Sugar Sweet Sin

The Devil's Party

"Any sign of him?" Jack says.

"Not yet."

"What about one of his brothers? Or Emilia?"

"Nope." I've been looking for them too, but there's no sign of any of the Fontaines—or the woman caught up in their drama.

And as the night rolls on, I'm beginning to wonder why we bothered showing up at all. Dante is still nowhere to be seen. Jack, to his credit, is a great sport, and he keeps up our little act quite well. We take turns touching each other—I've adjusted his tie so many times that I'm surprised I haven't accidentally pulled it off his neck—and when that gets dull, we start a game where we point out the different celebrities we'd try to hit on under different circumstances.

But I can tell that even Jack is getting a little restless after an hour, and I know that he's anxious to do a bit of real mingling. This is his chance to get his face in front of people he might be working with someday.

"Why don't you go circulate," I say finally. "Make some connections."

He cocks his head. "And leave you alone?"

I take a sip of my martini—a vanilla bean one this time. "I'll be fine. Dante obviously isn't here." I'm beginning to wonder why he insisted that I come.

"You can come with me," Jack says. "Don't you want to meet Stacia Fischer?"

"I'm fine," I insist. "I don't want you to worry about flirting with me while you're trying to network."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'm a big girl. I can handle a few minutes on my own." I take another drink. "Just get your butt over here as fast as you can if you see me in trouble."

"Of course." He puts his empty glass on a nearby table. "Text me if you need me." With that, he's off through the crowd, and I'm alone by myself in a quiet corner of the patio.

And I manage to stay that way for some time, tucked away in the shadows at the far side of the pool, sipping at my drink and watching the party unfold around me. I'm glad to be alone, but now that Jack isn't here to distract me, it's hard to keep my memories at bay.

Dante and I spent quite a bit of time by this pool. We often studied out here—there was something about the sun on my skin and the ocean breeze in my hair that made me feel both calm and energized at once. And Dante always claimed that he did his best work outside. He used to sit in that lounge chair beneath the cabana and scribble away at his latest script. He always preferred to write his first drafts by hand—he said that the words flowed better through a pen than through a keyboard.

I think that might have been when I realized I was in love with him—the first time I saw him bent over his notebook, his eyes bright as they followed his pen across the paper. It was like I was watching him pour his soul onto the page.

I'll admit it—it took a while for me to recognize his brilliance, to get past my preconceptions about him. I'd worked my butt off to get into that film program, and in waltzed Dante, the crown prince of Hollywood. Everyone in his family is in the business. He never needed film school to build connections or get his foot in the door like the rest of us. All he had to do was use his name and his money.

Dante was older than the rest of us, most of whom started the program right out of college. But that didn't seem to bother him. Nothing did—and he got a lot of attention during his time there. Some students blatantly flirted with him, others saw him as a networking opportunity, and still others seemed to harbor a fair bit of jealousy and resentment for him. I guess I fell into the "resentment" category, but at least I was quiet about it. Mostly I just pretended he didn't exist—until we were partnered up for that short film project.