Rhys tightened his grip on my hand and led me over.

Whatever he’d been feeling earlier, Rhys let go as he charmed Fairchild and the men around him. They asked about his days as a heavyweight champion, an existence that was such a far cry from their own, and Rhys indulged them. My boss, Jackson, appeared with Camille, along with a few colleagues and their partners. We spoke a little, a light relief at a party that made me uncomfortable, but they soon dispersed among the crowds. Except Jackson who stayed with Fairchild, listening to Rhys.

Other people joined and left the conversation, businessmen and women, members of Boston society, and Rhys handled them all with amazing aplomb. It occurred to me that, during his professional boxing days, he would have been surrounded by wealthy people. He was used to them.

He was better with them than I was, and I grew up in this world.

As the night wore on, I longed to be back in my apartment, curled up on my bed with the fantasy novel I was in the middle of. It was about faeries and war and romance and kick-ass heroines.

Or I’d prefer to be hanging out with the guys. “The guys” were my friends from MIT who hadn’t left Boston. Every second week we found a quiz night to attend and took far too much pleasure in annihilating our competitors.

Rhys was in the middle of convincing Fairchild and a few of his friends to drop by the gym for boxing lessons when I felt a hand on the small of my back. I turned sharply and looked up into a smiling, familiar face.

Stephen Chancer.

An ex.

Ish.

We’d gone on three dates. I’d slept with him on the third and then told him it wasn’t going to work out. Mostly because if I couldn’t stop thinking about electricity markets with high wind penetration during his penetration then I was calling it a fail.

However, my concern wasn’t over bumping into a man I’d rejected. He and I had been set up by his aunt, who knew my mother. For the most part I’d avoided mingling with East Coast society during my time at MIT, much to my mother’s despair. Stephen was the one time I’d let myself slip into that world, and to be honest, it wasn’t just his lack of industry in the bedroom that made me call it quits. He relied too much on his parents’ money and was kind of a snob.

None of that mattered now.

What mattered was him telling his aunt I was dating ex-boxer Rhys Morgan.

“Stephen, hi.” I flicked a wary look at Rhys who was too busy answering whatever question Fairchild had asked to notice who I was talking to.