Irresistible by Liz Bankes Page B

just learned to walk.”
    I try to think of something funny and biting to say, but my brain is mostly full of swirling, so I just roll my eyes.Cleo sits on the arm of Jamie’s chair, and the girl who was previously on the other arm scuttles away. I sink down to sit on what I realize too late is not a chair, but a footstool.
    “Please, God, let’s do something interesting,” he says to the room in general. “What do you have for me? Who’s played the game?”
    A girl with frizzy hair and unfortunately large teeth springs to her feet. “I’ve got something!”
    “Ah, Christina. I asked you to do something for me, didn’t I? What did I ask you to do?”
    “To … to mess with Lady Michaels.”
    “Now, Joseph,” says Jamie, leaning over close enough for me to feel his breath, “we don’t like Lady Michaels. Lady Michaels was awfully rude to my mother.” I feel all the eyes in the room swivel in my direction.
    “I, uh, got, um, chatting to Lord Michaels,” Christina says and snorts.
    “Lord Michaels. Excellent choice. He’s a sucker for a young girl’s face. Even yours, Christina.”
    “I know!” Christina nods her head, eyes wide, missing the insult. “He sent me pictures of his thingy!”
    She hands her phone to Jamie, who looks at it and winces. “That’s a lot to put up with for a title. Connors?”
    “Yup.” A small guy with a pale, pinched face stands up and then seems to shrink on realizing he has the attention of the room. My vision is less blurry now, but I’ve got a cloud of pain churning in my head.
    “Could you see to it that these pictures are uploaded to the homepage of Platinum PR? A slideshow would be nice, with captions to explain that these are images sent by the CEO’s husband to a seventeen-year-old.”
    Howls of appreciation go up from the room. Connors takes the phone and busies himself in a corner at an iMac.
    “Another marriage wrecked. Well done, Jay,” says Cleo sweetly.
    “A cold, vacuous one,” Jamie says. “It’s her career that matters to her.”
    The words are flowing past me and I can’t process them.
    “You guys are weird,” I eventually manage.
    Jamie looks at me, and for a second I think he’s moving his head from side to side, which would be an odd thing for him to do. Then I realize it’s my drunk brain.
    Meanwhile, a rowdy conversation has broken out. Apparently the redhead, Willem, has an attractive mother, and everyone is one-upping each other with what they’d do to her. The boy with the black spiky hair is acting it out, graphically. Willem’s cheeks turn pink and he snaps, “I bet that’s what you do to your own mom.”
    The black-haired guy leans in close to him. “I’m not pussy enough to let people talk about my mom that way.”
    Jamie stands up. “No, Guy, no one talks about your mom that way, because she’s fat and unattractive. Now, could you all go home? I want to go to bed.”
    I steady myself on the footstool. Now to try to get myself to the servants’ quarters, ideally without waking up any guests and definitely without waking up Julia. As the crowd leaves, Guy is muttering something, and I catch the word “sister.” Jamie does too, and he watches him leave. I see a flicker of something in his eyes that is sharp and not like his usual bored expression.
    “You can stay here,” he says to me.
    I start to protest, but he interrupts by throwing me a blanket.
    “Keep your pants on. I meant on the sofa.”
    “What if I don’t want to?”
    “Then, by all means, take your pants off.”
    “Give her some pajamas, Jay,” says Cleo, emerging from the bedroom wearing a white negligee that comes down only to the top of her thighs.
    Jamie tosses me a bundle of clothes, which I unravel into a T-shirt and some boxers. I go to the bathroom and get changed. Looking at myself in the mirror, I get a vision of me standing next to Cleo. Her light brown skin sets off the startling white of the silk resting on it. She almost shimmers. I have