“Listen, Greg, I….” My mind whirled for some kind of plausible excuse, but I couldn’t think of anything that would prevent him from dragging me upstairs.
A girl brushed by me, clutching her stomach and running for the washroom, and I knew exactly what to do.
“I don’t feel so great.” I staggered, and he turned to me as I bent over, holding my stomach. “Oh, God, I think I’m going to be sick.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw his face blanch. Yep, no guy wanted to see a chick throw up in the middle of a club. Especially not the guy currently responsible for me.
“Fuck,” he muttered and hauled me through the crowd to the women’s washroom.
I put my hand over my mouth and groaned. He slammed his palm into the washroom door. “I’ll wait here for you.”
I disappeared inside, and the second the door closed, I ran into a stall, took out my black V-neck dress and flats that were sticking partially out of my purse and quickly changed.
Grabbing a wad of toilet paper out of the stall, I wiped the red lipstick from my mouth then put the hair tie back in.
I came out of the stall and looked at myself in the mirror. Plain. Unsexy. Unnoticeable.
Perfect.
I hitched my purse over my shoulder and came out of the washroom keeping my head down. From the corner of my eye, I saw Greg look up, straighten then lean back against the wall when he realized it wasn’t the girl with the flowing red ringlets and unitard.
I hurried through the crowd and toward the back door. Just before the hallway, I chanced a glance up at the VIP section. That was when I saw him.
Killian. Holy shit. He stood leaning his hip against the glass railing.
He was talking to a girl with jagged, short blonde hair with tattoos down one arm. She wore a tight, sequined, black, spaghetti-strapped top and looked to be in her late twenties.
Her hand rested on his arm as she said something and he laughed, his head tilting back as he did it. I was too far away to hear it, but I didn’t need to. He looked good enough laughing without any sound. That was a good sign. It meant he’d probably not recognized me in the cage.
Killian’s eyes shifted from the girl, into the crowd below as if he’d known I was standing there. Any remnants of a grin disappeared, and his eyes narrowed.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I backed away then spun, banging into a guy. I muttered a fast apology and then as fast as I could, I ran for the back door.
Mars and Olivia were leaning up against the brick wall talking to one of the bouncers.
“Let’s go. Now.” I hurried out the back door and down the alley, not waiting to see if they followed me.
Mars jogged up beside me on one side and Olivia the other. I waved my arm out to a cab and it pulled over. Thank you, Toronto cabbies. You never had to go searching for a cab in this city.
We piled in and I gave him Mars’s address as she was closest to the club.
“What’s wrong?” Mars asked. “Something happen? Did you get in trouble?”
I shook my head. “No.”
Mars brows furrowed with concern. “You’re shaking.”
Because he did that to me. I had no control over my body around him, and it was utterly ridiculous. I felt ridiculous, damn it. I’d never felt this way with David. There were butterflies in the beginning and he’d been my instructor, so I was a bit in awe of him. Plus, David Knapp was handsome and a charmer. But it had taken a year of him asking before I agreed to date him.
“Killian was there.”
“Oh, shit,” Olivia said. “Did he see you?”
“I’m not sure. It was far away and it was crowded, so maybe he didn’t know it was me.” He totally knew it was me, but there was that smidge of hope he hadn’t recognized me.
“So what if he did,” Mars replied. “You’re out with your girls at Compass. Nothing wrong with that.”
True. And I wasn’t in the dance outfit. “Yeah.” And if he happened to be watching while I danced, he’d have never known it was me while wearing the mask and outfit.
What worried me was that there was a part of me that hoped he’d seen me dance and that maybe Killian Kane thought I was sexy.
Because no matter how many years it had been, or what he’d said to me at the concert, my lips still burned for him.
“So, what happened with that Savvy chick? You seeing her again?” Crisis asked as he came out onto Logan and Emily’s patio, holding two beers. He passed one to Ream then cracked the cap on his and the bottle hissed. “You talk to Brett about hiring her?”