I’m going to fucking kill Poppy.

It’s her fault I’m currently sitting in a hotel toilet cubicle half-naked with welts the size of I-don’t-know-what under my boobs and on my back, caused by the tiniest strapless lacy bra known to womankind. I had to pull my dress down and rip that sucker off so I could have a good scratch, and now I have scratch marks all over me that make it look like I’ve been tackled by a grizzly bear.

It’s also her fault that when I finally get up the courage to put said bra back on and fasten the tightest red dress I’ve ever worn back in place, I’m going to have to walk out of this public bathroom wearing only one shoe. The heel on the other one snapped when I skidded on the shiny tiles in the bathroom, resulting in a twisted ankle. The shoe broke as I went flying, landing on my ass. And yes, I now have a huge bruise on my ass.

Like I said, I’m going to fucking kill my cousin for making me wear a bra, dress, and shoes I would never choose to wear, to her wedding. “The society wedding of the year, Charlize” as my mother has taken every opportunity to tell me over the last six months.

Insert eye-roll.

Kill me now.

No, seriously, do it.

I love girl stuff just as much as the next woman, but honestly, when did it become mandatory to put ourselves in so much pain just to attend social functions? I can do heels, just not heels that make me look like an Amazonian woman. And dresses? I’d rather not be squeezed into one that is so tight my boobs and my lungs want to take out a restraining order on it. And that damn strapless bra with that allergy-causing stuff on it? As soon as I get home, I’m burning it.

My phone buzzes with a text, and I reach down to grab it out of my bag that I unceremoniously dumped on the floor of the toilet. Yeah, disgusting, I know. All those germs down there, but I was desperate to get that bra off.

As I reach for the phone, the sound a woman never ever ever wants to hear comes from behind me.

My. Dress. Rips.

I freeze, willing it to not be true.

Holding my breath, I twist my arm around to the back of my dress to feel for a rip, and sure enough, I find it.

“Oh mother of effing God, why does this shit always have to happen to me?” I mutter as I stand. “I bloody told Poppy that I had a dress I could wear, but no, she wants me to wear this damn dress.”

It’ll help you meet a man, she’d said, as if meeting a man was the highest thing on my agenda. To be clear, it isn’t. No, my main priority in life at the moment is to meet someone who can print bank notes that no one would ever suspect of being counterfeit.

I kid.

Kind of.

Actually, I just need a job. That will pay me in bank notes. Rather than in casseroles cooked lovingly for me. See, at the moment the only “job” I can get is the one where I help my seventy-one year old neighbour, Muriel, with her art. God love her, she still paints every day. She doesn’t really need my help, but after I’ve dedicated hours each day to finding a job, I find myself on the couch in her art room reading books and chatting about life while helping her mix colours and cleaning up once she’s done. Muriel has the most amazing collection of books I’ve ever come across. About art, history, architecture, politics, travel and so much more. Some days I want to skip the job hunting and just curl up on her couch with a pot of tea and all those books.

My mother’s voice rings loud in my head—you need friends your own age, Charlize, and a job. Get a damn job!

Ugh. Parents!

I grab my bra and put it back on, ignoring the itchy welts I’m covering. I then wiggle my dress up and into place. It has a zip at the back that I carefully attempt to pull up. It plays nice; however, I can feel what the problem is. When I stretched to reach for my phone, the fabric has ripped on one side of the zip, right down to my ass.

Opening the door of the toilet cubicle, I peer out and find no one else in the bathroom. As carefully as I can, I make my way to the mirror and turn to see how bad the dress looks from behind.

Oh. God.

It’s gaping open. Anyone who walks behind me will be subjected to my back, half my ass, and a flash of my red G-string.

All this at the society wedding of the year.

I do the only thing worth doing right now.

I scream to let my frustration out.

It feels so good that I continue screaming until it kind of turns into a wail. No tears or anything, just a good old-fashioned release of the disappointment, resentment, and irritation filling me. This is something I should do more often. Hell, everyone should do this more often. Between screaming, wailing and having sex, I think the human race could probably resolve a lot of issues without resorting to violence.

A deep voice cuts through the air. “Jesus, are you okay?”

My mouth snaps shut as I catch sight of a man entering the bathroom. My body fills with anticipation at the same time that my knees threaten to give way.

This man is hot.

Really fucking hot.

Like, on a scale of I’d-throw-myself-off-a-cliff-to-avoid-ever-having-to-look-at-you to I’d-take-all-my-clothes-off-right-now-if-it-meant-you’d-just-talk-to-me, he has to be at the level of I’m-never-wearing-clothes-again.

He’s probably the best-looking man I’ve ever come across. And that’s saying something, because my bestie is one of the hottest dudes out there.

I’m even ignoring the way everything about him screams money. I’m not usually attracted to wealthy men in suits, but damn, this guy knows how to wear one. He also has just the right amount of scruff. And don’t get me started on the way his dark brown hair falls effortlessly into place. I’d bet all the money I have in the world—a huge risk because I currently have less than five hundred dollars in my bank account—that he’s had it styled, even though it looks like he simply dried it with a towel and let it do its own thing.

I grip the sink and throw out the first thing that comes to mind. “Do you always wander into women’s bathrooms?” I mean, I’m all for him doing that, just not when I’m in the middle of the kind of personal crisis that is threatening to send me to the brink. My dress is gaping open, and my ass is hanging out. That’s a crisis with a capital fucking C.

His brows arch as his gaze drops to my back, clearly taking in everything on display. When his eyes meet mine again, he drawls, “Only when I think a woman is in that bathroom possibly dying. You do realise you were screaming like a woman on her deathbed, right?”

I grip the sink harder. “That’s because I fucking am!”

His lips twitch as if he’s trying not to smile. If he smiles or laughs, I swear I’ll turn around and clock him. He doesn’t, though. He’s smart as well as hot. “So now that we’ve established you’re close to death, do you want a hand with that?”

My brain scrambles fast to come to a decision. I figure things could be worse. Poppy’s mother and mine could have walked in on me. The Winters sisters would not be as cool about this situation as Mr I-Could-Blow-Your-Damn-Mind is being.

I nod. “Thanks. I’ll just grab my bag.” My emergency kit for these kinds of crises is in there. I’m choosing to ignore the nagging feeling deep in my gut that there isn’t any kit that can fix this problem.

I make my way back into the stall where I’ve left my bag on the floor, at which point I realise the flaw in this plan. If I bend to retrieve it, my dress will probably rip some more.

“Fuck me,” I mutter. “Why can’t anything ever be easy?”

“Problem?”

I spin to find Mr I-Could-Blow-Your-Damn-Mind standing directly behind me. Well, in front of me now. “What’s your name?” It comes out like a demand. It is, really. I don’t have the time to keep referring to him as Mr I-Could-Blow-Your-Damn-Mind every time I reference him in my head.

“We’re dealing with your death and you want my name?”

I pull a face. “Funny.” He kinda is, but this is not the time to be funny. I click my fingers to convey the urgency I feel. “Give me your name.”

His lips twitch again. “Owen. And you are?”

I want to spend time drooling over his name. It’s a good strong name, and I briefly imagine it falling from my lips while he gives me the kind of orgasm I bet a man like Owen can give. But I power on instead. This is no time for orgasm dreaming.

“Charlize.” I step backwards, over my clutch so that it’s in between us. Nodding at it, I say, “I need you to please pick that up so we can get my emergency kit out of it.”

“Your emergency kit? You really think this dress can be fixed?”

My eyes widen in horror. “Don’t you say that! Now is not the time to give up, Owen. If I have to walk in front of my mother again tonight, she will not be seeing my ass swinging in the wind.”

He cocks his head to the side. “Are you Dougall’s or Poppy’s? I’m guessing if your mother is here, you must be family of one of them.”

“Poppy’s. You?”

“Dougall and I went to school together.”

His words catch me off guard a little. Owen has to be late twenties, early thirties at the most, which means he’s been friends with Dougall for a long time. I feel that says a lot about a person—that they look after and take the time with their friends to keep that friendship going. I probably read too much into it—God knows I often do—but I’ve been burnt by old friends one too many times to not think there’s something sacred about old friendships.

He passes me my bag. Finally. However, my run of shitastic luck continues, and I fumble as his hand brushes mine, resulting in me dropping the bag. Tampons, condoms, and cash scatter across the floor. None of those things catch Owen’s attention. No, it’s my Motley Crue vibe and my small notebook that draw his gaze.

His lips pull up in a smile as he turns to face me again. “Motley Crue? I wouldn’t have picked you for them.” He bends to retrieve the notebook. “This looks interesting.”

I snatch it from him as he straightens. Really, the only thing worse that could happen right now would be my mother walking in and finding me with this notebook full of drawings of dicks and sex acts. That I’m standing next to the hottest man on earth, in a toilet cubicle, holding said book, is mortifying. It’s the kind of book a teenager would own, not a twenty-seven-year-old woman. And why the hell are we still smooshed together in this cubicle?

“My bestie gave it to me. And for your information, the Motley Crue vibe was a joke between Poppy and me.” I hold the bullet up. “And also for your information, you’d be surprised what I can do to a man with this.”

Poppy is deader than dead after this fiasco. And Dylan, my bestie, is, too. They will now have to spend the rest of their lives listening to me complain about the night I met the man who could have become the father of my children, only to watch him walk away laughing because he thinks my vagina has a thing for Motley Crue. And that I carry around a book of smut.

His eyes twinkle. “I bet I would.”

I try to ignore the butterflies that just whooshed through my tummy. Owen is way too close for my comfort. I mean, if we were about to get it on, sure, this would be awesome. But we’re not, so he needs to take a step back because I’m concerned I might throw myself at him if he doesn’t. And that would be all kinds of embarrassing.

It’s his eyes.

I have a thing for eyes.

They’re the bluest of blue. Like, I wanna swim in them they’re so blue. And I want him to come swimming with me. Naked. We should have no clothes on while we do all that swimming together.

“I can’t say I did,” he says.

His deep voice snaps me back to attention, and my heart stutters when I realise my hand is on his cheek. I blink and quickly remove my hand. “What?”

What, exactly!

What the fuck was I thinking when I touched him? And how did I not even know I was doing that? This man has some kind of voodoo magic power over me. And I just bloody met him! I’m losing my damn mind.

“You asked me if I realised my eyes looked like the ocean at Shipwreck Beach. And then you said something about going swimming with me there. Where is it?”

“Holy mother of…. Fuck… shit…. No, just ignore me.” Words fall out of my mouth at a horrifying rate of knots. I’m helpless to control them.

He chuckles, and the lines around his eyes are etched deeper into his skin. I could stare at those lines for hours. I’m always fascinated by the lives people live, and to me, the lines on someone’s face tell a story.

“Are you always this intriguing?”

I still. No one has ever called me intriguing before. Chaotic, awkward and compulsive, yes, but not that. My belly fills with a warmth that almost takes away all my mortification over everything that has transpired tonight.

Smiling up at him, I give him my truth—something I don’t usually give this easily. Owen has managed to catch me off guard and since we’ll never see each other again, I feel safe doing this. “That’s not a word used when referring to me. Most people, well, besides Dylan and Poppy, think I’m an oddball. Kooky. I mean, usually I’m not dressed in such a traditional dress that makes me look like everyone else, so I guess you could be forgiven for thinking I’m like everyone else. But I’m not. So yeah, I’m gonna take intriguing as a compliment.”

He smiles big again and good Lord above, it’s a movie-star smile if ever I saw one. Nodding, he murmurs, “Yes, intriguing is a compliment, and I think it’s the exact right word for you.” His gaze roams my face as he speaks. It’s like he’s trying to get a read on me, in much the same way I’m trying to get one on him.

“Shipwreck Beach is also called Navagio Beach. It’s in Greece. You should go there sometime. The water is so blue. It’s one of my favourite places in the world.”

“I’ll check it out.”

We fall into silence, each watching the other for a few moments. I don’t know about him, but I could stay like this for a long time. Even with my ass hanging out the back of my dress. He’s managed to calm me in a way not many people do. I’m usually all anxiety and stress around people, and while I started out that way with him, he’s eased my taut edges.

However, Poppy has other ideas. Or, should we say, other needs that prove far more important than me ogling Owen.

“Charlize! Where are you, girl? I neeeeed you!”

The sound of her heels clicking on the tiles fill the bathroom, coming closer to the toilet at the end where Owen and I are. Always the last cubicle—I never choose any other than that one. Even if I have to wait in line longer for it to become free.

“Oh, good, there you are.” She stops short for a second before adding, “Ummm, why are you standing in a toilet cubicle with Owen?”

My eyes meet Owen’s briefly before we both glance at my cousin. “He was, ah, helping me with something.”

Her face scrunches into a frown. “Is that code for like, sex?”

I figure it’s easier to show her than to try to tell her what happened. I turn so she can see my back. “I ripped my dress. Owen came to rescue me. We were just in the middle of getting my emergency kit out of my bag.” Well, kind of.

Poppy retrieves my bag from the floor and passes it to me. “Hate to break it to you, Charles, but I don’t think even your emergency kit can fix that dress.”

My kit is world-renowned. In my world, that is. Whenever I’m out with friends, it’s me they come to for any little emergency. I’ve never once failed to fix a situation. “I am not a quitter,” I declare loudly as I rummage in my bag, searching for something to save my ass from my mother’s eyes.

“Aunt Joan is going to have a conniption when she sees your dress.”

I stop what I’m doing momentarily and hit Poppy with a glare. “I know! Why do you think I’m losing my shit over here?”

She returns my glare. “Don’t snap at me. I’m just the messenger. And besides, we don’t have time for this. I need you to come work your magic.”

My eyes bulge. “Do I look like I’m in any state to go anywhere with you?” It’s a good thing Poppy and I are as close as sisters, otherwise our relationship would disintegrate fairly quickly with the way we snap and snarl at each other sometimes.

“I don’t care what state you’re in! My shares have just crashed, and I need you to come and help me fix it!”

Oh. God.

Poppy has millions tied up in shares. I usually advise her on it, but about six months ago, Dougall insisted on her hiring his friend to take over her portfolio. Something about me not being qualified enough for him. Whatever. I told her to keep the peace and let the dude take over while I watched from the sidelines. About a month ago, he insisted she dump a tonne of cash into a company I didn’t think she should, but Dougall stepped in and told her again to stop listening to me. I get it, she was in between a rock and a hard place, but now it seems that maybe the advice was bad.

“Duttons?” I ask to clarify what I am already guessing.

She nods. “Yes. I should never have listened to Tom.”

Owen cuts in at this point. He’s been silently watching our conversation up until now. “Tom Dooley recommended you buy Dutton shares?”

Poppy looks at him. “Yes. Do you know Tom? I thought he ran in different circles to you.”

“I know of him. I’ve heard that his deals have been going bad.”

Poppy’s shoulders slump as she glances back at me. “Bloody Dougall. I should never have let him convince me.”

My mind is already swinging into action. “Okay, there’s gotta be a way up to my room without anyone seeing my ass. You can walk behind me and—”

Owen shrugs out of his jacket and hands it to me. “Here, wear this. It’ll cover everything you need it to.”

I want to kiss him.

Well, let’s be real, I already wanted that.

Now, I want to kiss him and hump his leg.

Okay, okay, I wanted that before, too.

I grab the jacket before he changes his mind. “Thank you.”

He confuses me when he exits the stall we’ve been squashed in and says to Poppy, “Good luck with your shares. Yell out if you need help. I can recommend some great brokers.”

“Wait,” I call out. “You’re not coming with us so you can get your jacket back?” I cringe at how desperate I must sound. I’m just not ready to let him go yet. I want more time in his company. I want to stare into those eyes of his and imagine swimming some more.

His baby blues sparkle as they take me in again. “Keep the jacket. I have a feeling you need it more than I do tonight.”

With that, he turns and leaves Poppy and me alone in the bathroom. I’m ready to sag against the wall and run a play-by-play in my head of the entire interaction I just had with Owen, but Poppy grabs my arm and demands, “We need to go!”

She drags me out of the cubicle before I can collect myself. I stumble because I’m only wearing one of her Amazonian-inspired heels. “Geez, Pop, give me a moment.”

Letting me go, she drops her gaze to my feet. “Where is your other shoe? Goodness, Charles, what’s gotten into you tonight? You’re a mess.”

I make my way to where my other shoe landed in the corner of the bathroom when it broke. Snatching it up off the ground, I mutter, “You got into me tonight! You made me dress up in shit I would never usually wear. I’m so far out of my comfort zone it’s not funny. And being in this hotel for the entire weekend with my mother is enough to put me off my game for months. You’re lucky I love you as much as I do.”

She takes a deep breath and allows some of the tension in her body to seep out. “You really must love me. Who else would put up with all my shit? Especially when I didn’t even ask you to be one of my bridesmaids. I’m sorry I’m such a shitty cousin.”

I put my arm around her waist as we exit the bathroom. “You’re not a shitty cousin. And for the record, I do not do the bridesmaid thing. You know that. And can I just say, this jacket is the best jacket I’ve ever worn in my life.” It really is. Mostly because it smells all manly and sexy.

“That’s because it belongs to Owen North. I’m not sure how you managed to get him into that stall with you, but girl, he’s the guy every woman at this wedding wants to score.”

She says his name like it should mean something to me, but it doesn’t. Poppy and I might come from the same family, but I’ve distanced myself from them and everything they stand for. I’ve also removed myself from their world. Today was the first time I’ve seen my parents in months. So, throwing out Owen’s name isn’t of any use to me, because I don’t know who he is, and I have no intention of finding out.

He might be hot.

And I might want to go swimming with him.

But there’s no way Owen North and I would ever be a match.

“What the hell made you look up your shares at your wedding, anyway?” I ask Poppy as we head towards the elevators.

“Don’t give me hell about my devotion to my shares, Charles. A girl has to make sure she’s able to take care of herself at all times. Even if she is married now.”

I laugh.

Our mothers may have taught us a lot of useless stuff about how to act in public, how to host a dinner party, and how to walk in heels, but they also made sure we knew how to fend for ourselves in life.