Grounded (Up in the Air #3)(77)

His eyes bored into my back for long moments before he began to curse, succinctly and fluently. He finished his tirade with an impassioned, “I’ll kill her.”

“She said you’d say that,” I told him.

That just made him curse even more. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming, when she called me up saying that you were all doing a girls’ day, and that I should keep on working. I knew she wanted to get her hands on you.”

I shot him an exasperated look. “You really think that she did all of this just so that she could very briefly touch me? She was completely professional, James.”

“I should have known she would try this, but I can’t believe that you agreed to it. What were you thinking?”

“You did the same thing for me—to prove something to me. You wanted me to see that you really were devoted to me, and that you wanted a long-term commitment. I was trying to do the same thing for you. I wanted you to see that I’m just as committed. It’s not something that should make you jealous. I branded your name on my shoulder, and all you can do is get jealous that someone else was holding the needle. I didn’t do this because Frankie wanted me to. I did it for you. We belong to each other, James, and now we both have the ink to prove it. I thought that you would love seeing your name on me.”

In terms of defusing his anger, it worked like a charm. He pressed hard against my back, murmuring into my ear. “I do love seeing that on you. How could I ever stay mad, when you say such wonderful things to me? So tell me, Bianca, just how committed are you? Committed enough to take my name and wear my ring? Devoted enough to like the sound of Bianca Cavendish?”

My heart tried to pound right out of my chest. Because I knew he wasn’t really joking, even though his tone was light. And because it didn’t only make me want to panic anymore to hear him say a thing like that. Now a picture was beginning to form in my mind of something real and sustaining for us. Perhaps what had happened to my mother hadn’t forever ruined any possibility of my own happily ever after. The thought was both encouraging and terrifying.

James didn’t wait for me to answer. He knew me too well.

He kissed my neck. “Start growing accustomed to the idea, Love, and try not to tie yourself in knots second-guessing yourself. And try to remember that I’m head over heels in love with you, and that I’ve never even come close to saying those words to another person.”

“I love you, too,” I whispered back, loving him more at that moment than I’d even thought possible. How could I ever have imagined that Mr. Beautiful could be so incredibly sensitive to my needs? It was as though he’d known me forever.

If I was surprised at how quickly he dropped the subject of the tattoo with me, I was equally unsurprised at how he didn’t drop the subject with Frankie. Even a full week later, at her show’s Vegas Strip red carpet event, James was giving her the cold shoulder.

James wore a black tux with a black shirt and white bow tie. It was very fitted, very fashion forward, very supermodel James.

I wore a little white dress with silver accents. It was short enough to be Vegas appropriate, with a halter neck that I thought was flattering, though the back came up high enough to cover my new tattoo. Unlike James, I wasn’t trying to show it off to the world right off the bat.

Shiny red heels took all of the innocence out of the color of the dress, and James seemed a little dumbstruck when I walked out of the closet in the sexy getup. The look on his face told me I’d chosen just right.

The mood of this red carpet was actually a fun vibe, as opposed to the tenser one I’d attended before. People dressed up, but it was more sexy Las Vegas dress-up than stuffy ballroom. Even Frankie decided to forgo her usual half-shirt, cutoff shorts look and wore a tiny red dress that looked sinful.

It was Frankie’s night, and she’d been thoughtful enough to extend an invitation to Stephan and Javier. James had bought them their own custom tailored tuxes, and the two men were grinning from ear to ear as we all walked the red carpet together.

Frankie rushed to hug a stiff James as soon as she spotted us at the event.

“Will you at least talk to me about it? You can’t freeze me out forever, James,” she said into his cheek.

“Oh, we’ll talk,” he told her ominously.

She just smiled, seeming to take that as a good sign.

She greeted Stephan and Javier like they were all old friends, before moving to me. She pointedly didn’t try to hug me, just bending at the waist to give me a jaunty little bow. “Bianca, the lion tamer,” she said, grinning at James.

I put a hand on his arm, wishing he would just let it go. But James was James, and he would get there in his own time.

Frankie seemed to know him well enough to see that, and gave him space.

We ran into Tristan next. He was looking debonair in a black tux as he posed for one of the photo ops. The photographers seemed to be in a frenzy to get shots of him. I shot James a puzzled look.

“Is he famous or something?” I asked.

James grinned and then laughed. “Or something. He stars in the magic show at the Cavendish property, and he’s the lead singer in a band that had two hit singles last year. It doesn’t make me even a little bit sad that you aren’t a fan of his.”

Tristan turned to us the instant he finished with the shots. He grinned that wicked grin of his from ear to ear when he saw me.