Breaking the Billionaire's Rules(45)

She’s brilliant in that blue. Did she wear it for him? I bristle as he touches her arm. Blade. Does he think he’s a tenth of a match for her?

I watch her circulate. She seemed to have close personal relationships with every last one of my employees. Mia, beloved by everybody, just like old times.

Lana’s up with the scavenger-hunt crew, comparing clipboards. They have directions for me to read off clipboards after people drink some more. This is a group that loves clipboards.

The music stops just then. I look up, confused. I’m not ready to kick off the hunt, but I see the problem. Mia. The inevitable reunion with DJ Barnes.

Tearful hugs. I shouldn’t watch, but I can’t look away.

They’re arguing, or more, bantering. Mia is turning back and forth between Ryan and DJ. She’s lit up with energy. It’s a form of her I remember, laughing and arguing. Mia pokes a finger into DJ’s chest. The oboist is shoving a microphone at her. Shivers cascade over my body. They’re asking her to do a song.

No, I think.

I stand, immobile. Parker’s back, talking. Parker’s saying my name, somewhere at the fringes of my awareness.

She’s going to sing. Something, something wrong, Max? Parker again.

I can see plainly where DJ places his fingers on the fiddle. He scrapes out the first strains. Many a New Day. That’s what she’s going to sing. One of her Oklahoma! solos.

Not in front of all these people, I think. Because it’s ours.

“What’s wrong?” Parker asks.

Wrong. Wrong doesn’t come close.

I need a bigger word, the kind of word that the Germans might invent. A word that means that you’re dreading something that will be painful, but you also very much want that thing to happen.

And that painful thing you dread and want would involve longing for moments you can never have again. And it would involve a bursting, shouting feeling inside your chest, and all the while, your teeth are clenched. Dreadshockjoy or something.

She takes a breath, and I breathe, too, because that’s what Mia Corelli does, she reaches into your chest and pulls your breath out. Mia Corelli, always longing for more. Fighting for more. All brave and beautiful and tragic, but yet always somehow out of reach. Like a not-quite-remembered dream that floats away as soon as you grab for it, laughing as it goes.

Back in your life to bring it.

She starts in, high and strong and full of emotion. Voice clear like a bell. My dreadshockjoy swells. She’s really doing it.

She looks across the room at me, eyes colliding with mine, show tune like a cannonball.

Parker’s still there. “My bad,” he says.

“What?” I say.

“I thought you’d have fun seeing her again. Delivering your sandwiches and all. I didn’t think you’d get all twisted up about it.”

I turn to him. “You can’t stand Mia.”

He holds up his hands in mock defense. “I thought you’d get a kick out of it. You’ve always had such a spark around her.”

“So you arranged for her to deliver my sandwiches? Directly to me in my office? And didn’t see fit to tell me?”

“Well…” he stammers.

“Never mind.” Everything I understood about the situation reshuffles in my mind.

I thought she’d somehow engineered it. And she thinks I arranged it…in order to what? Taunt her and boss her around? Punch down and seduce her? Of course that’s what she’d think. Why not?

God, what a dick move. And of course it’s what she thinks.

The song’s over. She’s smiling. She looks at Ryan. He smiles at her. People will start setting off with their clues. No, I think. You can’t have her.

My feet take me back to the scavenger-hunt people. I tell them I’m changing it up. We’ll make it random.

“You’re not letting them pick their own partners?” the guy asks.

“Random partners are better for team building,” I say, on full Max Hilton arrogance mode. I take an iPad. I redo the numbers, putting Mia and me together. It shuffles all the rest of the partnerships. “That’s how the partners go now. Send it out.”

They send out a new list based on my idea.





17




You have high standards. Let her know that it’s up to her to meet those standards.

~The Max Hilton Playbook: Ten Golden Rules for Landing the Hottest Girl in the Room





* * *



Mia

“Usually they let you pick your partners,” Ryan says, frowning at the app. “I can’t believe you’re with Max.”

I blink at the list. “What happened?”

“I’m seeing some comments that the partners were shuffled specifically to be better for team building and community building,” Ryan says.

Heart still thundering in my chest, I gaze across the room at Max, cold and beautiful and perfect in his tux.

Community building. Riiiight.

Seriously, Max should’ve been a spy. He’d be an amazing spy. He changed the entire course of the party and created a disinformation campaign in one fell swoop, just to ruin my date.

I should be annoyed. My face is annoyed, but inside there’s this spark of forbidden excitement.

And really, I shouldn’t have sung the song. I told myself I wanted to get some control back, but it was a lie. I wanted some connection. To rip down his fa?ade and get through to the cotton-candy-musical Max that I fell for. It’s crazy behavior.