The VIP Room(85)

Smooth. And sweet. Unfortunately, I ended up with Peter on my other side. Unable to finagle a seat next to Dylan, who’d taken the end of the booth, Cathie slid in on the other end and glared at me.

“So, what are you doing with Leigha?” she asked, venom dripping from her words. “You’re not actually her date, are you? She works for you or something, right?”

“I work at Haywood and Cross, Cathie,” I said, cutting in. “I’ve been there since I graduated from college.”

“And Leigha is most definitely my date,” Dylan said. “I’d love to get her working for me, but Haywood and Cross is a great firm. I doubt I could entice her away. And it would interfere with our,” he paused and met my eyes, “personal relationship.”

Across the booth I heard Cathie whisper to Christie, “I think I just threw up a little. Tell me he’s not sleeping with her. So gross.” I flushed in embarrassment. If I’d heard, so had the rest of the table. They weren’t exactly subtle.

“How did you two meet?” my mother asked, covering the awkward silence left after Cathie’s comment.

“As so often happens in a town like this,” Dylan said, “We met at a bar. I saw Leigha across the room and I knew I had to get to know her better.” He smiled down at me, his expression the perfect representation of a doting boyfriend. He was good. If I wasn’t careful I’d find myself believing it.

“And you asked her out?” Christie said.

“Of course.”

“But she’s fat.” This from Christie. My mother murmured her name in an embarrassed protest.

“And boring,” Cathie added. “She’s an accountant for God’s sake. How much more boring does it get?”

Christie leaned around my mother to meet Cathie’s eyes. “Do you remember the boys she dated when we were in high-school?”

“Oh my God, such losers. Remember the one from the math club? They did that thing together?”

“He was such a dork,” Christie said, her giggle a replica of my mother’s. My mother rolled her eyes at us in a half-hearted apology.

“Girls, don’t be rude. Maybe if you two had spent a little more time in the math club and less time on dates, you would have graduated with a 4.0 like your sister. And that thing she and the boy from math club did was a very complicated project. They won some kind of prize for it, didn’t you honey?”

“We worked with the robotics club on navigational calculations for a drone they built. We won a grant for the school with it.”

“Impressive,” Dylan said, giving me that intimate boyfriend smile again. I couldn’t help melting a little, especially when he followed up by squeezing my knee under the table. His fingertips traced my kneecap in slow, deliberate circles, distracting me from the conversation.

“It was the only way she could get a date,” Cathie cut in. “Fishing at the bottom of the barrel.”

“It didn’t stop you from sleeping with him,” I said, sweetly. Maybe she’d been more popular than me, but most of that was because she slept around. A lot. Not just ‘healthy young woman with an active sex drive’ a lot but ‘trying to get attention any way I can’ a lot.

“Someone had to,” she shot back, not ashamed. “God knows you weren’t going to.”

“Leave your sister alone,” my mother said to them. “It wasn’t her fault she was overweight and shy.” Turning to Dylan, she went on, “Leigha was always a good girl. Bright. Well behaved. Never gave me a second of trouble. Not like these two.”

That was the reason I was even there. While my sisters were turbo bitches most of the time, my mom meant well. She got married way too often and was always on the prowl for her next husband, but she loved me and she showed it as best she could.

When I’d tried to beg off the wedding, even though it was only a few miles from my house, she’d said, “But I never see you anymore. I miss you!” I’d been helpless to say no.

At that moment, I fiercely regretted not sticking to my guns, even if being there had put me in Dylan’s path. Sitting through dinner with those two was going to kill me with humiliation.

I knew I’d wake up that night, or sometime next week, with the perfect comebacks echoing in my head. I always thought of them later, never on the spot. Under the glare of their cutting comments, my throat would swell shut and I could never think of anything good to say. Accusing Cathie of sleeping around didn’t count since she considered it a badge of honor.

The waitress interrupted with our menus and a recitation of the specials. I was still starving, despite the appetizers Dylan had fed me in his office. The next few minutes were occupied with deciding what to order, my sisters saying I should I get a side salad to keep my calories down, and Dylan suggesting the lasagna or the linguine pescatore.

When Christie gasped in horror and said, “Girls like Leigha can’t eat pasta. Too many carbs.” Dylan skewered her with a look and murmured in my ear, loud enough for the table to hear,

“I love to watch you eat, don’t I?” Then he pressed a kiss to my mouth.

I felt my skin turn a bright, hot red. His hand left off tracing circles on my knee and slid up to the middle of my leg, the weight of his palm heavy, a claiming, while his fingertips teased the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. My *, so close to his touch, heated. Again.