Unravelled (Revealed #2) (34 page)

‘Do you want me to see you home?’ I asked, half out of concern and half hoping that she might say yes and give us a little more time together.

‘No.’ Her response was immediate, and the tone harsh enough to make me wince and get the message – she wanted to get away from me pronto. ‘I mean … I’ll be fine, thank you.’ At that moment, the cloakroom attendant reappeared with a black jacket, which Caitlin accepted and slid into, folding her shawl over her arm. ‘I’d better go. Thank you again, Jack.’ And with that she was turning to leave. Again. What was it with this woman and walking away from me?

My stubborn ego just wouldn’t accept her repeated rejections, not when I knew I’d seen interest in her body language. She liked me, I was sure of it, but something was holding her back. Knowing this I just couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t. Every molecule within my body was screaming at me to follow her and make sure she really was OK. ‘Caitlin, wait …’

Her retreating figure tensed, then paused and slowly rotated toward me. My stomach sank when I saw that her eyes were almost blank again, clouded only with caution and fear as if she were still living through the encounter of a few minutes ago.

Her arms wrapped tightly around herself, making her look so defensive that I knew if I pushed her now then I would lose any future chance of getting to know her. Tensing my fists, I held back from moving towards her, and instead tried to smile at her reassuringly. ‘It was good to see you again. Goodnight.’

She gave one slow blink and a faint nod before turning and heading toward the door again. Letting her walk away was the hardest thing I’d done for a long time, but as Caitlin pushed through the exit, all I could do was stand there and let her go.

Allie

There was a definite possibility that my heart actually stopped for a few seconds when I saw Savannah Hilton, Sean’s wafer-thin, willowy, and utterly stunning co-star (and fiancée, as far as the world was concerned), as she elegantly entered the gallery and strutted straight through the crowd to join him. I say strutted because there is no other way to adequately describe the way that woman moved her hips. It was like liquid sex moving through the room.

Unable to tear my gaze away, I watched in sick fascination as her fingers immediately sought Sean’s hand and intertwined with his, but took some small satisfaction from noticing how his smile was tight and strained.

Letting out a long, loud sigh, I took a large swig of my champagne as I continued to watch them. Savannah looked beautiful, obviously. She did on screen and it seemed no different in real life. In fact, I suspected that if you knocked on her door at four in the morning, she would still look as perfectly groomed as she did now. Bloody bitch.

I instinctively found myself looking for any signs of chemistry between them. Savannah was certainly playing up nicely for the cameras, and seemed keen to be as close to Sean as physically possible, although she definitely looked a little edgy. Sean, on the other hand, was a wholly different story; his entire being radiated tension. Apart from the fact that he was allowing her to drape all over him, which irked me no end, he seemed completely ambivalent towards her.

A muscle flickered along his jaw as Savannah slipped her arm through his, wrapped her other across his stomach, and plastered herself to his side, and in response I felt my heartbeat rise with jealousy. Bitch. But why was he letting her touch him so intimately? Surely a cursory handhold would have been enough. But no, he was standing back while she practically humped him in public.

Narrowing my eyes I watched them closely, unable to tear my gaze away as they were approached by a photographer for some sort of interview. My observations were disrupted by a man who stepped almost right into my line of sight and beamed at me.

‘Hey, I’m Austin. I saw you standing on your own and wondered if you’d like a little company?’ I was about to knock him back but then I caught a glimpse of Sean looking our way, shooting the guy a death stare, and I paused. I’d never been one for manipulating situations to my advantage, and I’d certainly never considered the possibility of using one man’s advances to snare the attention of another … until now. Sean looked livid, barely managing to keep his attention on the photographer, but as mad as he might be, his flipping arm was still curled around Savannah’s waist and that was enough to spur me into being a little reckless.

‘Uh, OK, that would be nice,’ I said, smiling at the guy. He was good looking, if you liked them well preened and clean cut, but he was perhaps a little too groomed for my liking. His blond hair was parted and slicked back, chin cleanly shaven, and he had bright green eyes the colour of moss.

Over the course of the next few minutes, Austin managed to get closer and closer to me until the only way he could have closed the gap further would have been to actually climb on top of me. I tolerated it, because although it was immature (and not very fair) I hoped it was giving Sean a taste of his own medicine.

He’d touched my shoulder several times during our talk, and brushed his fingers on my forearm at one point, but I tensed when Austin slid a hand around my waist. This was getting a little beyond a casual flirt to make Sean jealous. The feel of Austin’s fingers lightly caressing my hip gradually increased in pressure until it made me feel so guilty that I actually felt a little sick.

Making my excuses, I escaped to the bar for some space, but no sooner had I leant my elbow on the cool marble surface than I became aware of an angry wall of heat advancing to my right. I didn’t even need to look to know it was Sean. I could feel him in every molecule of my body as they united in the joint desire to reach out to him.

Glancing at him, I felt my stomach drop when I saw the hard, bitter expression on his face. He wasn’t even looking at me. Instead his eyes stared straight ahead, paying me no heed whatsoever. I was so stunned by his dismissal that it took a second or two to work out that Sean actually was looking at me, via the mirror mounted above the bar.

Connecting my gaze with his in the glass, I saw his furious glare and felt my hackles rising as I replayed the last half hour’s worth of memories, all of which involved him having his arm around, or touching, Savannah as she fawned over him like a doe-eyed, love-sick teenager.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ he ground out between clenched teeth.

He was annoyed. Good, he bloody deserved a bit of payback for tonight. ‘I’m ordering a drink,’ I replied coolly, not rising to his bait.

‘I meant with that dickhead who had his hands all over you.’

Turning marginally so I could see Sean in person, I saw the murderous expression on his face and flinched, but still managed to force out a shrug, acting as nonchalant as I could.

‘I have no idea what you mean. He’s talking to me. I’m talking back. It’s called polite conversation. He might have put his hand around my waist briefly, I don’t really remember.’ I knew I was playing with fire, but I just couldn’t help myself.

‘He definitely did put his hands on you, and not just on your fucking hip,’ Sean snarled, his head snapping away from the mirror and making direct eye contact with mine.

We might have been mad at each other, but the chemistry between us was just as intense as ever, and as our eyes met unflinchingly, tension seemed to crackle in the small gap that separated our bodies. I was fairly sure that if we had been alone, there would have been some magnificent angry sex taking place right about now.

The strength of his stare made my heart accelerate, but I was so angry with him that I tried not to let it faze me. ‘Well, it looks like we’re even, doesn’t it? He has his hands on me, and you have your hands on Savannah,’ I spat, our heated glowers clashing as our whispered row threatened to escalate into a full-on shouting match.

My remark was met with complete silence from Sean as some of the anger seemed to slip from his face to be replaced with … something I couldn’t quite name. His eyes flickered around my face before he blinked, long and slowly, an action I found mesmerising.

‘Is this just a game to you?’ he asked quietly, shaking his head. It was then that I recognised his new emotion – disappointment. He was disappointed in me. That was so much worse than anger and I felt my earlier bravado wither and die.

As this horrible realisation sank in, I watched as Sean ripped his gaze from mine and stared down at the counter. ‘Because it certainly isn’t a game to that guy you’ve been flirting with for the last half hour.’

I was suddenly feeling on the back foot, not liking the way his judgement was making me feel, because deep down, I knew he was right, and I was disappointed in myself too.

‘Nothing happened, and nothing will happen. We were just talking,’ I murmured, trying to justify my actions and knowing that my inner turmoil showed in my trembling voice.

‘Yeah? You might want to tell that to the fucking hard on he’s been rocking for you,’ Sean said in disgust as he began to turn away from me. ‘I’ll let you get back to him. If you’re lucky he’ll still have a semi, so that’ll save you some work later on.’

I knew his disgusting words were thrown at me out of hurt and jealousy – or maybe he really was disgusted with me – but either way they made me panic and I quickly tried to reach out for his wrist. ‘Sean …’ He flinched slightly, but then with a brief flick of his arm he disengaged my hand and continued away from me.

Shit. Shit. Shit. What the hell had I just done? Flashing my eyes around wildly, I saw Sean was now back at Savannah’s side, his arm firmly around her waist and her body practically tucked against him.

What a sight. It made me feel so sick that I ended up grimacing. I bet perfect Savannah would never make a face like this. On top of his blatant display of supposed affection, he also appeared to be pointedly ignoring me, his body angled away and fully focused on Savannah and the man they were currently talking to. Not that I could really blame him; I’d been a complete cow.

God, talk about a major backfire – it seemed that somehow instead of tempting him to come to me, I’d actually managed to push him firmly into her arms, which Savannah was clearly loving.

So Sean was in the perfect, possessive arms of his waif ex-girlfriend who obviously wanted him back, and I was standing on the side-lines with an ugly, scrunched-up face like a complete spare part.

To make matters worse, I saw Austin moving in towards me again with a narrow-eyed smirk on his face, so sending him a quick apologetic wince across the gap between us, I turned to make my escape. Dashing haphazardly through the crowds, I bumped into random elbows and spilt at least three people’s champagne until I finally saw the sanctuary of the exit looming ahead of me and made a dive for it.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Allie

Bursting from the gallery door and into the cool of the night air, I stumbled forward almost blindly as tears blurred my vision. Before I could take more than a few steps away from the gallery, I found myself being yanked sharply backwards by a tight grip on my elbow that had me staggering around in my high heels as if I were drunk. Which I wasn’t.

Idiotic, yes. But drunk? Sadly, no.

‘Careful, Allie! Bloody hell, you nearly ran straight into the traffic. What the hell is the matter?’ Cait. My shoulders sagged in relief. After basically throwing my love life down the toilet, my best friend was a welcome sight right now and I promptly threw myself into her arms and began to sob loudly.

‘Whoa! Hey … hey, shhh, it’s OK,’ she said soothingly, patting my back.

Poor Cait, I’m sure she didn’t know what had hit her, but I proceeded to snivel, hiccup, and cling to her as I tried to cry out my stupidity and the ever-growing fear that I’d just royally screwed things up with Sean.

When I was finally able to speak, I leant back and drew in a shaky breath. ‘It’s not OK, but thank you for trying to make me feel better.’ Giving her a watery smile I licked my lips and checked the road for any signs of a taxi. ‘I want to get away from here. Can we go back to the hotel?’

‘I’m just waiting for my cab, but they just texted to say it’ll be at least twenty minutes because there’s a traffic delay.’ Giving me an assessing look, Cait jerked her thumb across the road and towards a bar. ‘Want to go and get a drink and you can tell me what’s wrong?’

Blowing out a huge breath, I ran my hands over my hair to smooth it, but grimaced. ‘I must look a right state.’ Pulling a small packet of wet wipes from her handbag, Cait set about cleaning under my eyes for me and then stepped back with a satisfied smile.

‘You look fine. We’ll find a quiet corner and I can tell you about the huge mistake I probably just made.’

Her words made my composure crack and I laughed, loud, and hard and slightly manically. ‘You made a huge mistake? That makes two of us, because I have just majorly fucked things up with Sean.’ Seeing the expectant concern on her face, I rolled my eyes. ‘Let’s get inside and I’ll tell you.’

I linked my arm through Cait’s elbow, and we made our way across the road and into the bar. It was small, but thankfully relatively empty. As promised, she settled me into a quiet corner and disappeared to get us some drinks before returning with two glasses of house white just a minute later.

‘You want to go first?’ Cait asked, a sad smile twitching on her lips.

Shaking my head adamantly, I took a sip of my wine and practically sighed with delight as the liquid parched my dry throat. ‘No. Whatever you’ve done can’t be as bad as mine, you go first.’

‘OK … well, I talked to Jack,’ she started tentatively, and I nodded. ‘Again.’ She emphasised this word and began to fiddle with the stem of her wineglass. ‘I kept thinking about our near kiss, so it was a bit awkward at first but not too bad.’ Cait sighed.

Reaching across, I gave her hand a gentle squeeze before asking the question I’d been dying to know since I’d watched them in the bar. ‘Did he ask you out again?’

She was chewing on her lower lip, yet another sign of her anxiousness. ‘No. But he did try to give me his number,’ she confessed much to my excitement, until I picked up on her use of the word ‘try’.