Page 33

“Dare I ask?” Matthew hands me a fresh glass.

I laugh as I fib, a half lie, half truth slipping from my lips. “Just girl talk. I quite like your mother, Matt. She’s progressive.”

“You’re two of a kind,” he murmurs, pouring champagne. “There are about sixty seconds left in 1919, Katarina. What should we toast to?”

I raise my glass, clinking the edge to his. The crystal ding is ringing and pure.

“To the 1920s,” I decide. “And to us. ”

“To us in the 1920s. Together,” Matthew amends. His eyebrows lift, his silent question hanging in the air. The crowd is counting down the seconds around us, but I’m locked on him. Their voices fade to a dull roar.

“To us in the 1920s,” I repeat slowly, tasting the words. “Together.”

I toss back the drink. Matthew’s eyes flicker, then hold on me. He takes his own tiny sip, then a slow breath. “Katarina, I—”

An explosion rockets into the air, and my gaze snaps away from his face. Gold erupts in a fiery blast overhead as the crowd screeches, “Happy New Year!”

Breathless, I turn back to Matthew. The burnished glow of the fast-fading opening salvo illuminates his face.

Wordlessly, his right hand wends behind my neck and into my hair.

He presses his lips to mine as the next firework launches.

The explosion is both in me and around me, overhead and underfoot.

“Happy New Year, Kat,” he murmurs against my lips.

My heart explodes into the sky.

Matthew deposits me at the door to my room in Cherokee Cottage shortly after the fireworks display concludes.

“Is this goodnight then?” I whisper, checking up and down the hallway for an audience. I sense the ghost of Ethan’s presence, just one crass joke or lewd insinuation away.

“It is.” Matthew squeezes my hand. “Gentlemanly best behavior, remember? Those were the terms of the deal.”

I crack my door. Raise a suggestive brow. “Perhaps I’d like to renegotiate.”

“Don’t tempt me, Katarina,” he rumbles, moving a few inches closer .

“I can be pretty persuasive.” I’m whispering again, even though the hallway is most certainly empty.

“And I’m a pushover,” he replies. “We’ve been here before.”

I latch my fingers into his lapels and yank. “I seem to remember winning .”

Matthew stumbles into me. One hand moves, magnetized and possessed, to my hip. But the other stubbornly grips my doorframe, stopping our backward momentum.

He grits his teeth, exhaling barely an inch from my lips. “Not this time, Kat.”

I pout and peer up through long lashes, giving him my very best nonverbal plea.

He laughs before kissing me, and somehow, it’s deliciously sweet and terribly, terribly sinful all at once. Full of things promised but not given. When he pulls back, I’m left wanting.

“Matthew DaMolin, I do declare,” I breathe, eyes searching. “I think you were the most unexpected twist of 1919.”

He chuckles again. “That’s high praise, coming from you. And you know what? I like knowing I’m both your last kiss of 1919 and the first of 1920. I like when you belong only to me, Kat.”

I jolt, surprised to realize it’s the first time I’ve thought of Paul all night. It’s strangely damning, that realization. I run from it.

“Is being my first kiss of 1920 all you want, Matthew?”

“I’m not sure, but I’m not going to stay long enough to find out. Goodnight, Kat.”

I’m disappointed when he moves away, but I step back over the threshold to my room nonetheless. “Goodnight, Matt.”

When the door clicks shut between us, I sigh and slump forward against it, then close my eyes, thinking and breathing .

Paul, invited in by Matthew, slinks to the forefront of my mind. Looming. Prowling. The specter of countless New Year’s kisses flits across my lips. I squeeze my eyes against the guilt.

Guilt, but not regret.

I breathe in and out, reliving the night in my mind.

The feel of Matthew’s tuxedoed arm beneath my fingers, the bright white of the bow tie against his neck.

The luxurious taste of champagne gliding down my throat.

The live wire of laughter buzzing from Constance Pulitzer’s lips to my ear.

The persistent glitter in the periphery of my vision, the glitter of priceless gemstones flashing about the room.

And me, walking through the wealthiest sea of people on the planet, somehow belonging there.

Belonging in this place, where poets and vagabonds go to die.

Where I used to think only the soulless live, people worth stealing from because they, in their ivory towers, deserve it. And maybe some—most—of them do.

But Matthew is here. And when I’m with him…

When I’m with him, everything I thought I knew and believed about the world has an annoying tendency to go sideways.

I don’t like these thoughts. Don’t like them one bit.

I peel myself off the door and go to the mirror instead.

I stare at my reflection, and God help me, I like what I see.

This woman in a white gown, who can hold her own at parties on Matthew DaMolin’s arm and breathe the same cigar-tainted air as Jack Morgan… I like her.

I am her, aren’t I?

The swirling, blurring lines of the con and the truth choke me. I’ve told Matthew so few lies and so many truths, yet an ocean of things unsaid still swells between us. And I wonder what would happen if I simply…let him see everything? Am I really so bad for wanting to have it all?

I shiver, chastised by the thought.

He would leave, you silly girl, I tell myself. If he knew the whole truth, he would be gone in a heartbeat. Expect nothing less.

You aren’t meant to be seen, Katarina. My mother’s haunting voice. If he can’t see you, he'll never catch you, will never leave you.

I spin away from the mirror in a swirl of skirts. These are dangerous thoughts, and I don’t want to be alone with them tonight. I simply can’t stand it.

In three strides, I’m back at my door, slipping soundlessly into the hallway.

It’s pitch dark, but Matthew’s bedroom is just a few paces away.

My heart rate ratchets up as the familiar thrill of evading detection rises.

I slink down the hall, pausing outside his door.

There’s a faint, flickering glow, a lit candle perhaps.

I don’t knock, don’t think; I just wrap my fingers around the knob and turn.

I blink twice as I slip inside, adjusting to the candlelight.

Then twice more as I take in the jarring sight before me.

Two bodies twined in each other. Two tuxedo jackets haphazardly tossed, abandoned, on the bed.

Two joined silhouettes in dim light—one standing, head tipped back, mouth slackened, the other kneeling, head pressed to waist. A pair of pants around a set of ankles, thick black socks stretching over calves.

Calves transitioning into powerful thighs, a bare waist, broad shoulders, a familiar jawline, dark hair…

Not Matthew’s room, I realize. Ethan’s.

Ethan with shocked eyes and mouth agape, his gaze whipping toward me. Harry Astor, falling back on kneeling haunches in horrified surprise.

“Fuck,” I gasp. “Holy fuck.” I slam a hand over my eyes and scuttle backward through the door. “I’m sorry…I didn’t…I’m sorry!”

I slam Ethan’s door in a fluster and fly down the hallway to my own room. With trembling fingers, I thrust open the door, then shut it behind me.

Holy. Fuck .

Ethan and Harry Astor? I rub my hands over my face, trying to scrub away what I just witnessed.

I’ve seen all types in the Catacombs. Men loving men is not foreign to me, doesn’t shock me the way it might some. Christ, I’ve seen Tony swing both ways.

But Ethan ? Womanizing, incorrigible Ethan? Heir to the DaMolin empire—that Ethan?

It doesn’t add up. It plain and simply doesn’t make sense.

Except…except I saw Ethan at Harry’s house, all those months ago, in the dead of night. When we were casing Astor Manor. I watched them share a cigarette before disappearing inside together.

A quiet knock sounds at my door.

Fuck. “Come in,” I murmur. I swallow hard as—a mercifully fully-clothed—Ethan slips inside.

“To avoid future confusion,” he begins, clearing his throat, “Matt’s room is the last door at the end of the hall. Mine is second to last.”

My cheeks burn. “Ah. Got it.”

We’re both quiet, staring at the other. The secret hanging between us chokes the air from the room.

“Kat, about what you saw—”

I raise a hand to stop him. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Kat—”

“Honestly, Ethan,” I say. “I saw nothing. I’ll say nothing. I stayed in my room all night, slept the best sleep of my life here at Cherokee. That’s all anyone will ever hear from me.”

“Thank you.” He sighs, stepping deeper into the room. He leans on the wall and closes his eyes. “It’s nothing anyway. Harry made that very clear before he departed. We won’t see each other again.”

“I–I’m really sorry,” I stammer. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s not your fault, Kat,” he mumbles. “Harry and I were reckless. We’re usually faultlessly careful—as military men, as gentlemen , we have to be—but it’s New Year’s, and we’re both a bit corked.

We were asking for trouble. But as I told you, it won’t happen again.

It’s best we all just forget it. Move on. ”

“What you do in your own room of your own house isn’t anybody’s business but your own,” I insist.

He smiles sadly at me. “It’s not my house yet, Kat. It may never be.”

“Well, that would be an absolute travesty. One I would never forgive your parents for.”

Ethan looks at me then, really looks. His gaze sweeps me from head to toe, assessing, burning a trail across my skin. He pushes himself off the wall and comes closer, a slight frown on his face as his hand reaches for my head. My instinct is to pull away, but I freeze.

“You really aren’t like the others, are you?” he murmurs. His fingers come to rest on my ear. He tweaks gently at Matthew’s gifted earrings. “Or are you? These are real diamonds. Where the hell did you get these, Catacomb girl?”

My cheeks bleed pink again. “They’re from your brother.”

“From Matthew ?” He drops his hand, incredulous. “Just how serious are you about my brother, Kat?”

“Um.” I lick my lips.

“What I mean is, he’s not just a meal ticket?”

“No!” Everything in me clenches against the accusation. I look at him with hard eyes, ready to rip his throat out for even suggesting it.

Ethan watches me, meeting my fire head-on. After a moment, he blinks in surprise and steps back. “Oh. Wow.”

“Wow, what?” My stomach turns over, wondering which part of me has been found out—the side playing Matthew or the one falling in love with him. I don’t know which I’m more afraid of .

Ethan has moved all the way back to my door. His fingers close blindly around the knob, and suddenly, teasing cocksure Ethan is back. A devilish smile blooms. “A secret for a secret, right? I won’t tell if you won’t, Katarina.”

“Tell what?” My brows are sharp.

“Exactly.” He winks. “I shouldn’t be here. This has the makings of a terrible scandal. Goodnight, Katarina. See you around. And…take care of Matthew, okay?”

The barest hint of softening flashes in his eyes before he departs. Vulnerability. There and gone in an instant.

I’m not entirely sure how a moment that was supposed to be about Ethan’s hidden love turned into one about my own, but darned if that man didn’t manage it.

A secret for a secret, I muse. What a dangerous little game.