Ember (7 page)

“I know I didn’t invite Lofi, but you could if you wanted to,” Ivy suggested hesitantly enough for Candra to know she was just being polite, but that the question was leading somewhere.

“I don’t think I’ll be doing that somehow.”

“Or Sebastian?”

And…that’s where it was leading to.
Candra sighed, pushing herself off her bed to go to her closet. “I won’t be inviting either of them. Ivy…” She stopped. She didn’t know what to say to Ivy about Lofi and Sebastian or how she should explain their abrupt and overwhelming presence in her life. “They’re…well, they’re different. I don’t think they are the partying type.”

“Different how?” Ivy asked curiously, and Candra imagined her narrowed eyes would be appraising her if they were speaking in person.

Candra was silent for the longest time. She didn’t know how to explain, and she certainly couldn’t bring herself to tell Ivy any semblance of the truth. It was all too ludicrous.

“Just different.”

Ivy hummed dubiously at her evasiveness. Candra wasn’t surprised.

“You are very cryptic lately.”

With that, Ivy cut off suddenly, and Candra rolled her eyes dramatically. Ivy never said goodbye, something she’d picked up from too many television shows and movies where the characters always ended calls in that way.

Chapter Five

Exactly fifty-eight minutes later, Candra pulled up in a cab outside an enormous brownstone. Sneaking out was every bit as difficult as she anticipated. The hushed conversation downstairs continued, although she heard the front door open and close twice in the last hour, first with a low bang and a few minutes later with quieter swish. She used the small fire escape at the back of the house to get out; it wasn’t the first time she’d done so. There were several parties last summer that Candra knew Brie wouldn’t approve of, but Candra had made sure she didn’t miss. them

She followed a guy and girl up the steps to the door; they had the distinct appearance of a couple who had seen more than one party that night already. The guy’s legs weren’t exactly steady, and his hand was firmly placed on the butt of the girl, who wasn’t wearing much in the way of clothing.

The party was loud and crowded. Philip’s parents often went away on foreign trips, leaving him very much to his own devices with only house staff for company. As a result, most of the people here had been in attendance at more than one of Philip’s parties.

Every square inch of space was occupied by bodies: there were teenagers making out with abandon against the walls, on the stairs, and in every corner. A makeshift dance floor had been set up in the huge, marble-floored foyer. Candra peered into the dining room where a girl was dancing on the long, oval mahogany table surrounded by a rapt audience that was whooping and cheering her on.

Candra didn’t see Ivy in there. There was no sign of her, and Candra wasn’t sure she’d be able to find her when she didn’t know where to start looking. She fished her phone out of the small purse she was carrying and was just about to put it to her ear when fingers trailed across the back of her neck. She stiffened and turned sharply with her heart pounding in her chest.

“Crap, Philip! You frightened the life out of me!”

“Oops.” He sniggered. His dark hair was mussed like he hadn’t been too careful about running his fingers through it, and his eyes were blood shot. His crumpled shirt had become untucked on one side, and Candra wondered which unfortunate girl had been the object of his latest advances.

“Where’s the beer hiding?” she asked, keeping her hand pressed to her chest where it felt like her heart had tried to explode out of her ribcage.

“It hasn’t been that long. I’m sure you still remember where I keep everything.”

Candra ignored the suggestive tone of his voice. “Kitchen?”

“Yup.” He took a long sip from the red cup he was holding, attempting to keep his eyes trained on Candra the entire time and failing embarrassingly.

“Okay! Well, thanks for the stimulating conversation yet again, Philip,” she said caustically, wondering how in the world she had ever found him attractive.

Around graduation they had spent every available moment at these parties, making out. Of course, that was when he wasn’t too busy making out with any other piece of female flesh he could get his hands on behind her back. By the time the weather had heated, Candra had cooled and gotten tired of Philip, putting the whole thing down to a behavioral anomaly.

Candra had gotten off lightly. Father Patrick had caught Ivy kissing one of Philip’s friends against the outside wall of the college. According to what Ivy told Candra, it was impromptu and innocent, but it had smeared Ivy with a bad reputation. As far as Candra knew, it had been Ivy’s very first kiss. Ivy’s parents had gotten a phone call from Father Patrick to tell them how their daughter had brought the school into disrepute because she was still wearing her uniform at the time. Candra remembered that Philip found the whole situation highly amusing. It was another incident in the list of reasons she had no interest in talking to him right now.

Philip slid the palm of his clammy hand over Candra’s bare shoulder and pushed her back against the wall. He didn’t use force, but it was accidentally hard enough to wind her a little. “What’s the rush?” He slurred a bit.

She shrugged her shoulder forward. “You’re drunk,” Candra accused, “and I told you, months ago, what we were doing is over.”

“Why?” He smirked as he played with a lock of her hair, twisting his finger through it slowly and staring at her passionately…or attempting to focus. She wasn’t sure which.

“Okay, let’s just see, shall we?” Candra spat, crossing her arms over her chest and instantly releasing them by her side again when his drunken, lusty gaze dropped to the cleavage her action had managed to create from her modest breasts. “We had nothing in common, you told your friends every last detail of everything that went on between us, you cheated…repeatedly, and you’re an idiot. Pick one.”

“Come on, you can’t say we had nothing in common,” he teased, raising an eyebrow and apparently choosing to ignore the rest of her reasoning.

Philip’s finger loosened from her hair, but instead of moving back, he ran it haphazardly across her exposed collarbone. Candra didn’t budge; there was no need. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t touched her there before, or other more intimate places. She knew he was only testing the water to see how far he could push her. From experience she knew he wanted to see her react, but she had no intention of showing him any response at all. She kept her expression neutral. Her fingertips pressed into the flocked wall-covering behind her. Candra kept her attention on the feeling of her palms flattening against the wall, refusing to think about how close Philip’s lower body was to hers.

There were people all around them, but Candra supposed to anyone else they probably appeared just the same as most of the other couples acting inappropriately in company. Philip’s fingertip trailed lower over the mound of her breast. That was taking it too far, and she began to contemplate if a well-placed, hard slap would sober him up. She opened her hand by her side in readiness, but she was too late.

Before Candra got a chance to take a shot, another hand appeared from nowhere and lifted Philip’s away.

“I don’t think you want to do that.”

Her eyes darted to a tall muscular guy she didn’t recognize, standing almost between her and Philip. She was sure if she had seen
him
before she would have remembered.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” Philip gasped, his eyes widened in shock. “This is my party.”

The guy lowered his face calmly so he was level with Philip, still retaining his grip, and looked directly into his eyes. “Which is precisely why you should show some respect to your guests. Like I said, I don’t think you want to do that.” His tone was menacing in its calmness, without any trace of attitude. His long-sleeved T-shirt was bunched to his elbows, and Candra couldn’t help watching the veins pop and the lines of his tensed muscle on his forearm as his grip intensified on Philip’s hand.

“I don’t want to do that,” Philip repeated after him like a puppet.

The guy smiled casually, making his navy-colored eyes crease a little at the corners. “You’re drunk, Philip. Maybe you just need to crash for a bit?”

Much to Candra’s surprise, when he eventually released Philip’s arm, Philip slapped the top of the guy’s arm like there were old friends, despite the fact that Candra felt as if she could have cut through the eerie tension hanging in the air between the three of them with a dull knife. They could have been friends, she reasoned. It wasn’t like Philip made a point of introducing any of his friends to her, but she was sure she still would have seen him around somewhere.

“Yeah, I probably do need a time out,” Philip agreed stupidly and then turned back to Candra. “Hey, I’m sorry, Candra. You know I didn’t mean any harm.”

“Eh, yeah.” She snickered. His sudden change of demeanor from drunken-demented-wolf to kid-caught-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar was incredibly bizarre. “Just messing around, right?”

“Right,” he determined with a nod of his head, not picking up on her sarcasm at all before he backed off and went off on his merry way.

Candra straightened out her hair and did a quick inventory to check that all her clothes were still in place.

“You don’t have to thank me.” The guy grinned smugly as if he was Lancelot and he’d just rescued Guinevere from a ragging army of barbarians, instead of Candra from a sleazy ex.

“I wasn’t going to,” she shot back confidently. “I was handling it perfectly well by myself, thanks”

“Well, you’re welcome, and it didn’t look that way to me.” He crossed his arms and followed his remark with a deep chuckle she could barely hear over the music that had just gone up a notch in volume.

She knew she was being rude. It wasn’t this guy’s fault that Philip could be a pain in the ass; he was probably born that way, or it was some shot they issued to guys in secret once they reached puberty.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I know you were trying to help.”

“Rough day?” He smiled. “And you weren’t being rude.” He was so sincere that it was totally disarming, and she couldn’t rip her eyes away as she watched him pull up his sleeves that had come down, revealing even more of his deeply tanned forearms. “I like it when a girl can take care of herself.”

Candra nodded and gulped, mouthing a hello to a girl from school that passed by checking out his ass. She wanted to ask if the girl had seen Ivy but couldn’t bring herself to leave her new friend in the middle of a conversation, if that was what they were having.

“I’m Daniel,” he said loudly, bringing his face momentarily near her ear and she secretly thanked the DJ when Daniel’s hot breath hit her neck.

When he stepped back, his lips pulled in a delicious lopsided grin. His eyes were the most unusual color: a deep, penetrating midnight blue, framed in the longest jet black lashes she’d ever seen. Candra had the sudden urge to brush away a clump of his straight black hair that fell across them. As if on cue, he flicked his head and then combed it away with fingers.

“Candra,” she called back in a voice that was surprising raspy.

He placed his hand out to shake hers in a very formal gesture. Worried that she had already been rude once, she took it. His skin was warm. It wasn’t soft, but it wasn’t rough either, and she couldn’t help liking the way it felt against hers.

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Candra. Maybe I’ll see you around?”

“Eh, yeah,” Candra stammered. She didn’t actually want him to go anywhere, or at the very least, she wouldn’t have minded an invitation to go along with him.

It was absurdly endearing the way his mouth was slightly uneven when he smiled, revealing a perfect set of Hollywood-white teeth. Candra found herself toying with the idea of asking him if he wanted to have a drink, a dance…or to be the father of her children.

He started to lift her hand, stroking the back of it with a featherlight touch of his fingers and at the same time lowering his face a little. He was going to kiss her hand—did people even do that anymore? One of his hands held hers while the fingers of his other hand explored her skin, tracing the lines of the small veins and making the tiny hairs rise and her body shiver. She didn’t try to pull away; she simply watched him. It was like he was fascinated, as if he had never touched someone before that moment.

He turned Candra’s hand so it was palm up, running the very tip of his nose back and forth across her wrist, and inhaled. She was frozen and utterly dumfounded by the excitement rocketing through her body. Her heart thundered, drowning out the sound of the base vibrating through the room. She was mortified to realize she couldn’t remember what perfume she was wearing or if she was wearing any at all. She was even more mortified to realize she liked what he was doing. It was sensual in a way she had never experienced before, and it was making every nerve ending in her body come alive with the anticipation of where he would touch her next.

Without lifting his head, he looked up to Candra through mesmerizing black eyelashes. “You know, some believe that when you save someone’s life you are responsible for that life, that something much greater than both of you binds you together forever.” His breath caressed her skin with each word.

Candra sucked in a shaky breath. “You didn’t exactly save my life.”

He smiled the same half-smirk again before letting her hand go and standing straight. “Details.” He grinned.

Candra returned his smile tentatively; her stomach was doing triple somersaults.

“I think I will call you ‘my Candra’ from now on.”

Then she laughed, making his grin grow wider, which only made him more handsome. He seemed to like it when she laughed.

“You know that’s kind of on the very razor’s edge of cute and creepy?” Candra joked.

The smile abruptly dropped from his face, and his eyes moved around the room as if he was looking for something. Candra looked around too, seeing nothing but teenagers with raging hormones and too much alcohol.

“I’ll see you soon, my Candra,” he said without looking back to her and leaving her disappointed.

Candra watched him longingly as he disappeared into the crowd before shaking her head vigorously.

Damn it, Candra, what the hell is wrong with you?
Now was completely the wrong time for meeting a new guy. She had enough going on in her life as it was.

She did another circuit of the party, looking for Ivy, and twenty minutes later she still hadn’t found her. Ivy wasn’t answering her phone, but Candra guessed she couldn’t hear it.