s godmother.”
“Oh wow,” I said. “I had no idea you were going to be here! I’m sure you must have some great stories about Grant growing up—”
“Oh yes, where to begin!” she interrupted, the biggest fake smile ever cracking her face like an earthquake fault line. “Perhaps with that time he seduced the youngest daughter of a Swedish client his grandfather was desperately trying to land, or the time he brought a drunk supermodel to his high school graduation party, or the fifth college he flunked out of because they didn’t offer a major in his preferred field of f*cking the highest class whores he could find—really, I don’t know where to begin, all the many and varied incidents with sluts in various states of undress do tend to blur together.”
She looked me up and down and gave a short, cutting laugh.
“I don’t think I’ll forget you, though, you are so incredibly…far outside of his normal type. I don’t know what he’s playing at with you.”
My head was spinning under the verbal assault, filled with whirling pictures of a young and even more devil-may-care Grant going through women like tissue paper.
She leaned closer and gave me a smile, all friendly, like she was actually on my side.
“Darling, I’m sure all those self-help books and women’s magazines are telling you to be strong and confident and love your body because it’s yours and it’s beautiful, but you really must face facts: they’re only saying that because they’re selling something.”