Fur and Honor (Steel Bonds)

Chapter 8

Miles hung up the telephone and crossed the final name off the list. This one was another of Mrs. Grant’s useful resources, labeled Acceptable Dates for Public Events .

Acceptable, maybe.

Available? Hard no. Not fewer than forty-eight hours to the event.

This failure should have sent Miles’s stress through the roof. The ladies—or their own personal assistants—he’d contacted in the past day and a half had made it clear that Lord Henry Delacour could not simply show up alone for the city’s New Year’s Eve gala. He required a date to evenly balance the table for dinner, to make small talk with the partners of potential business connections, to take a spin on the dance floor, to avoid negative gossip about his personal life… Miles had certainly learned why the women on this list were vetted, since everyone he spoke to had been exceedingly helpful in educating him on the importance of this seemingly pointless task.

Lord Delacour had made a mistake in hiring Miles as his personal assistant, a person with no experience or qualifications to suitably fill the role. He might do the job well enough, barring certain glaring missteps, but he’d never measure up to the requirements of either the businessman or nobleman. Delacour’s money and status meant the world bowed to his whim. He owned one of the fanciest penthouses in the city, traveled the island by private car, ate gourmet meals delivered by professional chefs, and now even had a personal assistant to handle his damned dry cleaning. The man wanted for nothing.

A good PA would have continued the search for a date, even after exhausting Mrs. Grant’s list. But Delacour hadn’t hired a good PA, he’d hired Miles. Because Lord Henry Delacour didn’t need anything from a broken, washed-up dock rat. He certainly didn’t need a date to this gala.

Instead, over the past weeks, it looked more and more like Delacour needed a friend. The dishes created by Miles’s mother for that small meeting might be the first home-cooked meal his boss had eaten in ages. Given the chance, Miles would offer him so much more. One day, Delacour might even realize that.

Right now, caring for and acknowledging the “real” Henry was a good first step.

Looked like this broken, washed-up dock rat needed a tux.