The Story about The Story | Reviews | Excerpt

This is a mock cover
And a make-shift title :-)

Chapter Five

Gareth called the evening I returned from London.

My little firm had done pretty well over the years. But ever since the subprime meltdown—we were one of the earliest to predict the crisis and to warn our clients to get rid of their structured investment vehicles that had large repackage mortgage components—I’d had more people calling to get on my client list than I’d either the manpower or expertise to handle.

But I made time for the Bank of England. I wasn’t so Marxist in my thinking that I didn’t want that very old and distinguished name on my curriculum vitae.

“How was London?”

“Not bad. Great curries.”

“Making money hand over fist?”

“Working hard for it, at least.”

“Are you working this weekend?”

“No, I’ve worked for fifteen days straight.” And sixteen-hour days, every last one of them. “What’s today, Thursday? I’m going to sleep all day tomorrow and veg out Saturday.”

“Don’t veg out Saturday. I need a date for this wedding I’m going to.”

“Whose wedding is it?”

“Sam’s.”

“Sam’s getting married?” Sam was a producer who hired Gareth on a regular basis. I’d met him a couple of times and thought he was a nice guy, if a bit too preppy for my tastes.

“Yeah, big ole fancy wedding coming up.”

“Bridezilla?”

“Haven’t heard about that. You wanna come with me?”

“I don’t know. Is it one of those society shindigs?” I was not a fan of elaborate nuptials. It was the mathematician in me: Given the divorce rate, for every grand spent on weddings, five hundred dollars went to waste. The corollary? The more money spent, the more wasted.

“Oh, come on, set aside Das Kapital for one day, put on something pretty and have some fun. Or at least keep an eye on me so I don’t get stupid drunk and impregnate a married woman.”

I laughed. “Okay. For your virtue, I’ll sacrifice a perfectly lovely lazy Saturday to socialize with New York’s inbred best.”

The truth was, I didn’t mind having somewhere to go on Saturday. I was a little afraid that if I stayed home by myself, come Saturday I might walk down the street to Bennett’s house and knock on the door.

I’d bought him something in London, a purchase that now I have no idea what to do with. I suppose Gareth could use a pair of Harry Winston platinum-and-diamond cuff links—except Gareth rarely wore fancy dress shirts and had a seventy percent chance of tossing the cuff links into the depth of his closet and never finding them again.

And here I was, snotty about the money the average American bride spent on her wedding. Gareth was right. I really was dumb as shit sometimes.

The wedding was the kind that featured an intimate ceremony for family and close friends and a big bash afterwards for all and sundry. The reception was held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

“Who’s Sam marrying again?” I asked as we walked into the hotel lobby, thirty-five floors above Columbus Circle. I knew Mandarin Oriental was a luxury hotel, but one look at the lobby with its cathedral ceiling and panoramic view of Central Park was quite enough to let me know that this was luxury with a capital L—and most likely capital U, X, U, R, and Y too.

“Some girl named Alyssa.”

“Is her last name Trump?”

“Don’t think so,” said Gareth. “Or we’d be at a Trump property, wouldn’t we?”

The hotel staff directed us up one flight of stairs, where the ballroom was located. On the thirty-six floor, tuxedoed ushers led us to the reception line, which was beginning to thin out—we’d arrived a little late. Gareth shook hands with the bride and the groom and introduced me to the bride. Then we shook hands with the groom’s parents and then—

The bride’s mother was none other than Bennett’s Aunt Sarah. I’d stumbled upon her daughter’s wedding. She looked just as surprised. But we didn’t have time to exchange anything other than a “Congratulations” from me and a “Thank you for coming” from her.

“That’s Bennett’s aunt. The bride is his cousin,” I said to Gareth, once we were out of hearing of the wedding party.

“Hey, maybe it was meant to be.”

“Yeah, right. Let me get out my phone and book a venue already. And while we are at it, why don’t you tell Bennett that I don’t want a diamond solitaire for an engagement ring? He needs to tattoo my name above his heart instead, cuz love should hurt.”

“You could have told me that yourself,” said a voice behind us.

Gareth and I both whipped around. Bennett. My heart rolled over.

He was in a tuxedo. I usually considered the tuxedo a relic, more silly than elegant. Well, I was about to revise my opinion because Bennett here killed in his tuxedo. He had the perfect build for it, long and lean. He had the best tailor money could buy, for the tuxedo fitted him exactly right. And he had the easy confidence to carry off a tuxedo jacket worn unbuttoned over a black vest and a silver tie. The boutonniere at his lapel—a single bud of purple tulip—marked him as a member of the wedding party.

“Ava. Gareth.” He shook hands with both of us.

“We are making plans,” said Gareth. “Ava here isn’t getting any younger. And weddings bring out the matchmaking papa in me. I was just telling Ava she should make a play for you.”

I rolled my eyes, but I was also relieved that Gareth explained everything so clearly. I did not want Bennett to believe that I had a hidden agenda where he was concerned. “Please ignore my brother. How are you, Bennett?”

“Pretty good. I didn’t know you were coming to the reception.”

“We didn’t know the bride was related to you until I saw her mother.”

Bennett waved over a waiter who bore a tray of champagne flutes. Gareth and I each took a glass. “Let me help you find your table,” said Bennett. “We’ll be sitting down to dinner soon.”

The ballroom was done up in jaw-dropping quantities of purple tulips and blush-pink peonies, and featured wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling views of the Manhattan nightline. Bennett stopped at a maitre d’ station set up near the entrance to consult a seating chart, then he walked with us to our table.

It was a slow walk, as guests, men and women, kept coming up to him, wanting a minute of his time, a slice of his attention. I realized for the first time that I’d never seen Bennett in a social setting. For some reason, I thought he’d be a bit stiff among people. But he was perfect adept at greeting people and then leaving them behind with a smile on their faces.

Bennett Somerset, the man I wouldn’t date, was more likely than not the most eligible bachelor at this wedding.

A waiter rushed in and held out a chair for me at our appointed table. “Enjoy,” said Bennett. “And thanks for the walnut tart, Gareth. It was sublime.”

After Bennett moved on, I turned to Gareth . “What? You gave my walnut tart to him?”

“Hey, you gave it to me; I could do whatever I wanted with it. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, haven’t you heard? Besides, I told him I baked it.”

“Good, you make your way to his heart then,” I said, following Bennett’s progress with my eyes. The man who claimed to never get laid without tiramisu certainly seemed in no difficulty tonight. And although he did not flirt outright, he was not shy: he touched elbows, shoulders, smalls of the back. His fingers even brushed one very pretty woman’s artfully tousled hair.

He finally made his way to the long table for the wedding party, set up on a dais. Sitting down, he smiled at a pixie-ish woman to his left. Then our eyes met across half the length of the ballroom.

I grabbed the menu and began studying it with a furious concentration.

We dined on gingered sea bass, goat-cheese stuffed beef medallions, and saffron risotto. Or at least, that was what the menu said. I drank more than I ate, ate more than I talked. Thankfully Gareth did the talking for the both of us.

There were toasts and a few short speeches. Bennett didn’t speak. I wished he had, then I could have legitimately stared at him. Not that I didn’t go ahead and stare anyway, ignoring the views, ignoring the food, ignoring everyone else around me.

The dancing started shortly after the speeches. While the guest chatted and the musicians set up, the dining tables were swiftly removed and the floor cleared. We met up with some other people Gareth had worked with and formed a little group at the back of the ballroom.

The obligatory slow dances took place first. Then club music blared and we got down. I had my back turned to the rest of the ballroom, because I didn’t want to look for Bennett. But some crazy part me also hoped he’d catch sight of my hips gyrating suggestively.

Gareth got himself deep in conversation with a rather intellectual-looking man while a couple of Gareth’s friends flirted with me. I flirted right back—it wasn’t as if I had anything better to do.

We must have danced for a solid hour, drinking champagne all the while. I was getting a bit of a buzz in the head. And then the music changed, from the frantic beat of electronic pop to something both mournful and sensuous.

“Who’s gonna tango?” somebody asked.

Everybody in our circle shrugged. I finally turned around. The other guests had retreated to the rim of the ballroom and, like us, looked expectantly at one another.

A woman in a blood-red spaghetti-strap dress, the hem cut on the bias, strode onto the middle of the ballroom and struck a pose. I recognized her as the one whose hair Bennett had stroked earlier.

She looked back in the direction she came from. “Come on,” she said, wheedling. “Just this once.”

She was speaking to Bennett, who shook his head no.

“You are not going to leave me standing here, are you?”

For a moment I thought he would. Then our eyes met again.

“Okay, just this once,” he said, still looking at me.

He shrugged off his jacket and tossed it at someone else. Then he loosened his tie. The crowd cheered and clapped. The music writhed and trembled. He approached the woman slowly, almost casually. Then, all of a sudden, he looped his arm about her waist and yanked her to him.

Catcalls erupted.

He drew a hand up her bare arm, over her shoulder, and down into her exposed cleavage.

“Mamma mia!” murmured someone behind me.

Just as Bennett’s fingers were about to roam too far south for public decency, he flung the woman away. She spun outward. He caught her by the fingertips. They stayed like that a moment, precariously balanced. She spun back into his arms. They were now pressed together from shoulder to groin, legs completely tangled.

Bennett—my Bennett—flicked one spaghetti strap off the woman’s shoulder. And then he bent his head and put his mouth to her collarbone. I heard myself gasp. He released her into a sweeping dip and pulled her up so that their faces nearly touched.

The dance began in earnest. I’d seen tango, both as performance art on stage and in the clubs of Buenos Aires. But I’d never experienced another tango in which the man dominated the pairing quite so overwhelmingly.

My God, the way he moved. All those immaculately starched three-piece suits hid a feral agility that had me slack-jawed. His turns and steps were as precise as an assassin’s aim. His posture was gorgeous. And his understanding of the soul of the tango—the courtship in all its danger and complexity—mesmerized me.

The woman in red was in thrall to his will, wrapped about him like a scarf. He played her like Slash on an electric guitar, never breaking gaze, caressing her with cool provocation and heartlesss—or so I hoped—promises.

“This is better than porn,” someone else said beside me.

I was too flabbergasted to speak.

They sank into a deep lunge. He wrapped his hand about her nape, a gesture of casual possession. Then while she remained in the lunge, he rose, trailed his finger along her jaw, then walked away.

She ran after him, lobbed her arms around him, and stopped him. He turned and lifted her, dropping her into a reverse dip. Then he pushed her away, hard. They stared at each other across fifteen feet of ballroom floor. The music rose to a crescendo. She launched herself at him, he caught and held her, then slowly slid her down against his person, until she stood with one foot on the ground, the other hooked around his thigh.

He ran his palm up her bare calf that was angled against his hip, caressed her side, and then took hold of her chin. A barest hint of a smile softened his mouth. The smile undid me entirely. It was power, control, and rampant masculinity in a bespoke package. At that moment, my well-bred, placid neighbor was the hottest thing I’d ever seen in my whole life.

The music stopped, he kissed his tango partner on the side of her mouth. Something crooked and thorny poked into my heart—and even more so when the guests burst into a wild applause.

“Now that was some hot shit,” whispered Gareth in my ear. “Good thing you don’t want to date him, otherwise you’d have to stand in line for it.”

“Don’t you have some married woman you need to impregnate?” I said, my eyes never leaving Bennett.

I barely felt the big thwack on my back from Gareth. Bennett and the blonde vacated the dance floor. A crowd quickly surrounded them.

Club music throbbed again. “Hey, come on, Ava. Let’s dance,” one of Gareth’s friend’s called to me.

“You go ahead. I need to use the restroom.”

I asked my way to the powder room and stared at my little-black-dressed reflection in the mirror. My cheeks were flushed, my irises dilated; my breaths came in short bursts. I looked exactly like what I was: a woman flustered and very much aroused.

And in unholy need. If I didn’t have him right now, all the vibrators in the world wouldn’t make a dent in my libido.

Well, here went nothing.

Excerpted from ONE NIGHT STANDS by Sherry Thomas
Copyright © 2010 by Sherry Thomas. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.