“I know the perfect spot for you. Here.” Guiding me toward the back of the house, she gestures to a cozy corner that looks lived-in but tidy. Twin mustard-yellow armchairs, a slim side table, a Tiffany-style lamp whose stained-glass shade casts kaleidoscopic jewel-tone colors around us.

“Thank you,” I tell her.

She smiles again. “Happy to help.”

Sinking into one of the armchairs, I stretch out my legs, unearth my phone from my pocket, and start to read. It’ll only be a minute or two. Just enough time to finish the chapter that was interrupted when my cab arrived.

It’s quiet back here, peacefully removed from the party’s chaos. A window is cracked, and the scent of autumn whispers in the air. It’s one of those moments that’s absolutely perfect.

Until Bea walks in through a swinging door on the far side of the room that I didn’t know existed and scares the life out of me.

I shoot upright in my seat and almost knock over the fancy lamp. “Beatrice.”

Her eyes widen behind the elaborate papier-mâché mask. “James.”

“Jamie,” I correct her, though why the hell I told this aggravating woman she could call me by my given name in the first place, when only a few people in my entire life have earned that intimacy, is entirely beyond me.

“Bea,” she parries. “You call me Beatrice, I call you James. What are you doing here?”

Language evades me for ten eternal seconds. I’ve always been like this, tongue-tied when my anxiety gets the best of me. But it’s worse tonight. With her.

I stare at Bea, starting with her long legs and the subtle flashes of black ink on her skin, up to the neckline that’s torturously low yet reveals so little. Her hair is dark except for the tips at her shoulders, which are bleached white-blond. But it’s her eyes that made every word fall out of my head when I first saw her. Blue-green irises ringed with striking cloud gray, like ocean waves churning under a stormy sky.

“Margo showed me to this spot,” I finally manage. Uncomfortable while sitting because it makes me much lower than her, I stand. Now I’m towering over her. That’s even more uncomfortable. “What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I was sent here to make sure no guests had missed champagne before Jules gave her toast to the birthday boy.”

“Ah.” I clear my throat.

That’s odd. Why would Juliet’s—and I suppose they’re also Jean-Claude’s—friends send us both to the same corner of the house after the disaster that just happened?

“Have one,” Bea says, lifting the tray of fizzing coup glasses closer.

I take an involuntary step back.

“It’s champagne, James, not a Molotov cocktail.”

“Drinks in your hand are not just drinks, Beatrice. They’re projectile missiles.”

“Wow,” she says. “You’re one hell of a—”