He studied her, a smile flirting with his lips.

Just as he was going to respond, though, Lynnette whispered, “It’s him.” Then her hand shot out. “Please, Ressa. You have to introduce me. Please. I’m dying. I . . .”

Baron turned his head at the same time as Ressa.

Her belly sank.

She thought maybe she’d just like to disappear as Baron lifted an arm. “Max. Trey. Why don’t you come over here? Trey has some . . . fans.”

He gave Ressa a charming smile. “Why don’t you join me for a drink while they chat? I swear, you really do look familiar to me.”

The look in his eyes made her skin crawl and she wanted, very badly, to put a lot of distance between them. “I already have a drink, Mr. Capstone,” she said, lifting hers and smiling.

He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, she pushed back from her chair, watching Trey and Max. A funny little twist of heat went through her at the sight of Trey.

Heat . . . and awkwardness.

“Max.” She looked at him first, managed to smile. Then she slid her gaze to Trey. His blue eyes were blank. Almost carefully so. “Mr. Barnes. If you two have a moment, I’ve got some friends who wanted to meet you. And . . . I . . . ah . . .”

Just get it out. Before he disappears and you can’t. If she didn’t say it, the words would burn inside her, like an open sore—festering and raw.

“I needed to apologize, for earlier. I’m sorry.”

Trey’s lids flickered.

You should have said yes, a small voice inside her murmured. Regret was a living, breathing thing inside her.

“So!” With a bright smile that she didn’t at all feel, Ressa turned around. “May I introduce Lynnette, Tori, and Ellie? We’ve been friends online for forever and once or twice a year, we try to hook up at one of these events. Guys, this is Max . . .” She moved to stand at his side, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. “And this is Trey Barnes. Sorry, Max, but it’s him they really want to talk to.”

Max chuckled. “That’s okay. I’m used to being tossed aside for the younger, better looking guys these days.”

She breathed out a nearly silent sigh of relief as Trey moved forward to talk to her friends.

“. . . join us?”

She blinked, caught off guard a few minutes later.

Max tightened the hand he’d laid on hers. “Ressa, are you feeling well?”

“I’m fine. My mind was just wandering. What were you saying?”

“We’re all getting sort of hungry and thought we’d order something.” Max cocked a thick brow. “Are you going to join us? We’ll need a few more chairs.”

“Oh. Well . . .” She shot a look around the table. “Um, no . . . no, I don’t think so.” She eased her hand away from Max and edged around Trey to grab her bag. She caught Lynnette’s eye and held her friend’s gaze, hard, for a long moment, before she turned around, her gaze skating past Trey to meet Max’s once more. “I’m actually heading to bed. I’m still dragging from that drive in. Raincheck?”

“Breakfast, right?” She glanced at her friends, saw the speculative glance in Lynnette’s eyes, saw Ellie opening her mouth—then wincing. Probably because Tori had just kicked her under the table.

“Breakfast!” Tori smiled. “You’re buying, remember. You owe us.”

Ressa bit back a groan and then nodded at the group in general, before turning on her heel.

She had a bottle of wine in her room. Ellie had brought it when she drove in from Albuquerque—her friend hated to fly and drove everywhere.

Ressa was going to crack that baby open and drink the whole—

“That was smooth.”

She practically came right out of her skin. Whirling around, she glared at Trey. He stood less than two feet away.

“You . . .” Heaving out a breath, she pressed a hand to her racing heart and then looked past him into the hotel restaurant. Max had settled into her seat and Baron was shouldering his way deeper into the crush.

Nobody looked their way. At all.

“Mr. Barnes—”

“It’s Trey,” he said, his voice mild.

Narrowing her eyes, she continued to speak. “Unless you needed something, I’d like to go on up to my room. My panel is at eight thirty in the morning. I don’t know who thought that was a good idea, but I need some sleep if I’m going to be functional.”

“Okay.” He shrugged. “I just wanted to tell you thanks for the coffee.”

As he cut around her, she reached up and pressed her fingers to her temples. “You are a very frustrating man, you know that?”

She watched as he turned around, still walking, backward. “So I’ve been told. You didn’t need to apologize. You didn’t know. We’ll just chalk it all up to an . . . awkward experience.”

Then he headed off down the hall.

She should have just let it go.

Just let it go at that. Really.

“Oh, it’s been an experience. Not really the kind I was shooting for, but yeah. It’s been an experience.”

This time, when he turned around, he didn’t keep walking backward. Instead, he moved toward her, his steps slow, his eyes thoughtful. “Yeah? Exactly what sort of experience were you shooting for?”

Ressa thought about the ring he’d worn, the one he’d taken off and how he’d stumbled and fumbled through trying to explain it.

She thought of the storm of emotion that had been in his voice, in his eyes. It wasn’t just grief—there was a storm of emotion that she couldn’t even begin to understand.

Then she thought about the faint smile that tugged at his lips, that heat she’d seen in his gaze.

Don’t. Just don’t—her common sense screamed.

“I’ve got wine in my room. I was going to drink the whole bottle. Want to save me from myself?”

“I don’t drink much these days,” he said softly. Then he blew out a breath. The words were laden with things unsaid. Then he shrugged. “But I can maybe keep you company.”

Chapter Ten

It took almost twenty minutes to get to her room, thanks to the crush at the elevators. During that twenty minutes, Trey waited for the voice of reason to ruin things.

Waited for that awkwardness that had accompanied the last three dates.

Waited for his gut to start to churn at the thought of sitting down over a drink—it did, every time. He dealt with it, smiled through it and handled the headache after.

Waited for a rush of guilt, for the elevator to get stuck, an earthquake, a meteor strike . . . anything that would signify this was just a bad, awful idea.

But with each minute that passed, he just wanted to be in her room—at this point, any room would do, so long as he had some privacy—because he was dying to touch her.

He didn’t know exactly what she was offering.

Part of him thought he did, and he was almost certain he was right, but Trey was a realist. He was also more likely to believe in the negative with some things, because it was easier that way. Disappointment sucked.

He was also fully aware that more than likely, even if she was interested in . . . anything, this was the most likely scenario—if she touched him, his brain was going to screw everything up and then he’d look like a basket case in front of a woman he wanted more than he wanted his next breath of air.

His hands were shaking.

To hide it, he shoved them into his back pockets as they waited for their turn to shuffle onto the elevator. Finally, they managed to wedge themselves in and then more people wedged themselves in after that. Trey found himself so close, he could have turned his head and he’d be able to bury his face in her hair. Soft, wild twists of curls . . . what would she do—

“Oh! Sorry!” There was a giggle, a squeal . . . and then like a bunch of dominos, people half fell, half crashed into others as the woman in the front continued to giggle. “Oopsie! Too marny—ah, too many marnis—too many martinis!”