This was getting ridiculous.

Samira Palmer grabbed her drink, ducked behind one of the pillars closest to the ballroom’s dessert bar and checked her phone for texts.

Nothing. Oh, wait, there was something from her ex-fiancé Terrance again:

Can we talk soon?

There was only one response to such a text, and she’d gotten good at giving it:

Delete.

You don’t need him, girl, she reminded herself.

Taking a deep breath to clear Terrance’s unwanted image from her brain, she checked the time.

Nine twenty-nine. And here she was, a grown thirty-three-year-old standing alone in a crowded and noisy ballroom like a jilted prom date. While wearing a freaking Nefertiti costume with a heavy-ass jeweled crown on her head and torture device sandals on her feet.

And paying two hundred dollars for the privilege. Not including tax.

Was she a loser, or what?

She finished the last of her second chardonnay and set the empty glass on a nearby tray as she moodily watched the crowd (if she saw one more hooker Dorothy costume with ruby red stilettos, she was seriously going to hit someone) and scrolled through her options. Another drink might be nice, but she had a big meeting at work in the morning, and she didn’t want to show up with a hangover. On the other hand—

Her phone buzzed in her hand, startling her. The display flashed her best friend Melody Harrison’s picture.

Well, thank God. About damn time.

“What’s going on?” Samira snapped as the picture resolved to show Melody in her scrubs as she hurried down some hospital corridor. “You’d better be coming to the party as a surgeon, because I know you’re not about to cancel on me.”

“I’m canceling on you,” Melody said. “I got called in. Car accident. Sorry.”

“You should be. You’re the one who dragged me to this nonsense and forced me to rent this expensive-ass costume for the night.”

“Well, I wanted to get you out so you wouldn’t mope. On the plus side? You look great.”

“I do look great, don’t I?” Grinning and striking a glamour pose, Samira ran the phone down the length of her body.

“Love the gladiator sandals!”

“Yeah, well, that’s not the point.” Samira held the phone in front of her face again. “The point is, you know I don’t have this kind of money to waste right now. I got my AmEx bill today. I’ve been carrying it around with me. I’m hoping if I look at it enough times, I’ll erase some of the zeroes with my mental powers.”

“Oh, no.” Melody, who’d ducked into the hospital cafeteria for a cup of coffee, made a face. “What’s the damage?”

Samira swallowed hard, barely able to get the words out. “Ten-eight.”

“Oh, my God.” Melody looked a little woozy as she paid the cashier and resumed her march through the hospital. “I know you’re sick.”

“You could say that,” Samira said. Almost eleven thousand dollars. Samira’s half of the nonrefundable expenses for a would-be event of the year that Terrance had called off the night before the wedding. “At least he’s paying his share.”

“I know you’re tired of me saying this…” Melody began.

Samira rolled her eyes. “Here we go.”

“But this could have been so much worse. Thank God you didn’t marry a gay man, honey. Thank God you didn’t, I don’t know, have kids with him and invest five years in building a family before he told you.”

“Kindly do not try to find a bright spot in this tragic situation. I spent over a year with a guy and didn’t notice he was gay.” Samira paused, then let her worst fear slip through. “Hell, maybe he wasn’t gay until he hooked up with me.”

Melody scowled at her as she hit a metal plate on the wall and walked through a massive swinging door. “You know that’s not how it works.”

Samira did know, but try telling that to her eviscerated ego. It remained secretly convinced that if she’d been more exciting in bed, she’d be a honeymooner unpacking all her wedding gifts in her new home right now instead of an embarrassed dumped bride returning her half of the gifts with awkward thank-you explanation notes.

On the plus side? Now she knew why their sex life had always been well south of stellar.

“None of us suspected he was gay,” Melody continued. “He set off no gay-dar. Just goes to show you can’t go around stereotyping people and hitting them with your preconceived notions. He’s gay. He worked up the courage to come out of the closet and call off what would have been a bad marriage. You dodged a bullet. An expensive bullet, but think what a divorce would have cost you. Live and learn, right?”

“Well, apparently I’m only batting fifty percent on that one. Did you forget? The guy before my runaway groom cheated on me for six months, and I didn’t realize that either. I’m too stupid to live, evidently.”

“You just want a husband and children. That’s not stupid.”

“It is when it eats up good childbearing years on trifling guys,” Samira said.

“All men are not trifling.”

“Cite?”

Melody laughed. “I’ll find you one later. I know you dodged a bullet, but I still want to punch Terrance for doing this to you. It’s not like you open up and trust people in the first place.”

“I don’t need him, anyway,” Samira said. “I’m fine by myself.”

Harsh sigh from Melody. “See? This is just the excuse you were looking for to push men away and make sure no one else gets close to you.”

Samira glanced all around. “I’m sorry. I’m having a tough time visualizing the men you’re referring to. Maybe they’re all dressed as the Invisible Man tonight.”

Melody snorted out a laugh. “I gotta go scrub in. You okay?”

“I’ll live,” Samira said glumly. “I’m going home. Enough’s enough.”

“Don’t go home and waste the pretty! Seriously, who’s there? Anyone interesting?”

Samira’s mind flashed back to the hot French guy, her heart rate kicking up.

“I don’t know,” she said, adjusting one of her earrings.

“The music sounds good. Is that Sir Mix-A-Lot? ‘Baby Got Back’?”

“Yeah. The DJ seems to be in love with the nineties.”

“Well, take a minute and try to unwind. Have a spin around the room. Maybe you’ll meet someone to hook up with.”

“I don’t hook up.” Samira had never managed a successful casual sexual relationship, and she wasn’t going to waste even more childbearing years trying to figure out how to do it now. “You know that.”

“You need a hot hookup to get back in the saddle, girl. Just sayin’. Okay gotta go. Love you. Call me tomorrow.”

“Love you,” Samira said, and hung up.

So…what now? More wine? A walk around the room, like Melody suggested?

Nah. Time to call it a night, for a variety of reasons. She had better wine at home, and she’d already made approximately one million laps around the room while waiting for her friends. Worse, the dance music and noise level had maxed out her delicate ears. Most importantly? The effort to pretend that she was casually mingling rather than performing a covert op to relocate Sexy French Guy had left her exhausted and irritable.

Because, really, what the hell did she think she was doing?

Why would he want her? No one else ever did. Not for long, anyway.

They’d had a fun little interlude, but he was gone now, evidently never to return. And it was all for the best. Seriously. What had gotten into her, anyway? What had she’d thought she’d do if he reappeared? It wasn’t like they’d disappear into one of the fancy suites upstairs and have chandelier-swinging sex all night.

You don’t need him anyway, girl, she reminded herself—hang on.

Were those lemon tarts on the dessert table?

They were.

Well, she’d have one for the road, then leave. She deserved a special treat after the day (Week? Month? Year?) she’d endured.

Things were definitely looking up.

Hitching her clutch more firmly under her arm, she helped herself. Lemon tarts! Oh, and look—cream puffs. Better have one of those, too—

“Cleopatra,” said a male voice at her side. “Why do you keep slipping away from me, baby?”

Samira scowled and tried to pretend she didn’t hear him. Unfortunately, there was no avoiding Drunk Julius Caesar, and she should know, because she’d been trying all night.

Sure enough, he loomed closer, planting himself firmly in her peripheral vision, and left her no choice but to acknowledge his presence.

The current song was, appropriately enough, TLC’s “.”

“Kindly leave me alone.” She flashed him a pleasant smile. “I don’t want any trouble, but you’re starting to get on my nerves.”

The guy sized her up—again—with his bloodshot eyes, swaying lightly on his feet. With his flowing white toga and headband made of green leaves, he wasn’t bad looking and would do himself a world of good if he just stood there being handsome rather than trying to drink his way to the bottom of every liquor bottle in the room.

“We should get together,” he said, sidling closer. “Talk about our plans to conquer the world. I could feed you peeled grapes. No snakes allowed.”

He cracked himself up with his sad little joke.

Rolling her eyes, Samira took her dessert-filled plate and turned to go.

Until he reached out and clamped a heavy hand around her upper arm.

“Where you going? Don’t be such a bitch.”

“Hey!” she cried, her shrill voice cutting across the music.

Samira acted without thinking. Dropping the plate, she turned into him, holding her hand open wide, and smacked him hard in his woefully unimpressive groin. He yelped and doubled over, letting her go so he could grab his abused privates with a moan.

Her repulsive job done, she dusted off her hands with grim satisfaction. She fully expected him to drop to his knees and was happily anticipating seeing him curl up in the fetal position when she realized that someone else had gotten involved.

It was…oh, God, it was Hot French Guy, who’d materialized out of nowhere.

Even more incredible?

He was now disguised as the sexiest Phantom of the Opera ever.

Samira gaped at him, all good sense doing a spectacular swan dive out the nearest window.

If she’d thought he couldn’t get any handsomer than he’d been when he nearly knocked her on her ass earlier, with his shaggy, shoulder-length sable hair, expensive European-cut James Bond suit (circa Daniel Craig), full lips, harsh cheekbones and dimpled chin beneath a dense five o-clock shadow, she’d been wrong. Now his ensemble included a sweeping black cape (she loved capes!) and a sculpted white half-mask that sliced diagonally across his face and only covered the right side.

The overall effect? He looked powerful and vaguely dangerous. Ridiculously sexy.

As for his eyes…

The same eyes that had studied her with the intensity of a solar flare a little while ago were now narrow slits of fury. His chin was set. His lips were flat, his jaws tight. In that tense moment, Samira wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see him unsheathe a sword and skewer Drunk Julius Caesar with it.

But he twisted the guy’s arm behind his back, making the drunken idiot cry out just as a security guy rushed up.

“Apologize for bad manners,” Sexy French Guy snarled.

Drunk Julius Caesar, red-faced and gasping, cupped his balls with his free hand and acted like he had some options. “Screw you, man!”

Without a word, Sexy French Guy cranked that arm a little harder.

“Okay! Okay! I’m sorry.”

Sexy French Guy turned him loose with a rough shove to the back, at which point security took over.

“Come on, genius,” the guard said, taking Drunk Julius Caesar by the upper arm and frog-marching him through the crowd that had gathered to watch the commotion. “You’ve been causing problems all night. Time to go.”

They left. The muttering and excited crowd dispersed, leaving Samira alone with her thundering pulse, Sexy French Guy and a stunned relative silence.

“Did he hurt you?” SFG asked in that delicious accent, his voice husky and urgent.

“No.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said, starting to smile.

He frowned behind his half-mask, adding to the intensity of his heated expression. “What’s funny?”

“If my parents or best friends had seen that, I don’t think they’d look as upset as you do right now.”

He hesitated while some of the bloodlust eased from his face.

“I thought he was hurting you. I didn’t like it.”

“He wasn’t. I can take care of myself.”

“I saw that.” His features eased into something softer, but still turbulent. “But I really didn’t like it.”

Samira stared at him, trying to detect signs of bullshit and finding none.

He stared back, his gaze penetrating.

“It’s the cape, isn’t it?” Samira asked, desperate to break the spiking tension, which made her skin much too tight and her blood too swift and hot. “You put it on, and now you think you’re some sort of superhero.”

His surprised laughter generated startling white teeth and dimples, quickly subdued. “A useless superhero, as it turns out. Imagine my dismay when I go to all this trouble and you rescue yourself.”

That made her laugh.

He went very still, his breath hitching.

Another round of staring ensued, broken only when a server appeared, startling them. They looked around to discover him with a champagne bucket and two glasses.

“Did you still want the champagne, sir?”

“That depends.” SFG turned back to Samira. “Have a drink with me?”

Samira tried to look severe, probably failing spectacularly.

The thing was, this wasn’t her. Nothing about this night was her. Not the costume, the flirting with a complete stranger who didn’t come with an introduction or thorough vetting by her friends or the way something illicit fluttered deep in her belly every time she looked at SFG.

And yet she felt the unerring certainty that this was exactly where she belonged tonight.

“How do you know I like champagne?” she asked.

“Je ferai tout ce que vous voulez, ma reine,” he said quietly, holding out a hand.

He spoke too fast, and her remembered high-school and college French was only passable. Even so, there was no mistaking the raw sincerity in his voice. And what heterosexual woman alive could refuse an invitation like that from a man who looked like this?

“Whatever I want?” she asked.

Unmistakable admiration gleamed in his eyes as he led her to a table in the back.

“Absolutely whatever you want.”