“Look at the number of women standing there fawning all over him,” my assistant and best friend since grade school said, her head shaking, as she pointed a finger at my archnemesis across the room. “I’m actually embarrassed to be female right now.”

I pushed her arm down before he noticed and did something mortifying in response, like inform the entire room that I was in love with him or something. I wouldn’t put it past him. James Russo loved to embarrass and humiliate me. He’d been doing it since high school.

“Jeanine! Don’t draw his attention toward us. And I don’t want to look at him, or his fan club.” I groaned even though it was a lie, and she damn well knew it.

James Russo had grown up to be one hell of a gorgeous man. And I absolutely wanted to check him out, maybe even lose myself in a dirty fantasy or two, but I couldn’t admit that part. At least, not out loud. I was supposed to loathe his very existence. Despising James was as much a part of my DNA as my dark hair and Italian heritage.

“You totally want to look at him,” she teased. “Maybe then you’ll see how often he looks at you.”

Pivoting on my brand-new high heel, I turned to face my soon-to-be-former best friend if she didn’t pull it together, “James Russo does not look at me any more than I look at him. We hate each other, and you know this. You’ve always known this. He is the world’s worst human. If there were an award for it, he’d win. Why are you being so weird? Are you drunk?” I glanced around her at our stash of wine bottles still firmly in place on the ground, checking to make sure none were empty.

If anyone knew how much James and I couldn’t stand one another, it was Jeanine. She had grown up with the two of us, had been fully aware of our families’ mutual war, and had been caught in the middle of it on more than one occasion. While she sometimes placated me with subtle jabs and insults in James’s honor, she usually played the role of peacekeeper—or at least, she tried.

“I just wonder when you two will bury the hatchet, is all,” she said for, like, the fourteen thousandth time since we’d been born.

“Never,” I said, giving her the exact same response that I always had.

Burying the hatchet wasn’t an option in my family. Even if I wanted to, which I didn’t, it wasn’t allowed. My dad would disown me completely and make me change my last name before he ever forgave a Russo.