“There’s a party next weekend,” Nick gritted out. He did not appear to be relishing that statement. “A fund-raiser Davis Ames is throwing at the Arcadia hotel.” He said Ames like it was a curse word. “I need you to go with me.”

I’d never been much for dating, only partially because I’d never been the kind of girl that boys dated. I could handle catcalls and propositions and rumors about what might or might not have happened under the bleachers, but anything beyond that was virgin territory.

No pun intended.

“Sawyer?” Nick prompted.

“And here I thought you were going to ask me to plan a jewel heist,” I quipped, because quipping was easier than thinking about what he had asked in any level of detail.

“If I wanted to plan a jewel heist,” he retorted, “I would have called Campbell.”

Hearing him say her name didn’t hurt, even knowing their history. Thank God. My utter lack of an urge to wince reinforced for me that I was still on the right side of the fine line I’d spent my life skirting. Flirting was fine. Thinking was fine. Physicality, even, I could handle.

Just not feelings.

“Why didn’t you call Campbell?” I asked. They’d been each other’s method of blowing off steam, once, and if I owed him, she owed him big.

“Because,” came the reply. “I called you.”

That—and the way he’d said it, his voice softening—wasn’t something I had any intention of letting my mind linger on for long.

Luckily, Nick chose that moment to enlighten me as to why he wanted to go to some party badly enough to call in a favor. “I have a sister. She’s fifteen. Lives with our grandmother. Wants to do the stupid Debutante thing in a couple of years.”

He sounded so disgruntled at the idea that I grinned. “And this requires me going to a party with you why?” I asked.

“I have money now.” He sounded disgruntled about that, too. “I just don’t have the connections she needs. Or the reputation.”

“Are you asking me to make you respectable?” I said, enjoying this more than I should have. “What is this, a Jane Austen novel?”

“I like Jane Austen,” he replied evenly. “And you owe me.”

I did—and as long as I owed him, that was all this had to be. A debt I could pay. Maybe we’d get another dance in.

Maybe I could get him out of my system.

“You have yourself a deal,” I said. “Mr. Ryan.”

Before he could respond to my use of his last name, Aunt Olivia called out for Lily and me from inside the house, and I stifled a groan.

“What was that?” Nick asked.

My traitor lips ticced upward. “Goodbye, Nick.”