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Victor wouldn’t be in here if she wasn’t. But I still can’t lean into the relief that realization offers because she should be with me.

For the next five minutes, my eyes jump from one corner of the room to the next, landing on everything and nothing.

Red dresses. Black suits. Fake smiles. No Delilah.

My already stiff jaw strains from the pressure of grinding my teeth.

Where is she?

Where is she?

Where is she?

“I can tell when I’m boring somebody.” In front of me, the mayor’s son laughs dryly. “Just give me a call Monday morning so we can finalize some things before my trip.”

With an absent nod, my feet begin carrying me to Victor. But that trip gets interrupted when a cloud of red fills my vision.

“Hey, Adonis.”

“Chiara.”

“Don’t look so happy to see me.” The flutter of her lashes is wasted on me. “I’m your fiancée, at least pretend to look moved by my presence.”

“What happened to France?” According to Victor’s last update regarding her whereabouts, she was in France. Marseille, to be exact. The same place she’d been for the past two months.

“I took a red eye back yesterday at your mother’s insistence,” she answers in a saccharine voice. “She thought it would be good for us to be seen together leading up to your official proposal. When is that happening, by the way?”

I’m not surprised to hear the shitty source of that advice is my mom, but it doesn’t alleviate the tightness bunching my shoulders, either.

Animosity doesn’t exist between me and my so-called future wife. My irritation stems from the situation in general. Falling for Delilah wasn’t supposed to be on my list of things to do before I walked down the aisle, but I did, and I can’t undo it. I don’t want to undo it.

Chiara lets out a long-suffering sigh I can hear over the low hum of music for the pre-dinner drink reception. Andwhen she shifts in her heels, I momentarily let my attention shift from searching for Delilah to taking her in.

The woman in front of me is beautiful. Some would even say stunning. But the only woman I want is the one I can’t find right now. The one who would be rolling her eyes at me instead of batting her lashes. The one who smells like strawberries and feels like my own personal hell.

I’m about to walk away and deal with the fallout later when Chiara’s voice and firm hand on my forearm lock me in place.

I look at her hand on my arm then back at her. Then I do it again before I shake my head and turn around to fully face her for a second time. “You flew home to make a statement when I didn’t tell you I wanted you here?”

Her brows jump at my strident tone, but she keeps her hand on my arm. And because I know people I can’t see are watching this exchange, I let her touch me.

“So tense. Don’t tell me that woman has you wound this tight.”

“If the woman you’re referring to is you, then yeah.”

Mischief and maliciousness battle for dominance on her face before she settles for something in between.

Over the years, Chiara and I have never spent…quality time together. But what we had established in the time we’d known each other was that our marriage would be one in name only. We’d exchanged enough words for her to be familiar with my boundaries, no matter how long ago I laid them out for her. Before tonight, she never put her hands on me because she knows I don’t like being touched. Before tonight, she never wanted to have a conversation with me because she hates my one-word answers. But the sneaky slant of her mouth is all I need to see to know she won’t be playing by the rules tonight.

So, I let her speak while I go back to scanning the room for a champagne gown and deep, golden-brown skin.

“I met her in the bathroom,” she says, her expression more affected than her tone lets on. “She’s a sweetheart. Looked kind of surprised when I told her we were engaged though.”

A dark and humorless laugh flows into the space between us, the sound enough to make Chiara break contact.

“I’m not engaged to you.”

Even though she isn’t touching me anymore, she’s still too close. That’s why I hear the subtle click of her tongue before she tells me, “Technically, we’ve been engaged all our lives. The ring would just be a formality at this point.”