Khai’s focus shattered, and he dropped his hand away from his eyes. Wowie? Really? What the hell was Van doing out there?
A smothered choking sound drew his attention before he could spy on the couple again, and he found Esme’s shoulders shaking as she laughed into her palm. He supposed it was kind of funny, but he never laughed along with her. She’d taken an arm away from her chest, and he swore he could almost see one of her nipples. He wasn’t sure with all the shadows, but there was a dark—
Hell. He was in hell.
He stared at the wall, trying his best not to respond to the live porn both outside and inside the closet. It was impossible. The woman’s cries kept getting louder. Did Esme make those sounds? He hoped she didn’t say wowie. But something else. Like maybe … his name. His entire body hardened at the thought, and his skin went ultrasensitive. His pulse sped up. He attempted to put more space between them, but the side of the closet brought him up short. There was no escape.
How much longer could this go on? Were Van and his lady trying to set some sort of world record?
Eventually, the noises came to a horrible crescendo and then quieted. Van tottered drunkenly to his feet and helped his partner up. They straightened their clothes with awkward conversation and disappeared. Khai waited for a count of sixty before he pushed the closet door open and walked out. He took a breath, and the air smelled like—no, he wasn’t going to think about what the air smelled like. An involuntary shudder coursed through him.
Esme followed him out of the closet, her cheeks reddened to a fantastic lobstery sheen, and went to get her green dress and shoes—he’d thought they looked familiar. Keeping her back to him, she stepped into her dress and pulled it up. A woman’s back wasn’t one of the restricted body parts mentioned in the footnotes of the Rules, so he let himself look. But it still felt like rule breaking. The curve at the base of her spine was one of the most elegant things he’d ever seen.
“Help me?” she asked, looking at him over her shoulder.
His feet took him to her on their own. As his heart pounded loud in his ears, he fumbled with the zipper and pulled it along the graceful line of her back, covering her perfect skin. When he finished, she turned around, and their eyes met.
“I wanted to wear the wedding dress,” she whispered. “But I couldn’t reach it.”
He glanced at the wedding gown hanging on the curtain rod. Yeah, she was definitely too short for that. “Do you want me to get it down for you?”
A smile worked over her face, one of those mind-scrambling, breathtaking smiles that made her eyes greener. He’d caused that smile. The knowledge sent warmth melting through him, better than a big sweater fresh from the dryer.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked.
Her smile widened. “You didn’t laugh.”
“Why would I?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Where did you go? I looked everywhere for you.”
“I took a walk outside. To clear my head. I’m not … good with people.” And the banquet hall and hotel had felt suffocating. Once he’d realized what was missing, he’d started to notice all the places where Andy should have been. Getting a drink at the wet bar, standing with the groomsmen, at Khai’s side …
“I’m also not good with people,” she said.
That was a revelation to Khai, and when he looked at her then, her imperfections stuck out for the first time. One of her eyebrows arched more than the other. Her nose wasn’t as straight as he’d thought. There, on the left side of her neck, a tiny birthmark. She wasn’t a photoshopped image on a magazine. She was a real person, flawed. Oddly, that made her more beautiful. She was also smart in her own strange way, with a sense of fairness that resonated with his own. She wasn’t at all what he’d thought in the beginning.