By the time Raya had passed on the relevant messages to her father and Dino, she followed Paige through to the living room and wondered if she could ask her something personal. She could see that her older sister was very casually flicking through a magazine, tapping her foot to the quiet party music she had put on the living room stereo, and felt that if she was so relaxed, she might not notice just how personal the question was. Taking a slow saunter in, Raya sank onto the sofa next to her sister and let out a deep, over-exaggerated sigh. “What’s wrong with you?” Paige asked with a soft smile, all too aware of the fact that Raya was deliberately trying to get her attention.
“Nothing.” She sighed dramatically, looking away. And the sight of it made her smile, knowing that however sweet her little sister was she’d never be a A-list actress. Flicking to the back page of her catalogue, she leant forward and picked up the pen from the coffee table, Raya’s intrigued stare amusing as Paige continued to ignore her and began to fill in the form on the last page. “What are you doing?” She asked questioningly, making Paige sigh and shrug as she explained that she was filling in the application form for her next course, in advance she insisted, trying to remember all the relevant information that she’d entered in her last application form and which things needed updating. “Did you ask papà already?” Raya asked, confused, but also knowing that Angelo had been the only one who had ever allowed her big sister to go on the courses she had asked to attend, so knowing that she was already filling out the application form, made her suspicious as to when she had had time to talk it over with Angelo. “I just ask because…well, I thought Angelo was hoping you would take over the firm once your business degree was finished.” She explained gently when she noticed Paige’s disapproving glance that said that she felt she shouldn’t have had to ask for permission to do what she wanted.
“It’s got nothing to do with Angelo so he should keep his nose out my business.” Paige sighed, knowing that Angelo was all too often trying to rule her life. Well, they weren’t married yet, if ever. And with the thought of it, she knew that that was something she’d have to get used to if she were to marry Angelo. He was always trying to rule her life as it was, and that would only get worse once they were married and Paige knew it would be even harder to win an argument or to remind him that her life was her own if they were to marry. Marriage to Angelo simply meant that he owned her and could do whatever he wanted with her and that she’d have to obey him for the rest of her life…was that something she really wanted to put herself through? “Angelo doesn’t own me Raya and he never will. I can do what I want with my life.” She explained suddenly, hurt at the thought of all that she’d come to realise.
“Oh…I know…” Raya stuttered hesitantly. She had no idea what to say now that her sister had made such an unusual and off-the-topic confession. So choosing the safer option, she decided to change the subject. “I think you’re doing the right thing Paige. There’s never going to be a better time to decide how you feel about Angelo than when he asks you to marry him. I know that if I had doubts over how I felt about someone, someone who had always been in my life…and he asked me to marry him…I’d know that I could trust my initial reaction to his proposal and know that it was how I felt.” She sighed dreamily.
No-one really knew how the time had rolled by them so fast, as they all stood around the reception room, caught up in their own discussion and thoughts. It seemed that the entire afternoon had just slipped past them without their knowledge. Things had been hectic in the house until almost half past four, when they had decided to have an early dinner, each person having been busy taking care of their own personal issues, all quietly mulling over those things through dinner, as Angelo, Dino and Julius kept up the pleasant conversation. And by half past five, once dinner was completely over the chaos had begun again, each of the four women disappearing upstairs to get ready for the party, giving the men a chance to relax for an hour before quickly changing. Seven o’clock brought the first set of guests and now that everyone had arrived, and Angelo was having to watch Paige laughing and talking with Danny and a few of his friends, with his arm around her shoulders, he knew that the time had gone by too quickly or his liking. There were so many things he could have said to Paige during that time that it felt as though he’d lost the chance to say them forever. But even if there was no hope of having her admit that she had feelings for him, did he really have to see the woman the loved in another man’s arms? It was like pouring salt on an open wound and he didn’t know if he could stomach it much longer, taking a drink of his beer as Jacob reappeared with a smile. Angelo tried to reign in his thoughts and enjoy the night as his friend came over, looking eager to tell him something. “Guess who’s here?” Jacob asked as soon as he was within reach of his friend, glad that he didn‘t have to shout over the soft Jazz music.
“Who?”
“Mora.” He grinned, looking back out to the double doors of the reception room, laughing at the clear look of desperation on his friends face. “And she’s coming right over here…” He laughed again as Angelo handed him his bottle of beer and looked around the room for an escape plan.
“No problem…I’ve got it covered.” He smiled, saluting Jacob cheekily as he left him, walking up behind the sweet girl Raya and whispering in her ear before she laughed and took his hand, joining him on the dance floor. Although, however rushed his deceptive plan was, it seemed to have worked as Mora stalled slightly in her tracks and watched the object of her affection dancing with the young seventeen year old. And she didn’t look impressed in the slightest as Raya continued to giggle at Angelo’s quiet words, and watch her feet nervously, making sure she was dancing the right steps as Jacob laughed at them. He knew he shouldn’t have, but he couldn’t help it.
Angelo really was a funny guy. As pretty and as flirtatious as Mora was, he still had no inclination to be with her, mostly because he could never see himself with anyone other than Paige. But there wasn’t one person in the room who hadn’t noticed the distance Paige had put between them, sticking like glue to her bodyguard and his group of boisterous and completely unacceptable friends. It wouldn’t have been so bad for her to be in their company, if it weren’t for the fact that they were drooling over every girl in the room. If there weren’t staring or making lurid comments to any girl from sixteen to thirty then they were flirting with Paige in a way that every guest with a heartbeat could see made Angelo furious. It wasn’t just the fact that they were hitting on her, it was more because they could see that Paige wasn’t comfortable with it, but that Danny didn’t seem to care. It was a shame to see his best friend being humiliated that way, but there was nothing he could do about it, no matter how much he wanted to. And what only made things worse, was that Julius wasn’t coping well with the excitement of the party as it was, even though he spent every minute with his wife, doting on her and talking happily with Dino. But they could all see that he was drinking more water and loosening his tie every now and then, and what Jacob really didn’t understand was how Paige could put her own father through the torture of seeing her being so irresponsible and careless with herself.
*****
By the time the party for Skylar came along at the end of the night, Eliza was disappointed to find that she wasn’t going to be able to set her up with anyone. She apparently had no romantic interest in Kiaran and wouldn’t let her even introduce her to her friend Florin like she’d intended to. What fun was she going to have if she couldn’t set up her new friend with a new guy to cheer her up? At least Joachim had shown up on time, that was one consolation. He’d missed the big basketball game on campus when the team Devin captained, with Ryan and the boys, had won a championship game against their rival team, full of the freshman boys. It didn’t interest her in the slightest apart from the fact that it gave them all a plausible excuse for a party without Skylar suspecting anything. But it wasn’t Skylar she was worried about, even Joachim noticed how distracted Ryan was, staring at Skylar with a smile from across the room as if she was a cream cake he couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into. She tried telling Joachim what he’d been like with her before, trying to kiss her twice and succeeding once, but he just passed it off as an infatuation he would soon get over. Eliza wasn’t so sure. She saw Skylar making her way to the kitchen after a quick chat with Niles, presumably as an escape plan from his obvious flirtations only for Ryan to put his bottle of beer down on the table next to him and go after her. She wanted to help her the best she could, so she sent Joachim to keep Ryan occupied.
Unfortunately for Eliza, what she didn’t realise was that it wasn’t Niles who had sent Skylar running for an escape but the start of a headache that stabbed at her head like a knife. She wasn’t a sufferer of migraines but the feeling reminded her of the intense pain she had felt before each and every visions, that previously, she had passed off as a normal headache or lack of food. Now that she knew better she made her excuses to Niles, saying she needed a drink and some fresh air of the garden before hiding in the kitchen for a few moments. She had barely finished filling her glass with water from the tap when Ryan waltzed in with his Elvis swagger. Only he didn’t pull it off half as well. “Hey hot stuff…fancy a little tonsil tennis?” He asked, making her sigh and roll her eyes in frustration as she turned and leant back against the counter, her glass securely on the counter in case she toppled over. The feeling that she was about to drop made her realise how important it was to get rid of Ryan, and so she played along with his little game in order to frighten him off.
“Sure, why not?” She faked a good enough smile to convince him only for him to squint at her curiously as if he had never expected her to agree and before he could change his mind, she stepped up to him and kissed him. Despite his constant flirtations and attempted kisses, it took him a few skipped beats of her heart to react. She was terrified that any moment she was going to drop and the fact that she couldn’t stall it or control when it happened was beginning to upset her, rather than make her angry. She didn’t want to scare anyone but it was likely that at some point she did just that, eventually she was going to drop at an inopportune time and someone was either going to get hurt or she’d put herself in a dangerous or vulnerable position. So when Ryan kissed her back heatedly, with a lot less expertise than she expected from a serious womaniser like he was, she hoped that by taking her mind off what was going to happen and make it that she couldn’t possibly pass out because her brain and her body were too busy doing other things, then she could push back the designated ‘vision’ until a more convenient time, or at least until she was alone. The only problem was that she rather enjoyed kissing Ryan, just as she had done the first time. She couldn’t help it. So he wasn’t much of a flirt or great at seducing her but he managed to occupy her mind well enough that the pain in her head faded away. As soon as it subsided, she broke apart from Ryan and took a step back from him, knowing that however much she had enjoyed his kisses, he was still a jerk and a selfish moron who used people. She could never forget that. “Aren’t you going to run off now? That’s what you usually do, isn’t it?” She asked, making him sigh, hearing something completely different in her words than what she had actually said. He had already told her that he didn’t want anything serious with her but had thought her agreement to kiss him had meant she was ready for a little non serious fling between them, obviously he was wrong.
“Look, I told you, I’m not into getting serious…with you or anyone.” Ryan protested, backing off with his hands up defence even though she had no intention of going anywhere near him again. He simply took care of a little inconvenient problem and although she hated the thought that she had used him, what he intended to use her for was much worse. She was just trying to stay on her feet and prevent a public display of her unusual ability. Or curse, more as she thought it. Nothing she saw was of any use to her if she couldn’t get near the people to help them and she didn’t even know where most of them were happening, so how could she get near them to help?
“Fine, but just know that you can’t keep using me. I only let you kiss me because I was getting a headache and needed it to stop. Now it’s gone, you can go too.” Skylar had just finished speak and was listening to Ryan’s witty repartee when the stabbing pain returned, making her sigh and close her eyes, trying to ignore it, hoping that it would go away or at least wait until he had gone.
“Yeah right…you just can’t resist me. We make a good little…Lar? You alright?” He was totally floored when suddenly Skylar held her hand to her head and let out a little squeak of protest that he was sure would have been a scream if she hadn’t had the breath knocked out of her a second later. Before he’d even finished asking if she was okay, she fell to the kitchen floor and passed out.
*****
Raya couldn’t believe that Angelo was being such a chicken and using her as a scapegoat to escape the clutches of Mora Ferrier. She was sweet red-headed Irish girl with a good heart, except that that heart pined for him, no matter how many times he told her they would only ever be friends. She didn’t mind of course, she liked dancing with him and having him talk to her, and it was nice to see that there were still nice guys out in the world. “Why’ve you been so quiet all night?” Angelo asked, as he twirled her with a curious smile. “I thought you’d be partying with your friends, but you’ve barely moved from Julius’s side all night.”
“There’s no reason.” Raya shrugged, staring at her feet again nervously, pretending that it was to check her steps. But Angelo could see that something was bothering her that she didn’t much want to talk about. So, for a little while he changed the subject and made sure to make her laugh as they danced, hoping it might cheer her up a little. It was quite nice to forget about the torture Paige was putting him through and just have a nice time but he could see that he wasn’t the only one pining after someone he thought he couldn’t have as he gave a casual glance over to Jacob, to see if Sasha had arrived yet, when he noticed a very curious sight. “No more dancing Angelo…I’m so confused.” Raya complained as they went into their third dance, and he couldn’t help but laugh and know that the only thing she was confused about was which steps were for which dance. And it was such a sweet objection that he couldn’t help but give in.
“Alright princess…listen, you better go tell Paige that she’s on in ten minutes and I’ll get you a drink.” He smiled down at her, kissing her forehead as he sent her off to the liveliest corner of the room to speak to her sister. Burying his hands in his pockets, he walked up to the bar and leant his back against it with a sigh. “She’s a beautiful girl, isn’t she?” He asked the young eighteen year old at his side.
“What?”
“Raya.” Angelo smiled down at Chris Parker, the young intern at Julius’s firm knowingly. He may have had his own problems on his mind, but he wasn’t blind to the fact that the kid hadn’t had his eyes off Raya all night. And although he was a year older than her, he knew enough from Raya’s recounts of her work at the firm to know that Chris was forever helping her with getting used to things, keeping her company on her first day and spending time with her. He knew it had to mean something, especially since he hadn’t taken his eyes off her in the entire hour from the minute he’d walked through the front door, even though Raya had admitted that she found his constant attention uncomfortable. But what Angelo wondered, was whether she found it uncomfortable because he was giving her attention, or whether that attention was unwanted. “She’s sweet, isn’t she?” He began again, noticing the faint smile growing on Chris’ lips as he watched her, nodding to himself quietly, as though not wanting to admit it. He sighed his agreement, burying his own hands in his pockets as his smile fell. It made Angelo smile to see him starting to shuffle his feet, suddenly uncomfortable with the conversation. When he complained that she was a bit young though, he couldn’t help but smile. “One year isn’t much. It’s practically nothing. Even though it seems a lot at your age.” He thought aloud pensively, knowing that there was three years between himself and Paige. But he knew that, when school was involved and one person was one or two years ahead or behind of the other, it felt like much more of a gap than it really was. “You know Paige, don’t you…well there’s three years between us. And I still love her.” He admitted, a curious look on Chris’ face when he looked up at him, asking if it wasn’t really noticeable, all the while glancing back over at Raya hesitantly. “Not really.” Then, with another thought he couldn’t help but smile and laugh to himself. “It lets me be a big kid sometimes…so it’s kind of good actually.”
“I suppose there’s all that crap about girls maturing first, isn’t there…so that’d mean we’re just about on par.” He reasoned, even though Angelo could tell that he was only convincing himself that he was wrong in his initial arguments which didn‘t make sense, but then he could remember that when he was a teenager, not much made sense. “But still…we’re just friends.” Angelo smiled to himself in realisation as he pushed himself from the bar and walked away, returning to talk to his best friend as he saw Chris quietly deliberating over his words, as he watched Raya.
Paige wasn’t quite sure why Danny was letting his friends be so disrespectful to her family, but when she mentioned it herself, they didn’t seem to care and only laughed at her. It was one thing for them to flirt with a girl quietly or to make their insinuations in private, but to shout them half way across the room, in front of her parents and her entire family, it was just too much. But she didn’t know what to do. She could see that Angelo wasn’t happy, but if he was so pissed off with it, why didn’t he do something about it himself? “So I told her that she’s a bloody lap dancer, if she hadn’t intended to go back to mine for a quick lay then what was she giving me the come on for…” Joey laughed as he took another drink of his beer, his friends laughing at another of his chauvinistic ‘conquest’ stories, which he had unfortunately been telling all night, regardless of the fact that he was the youngest of the lot. “I’m telling you, she got the fright of her life when I told her I wasn’t going to call her again if I wasn’t going to get laid for it.” He laughed to himself, his friends not finding it hard to join in.
“What’s up?” Danny whispered in her ear suddenly, noticing the way she seemed so distant, rolling her eyes at Joey’s words, but his question only made Paige sigh with a slight shrug, disappointed that he couldn‘t tell what was wrong. And that it was his friends that were the problem.
“Just leave her mate…she’s a woman.” Blair frowned, pointing his finger at her as he slipped his other hand down her leg, smiling when she grabbed his hand angrily and threw it back at him. And she was all too aware that even though Danny was glaring at him as if he could kill him, he hadn’t exactly done anything about it, or about the twenty five other times his friends had hit on her. “She’s got no sense of humour.” He complained, using her reaction to justify his claim. And they could all see that it infuriated Paige when they laughed, but she was the one wearing the enticing get up and they were only men after all. How were they supposed to look at a gorgeous woman in a fitted, figure hugging black dress, with tiny straps that could so easily fall off, and not be interested. And to make it worse, it had a length that was half-ways between inviting and friendly just above her knees so that, when they had walked in to find her dancing with some tall buff guy, when they’d arrived, that said skirt had been flying around her thighs as she twirled.
“Anyway, ignore her…” Joey began again, rubbing his chin as he tried to remember where he’d left off. “Oh yeah…so I told her I wouldn’t call if I wasn’t going to get laid, so she stormed out and said that wouldn’t be a problem cause she didn‘t ever want to see me again.” He revealed with a slight smile. “…and it turned out that a week later I came home from work to find her standing on my door step in my sports jacket. I totally forgot she’d left still wearing it and I thought she was just going to give it back, so I asked her what she was doing there, but then…hell didn’t she just unzip that jacket and end up standing there naked.” He recalled, making his friends laugh and ask if he was lying. “Nah…she let me get a sneak peak, asked if she could come in and followed me inside.” He continued, pausing in his story for a moment as a sweet looking brunette walked over, catching his attention. She looked as though she might have only been in her late teens, but she had a beautiful, gentle looking face, and a quiet serenity about her and it was definitely appealing. Then again, that could just have been the dress she had on. A deep rich red making her stand out from the crowd, her wavy, black hair lying over her shoulder, and the fact that that dress led around the back of her neck in a halter neck style and ended in a mini skirt wasn’t so unappealing either.
“Paige…” She called over, Joey smiling when he realised he’d just found a topic of conversation if he needed one to get close to her. And yet, he could see he’d have competition if it came to that, since every one of his friends were giving her the same scrutinising, highly approving stare. “Paige can I talk to you a minute?” She asked.
“What is it?”