“No,” I said. “We weren’t involved in anything except a nice little chat. Owen and I are old friends.”

That’s what I’d introduced myself as to her before, and that’s what I was going with now, since it was far less complicated than the truth. I’d hoped that would be enough to satisfy her, but Jillian kept staring at me, her brown eyes dark and thoughtful.

“So I’m not encroaching on your territory, then?” she asked in a blunt tone. “Because I’m not the kind of woman who goes around trying to poach men who are already involved with someone else. And I especially don’t like being anybody’s rebound fling.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Well, that’s a colorful way of putting things.”

She shrugged, but she lifted her chin and kept her eyes steady on mine. I admired her for that—I admired her a lot for that. It took moxy to confront your date’s ex, or whatever I was these days, and ask her point-blank what was going on. So I decided to be polite about things.

“Owen’s a big boy,” I said. “His actions are his own—and so are mine.”

Jillian frowned, clearly not understanding my words, but I didn’t feel like explaining them to her. I wasn’t quite sure what I meant myself. But if she wanted to make a play for Owen and he decided to move on with her, I wasn’t going to stand in their way. I owed Owen that much—her too. No matter how much it hurt.

“What I’m trying to say is that I hope you have a nice night,” I said. “With or without Owen.”

She nodded, accepting my words. What she really thought about them and me, I couldn’t tell, but they seemed to ease her mind.

“Well, I guess I should be getting back to the party,” she said. “I believe Mr. McAllister is about to start his speech.”

“Oh,” I drawled. “You certainly wouldn’t want to miss that.”

Finn had told me that sometime during the evening McAllister and a few of the muckety-mucks who were on the Briartop board were going to talk about what a wonderful benefactor of the arts Mab had been, how much she’d supported the museum throughout the years, and how generous it was of her to endow Briartop with her art collection postmortem. Lies, lies, and more lies, all the way around. The only things Mab had ever generously dished out had been pain, misery, and suffering, courtesy of her Fire magic.