Chapter Ten
ARIA
The dress Lana and I picked out is midnight blue.
A fitted bodice with intricate lace and beading, a plunging neckline and off the shoulder straps that give it a romantic feel.
Not the kind that blends in. The kind that makes a room go quiet when you walk through the door. Fitted through the waist, open back, a slit that stops just above the knee. The kind of dress that says "I belong here" even when my hands shake while I zip it.
I stare at myself in the guest suite mirror and try to see what other people will see tonight.
Everett Kauffman’s fiancée.
The ten-million-dollar ring catches the light every time I move my hand. It still feels like wearing someone else’s life on my finger.
My phone buzzes.
Everly: Heels. Not flats. You’re a Kauffman now. Own the room.
I slide on the heels.
Everett is waiting by the elevator when I step into the hall.
Dark suit, no tie tonight, the top button of his shirt undone in a way that looks effortlessly sexy.
His hair is pushed back and his jaw is freshly shaved.
He looks a billionaire heir with the poise of a first-rate education and memberships to the clubs of the elite.
There's something underneath it all. Something I've only gotten a small glimpse of before he covers it back up again.
His eyes sweep down once. Fast. Controlled.
Then back to my face.
"Ready?" he asks.
No.
"Yes."
The benefit dinner is at La Maison Aurelle, a restaurant people wait months to get into unless they’re wealthy, connected, or both.
Tonight, Kauffman Enterprises is one of the lead investors, which means Everett has a reserved table near the front without so much as saying his name.
Crystal chandeliers cast everything in a warm gold glow. A live harpist plays
Everett’s hand settles on my lower back as we enter. Guiding, not possessive. A touch you’d miss if you blinked.
Heads turn as we walk by. Not all of them—but enough.
The ones who’ve seen the photos. The ones who know that the patriarch of Kauffman Enterprises just walked into La Maison Aurelle with a fiancée no one knows anything about.
A few whispers travel through clusters of people in bespoke suits and couture gowns, and I do my best to sit like a woman who doesn’t hear any of it.
Then I see her.
Sienna Brighton.
She’s already seated at our table in a burgundy gown that fits like it was sewn onto her body.
Her hair is down tonight—dark, glossy, falling past her shoulders.
Next to her is a man in a navy suit with perfect teeth and the kind of polished ease that screams lawyer before he even opens his mouth.
On the other side of him are two other couples I vaguely recognize from Hawkeyes charity events over the years.
Rich. Connected. The kind of people who treat these rooms like a second home.
Of course Everett’s table would look like this.
Everett’s hand stays on the small of my back. I glance up at him, but his focus is already shifting across the table.
"Sienna," he says.
"Everett." Her smile is smooth and immediate. Then her gaze slides to me. Not my face first. My left hand.
The ring.
She takes it in in one quick, sharp sweep before her smile returns.
Everett gestures across the table. "Aria, this is Sienna Brighton. She works for the Harvey Group and is one of the best business managers in the city." Then his eyes flicker back to me. "Sienna, this is my fiancée Aria."
"It’s a pleasure to meet you, Aria," Sienna says. "I have to admit, I’ve always been curious what kind of woman would finally take Everett off the market."
"It’s a pleasure to meet you too," I say, because my father taught me manners before he taught me to ride a bike. "I can’t take full credit for taking Everett off the market. Sometimes timing is everything."
"That," Sienna says, her smile never slipping, "is probably the understatement of the evening.
"And this is Daniel Hart. He's a lawyer for the Harvey Group," Everett says, introducing the man sitting next to Sienna.
Daniel offers me a polite smile. "I am a lawyer, but don't hold that against me," he teases with a smile aimed in my direction.
Everett pulls out my chair and I sit. Then he takes the chair between Sienna and me.
Sienna turns to Everett almost immediately.
"Pierre Matisse just arrived," she says. "His wife is here too. I’ve been working this acquisition for four months, and he’s finally ready to have a real conversation. But Harvey Group doesn’t manage his company, so I have no leverage here."
"Meaning?" Everett asks.
"Meaning you’re going to have to charm him before he flies back to France tomorrow and decides to sell to one of your competitors."
Everett leans toward her to hear the rest, and I feel it immediately—immediately—his body angling away from me and toward her. The warmth of his hand lifts off my back and I feel the absence like a draft against my skin.
Sienna tilts toward him too, lowering her voice, and for one stupid second I hate how natural they look. How easy. Like they’ve done this a hundred times before.
Maybe they have.
Daniel notices, I think, but if he does, he gives no sign. He just reaches for his water glass and takes a sip like his girlfriend leaning too close to Everett Kauffman is a perfectly ordinary part of dinner.
"Let me introduce you," Sienna says, already pushing back her chair.
Everett stands next.
His fingers brush the back of my chair for one brief second before he steps away. "I’ll be back."
"Of course," I say.
Sienna smooths her gown and heads off with him, her hand brushing his sleeve as she steers him through the room.
Daniel nods at someone across the room and he gets up to say hello. Meanwhile the other couple at this table hasn’t shown up yet so I am now sitting alone.
A waiter appears beside me with a tray of champagne flutes. I take one and sit there with a smile that’s already starting to hurt.
For the next twenty minutes, I watch them work.
Sienna leans in to whisper something. Everett nods. She touches his arm twice—once to get his attention, once to emphasize a point—and each time her fingers linger a beat too long to be accidental.
They look right together. That’s the part that twists in my chest. Two people carved from the same stone. Same world. Same instinct for power and proximity.
He has an agenda tonight. I knew that walking in. I’m not here because he wants me here—I’m here because Everly’s forty-two-page PR protocol says I should be. Because engaged couples attend galas together. But Everett had always planned to use this event to network.
I stand up and drift toward the buffet table because at least food won’t make me feel invisible.
That’s when I hear it.
A woman at the far end of the table is speaking to one of the waiters, her voice strained and her hands gesturing in a way that says she’s been trying to make herself understood for longer than she’d like.
"S’il vous pla?t —" and then she tries a few words in broken English.
The waiter stares at her blankly. "I’m sorry, ma’am, could you repeat that?"
She tries again, slower this time, her English fractured and uncertain. "White wine? I would like—If you have?"
The waiter frowns. "We have a Chardonnay and a—"
"Excusez-moi," I say, stepping forward. I smile at the woman. And then use the French my mother taught me. It's rusty, sure, but the moment I start in, I can see relief on her face immediately. Her entire body loosens.
She tells me in French that her husband tells her that her English is fine but that she knows it is not fine.
I laugh. "Your English is better than most people’s French, trust me."
I turn to the waiter. "She’d like the Sancerre, please. And I’ll have the same."
He nods and disappears. The woman—mid-forties, elegant in a jade dress with her dark hair swept into a twist—takes my arm like we’ve known each other for years.
"I am Margaux," she says. "And you have saved my evening."
"Aria."
"Aria." She says it the French way—the R soft, the vowels open. "Please, sit with me. My husband has disappeared into whatever it is these men do at these things, and I cannot survive another conversation in English where I smile and nod and understand nothing."
I glance across the room. Everett is deep in conversation with Sienna and a silver-haired man I don’t recognize. Sienna’s hand is on Everett's arm again.
"I’d love to," I say.
We find a table in the corner and fall into a conversation that only happens when two people meet by accident and realize they actually like each other.
Margaux is from Lyon. She moved to Paris for university, met her husband at a wine tasting in Bordeaux, and has spent the last twenty years following him to business dinners in cities she’d rather be exploring alone.
She’s warm and funny and self-deprecating in a way that reminds me of Cammy—except Margaux does it in two languages simultaneously.
We talk about Seattle. About the rain. About how French bakeries are superior to American ones and she will fight anyone who disagrees. About her two daughters, both in university. About my father, briefly—just enough that she squeezes my hand and says, "You are a good daughter."
I’ve been talking to Margaux for almost an hour when a shadow falls across the table.
"Margaux, there you are."
I look up.
Everett is standing beside a man—tall, silver-haired, impeccably dressed. Pierre Matisse radiates the quiet authority of someone who signs contracts that move markets.
Margaux lights up. "Pierre! Come, sit. I’ve made a friend."
Pierre Matisse turns to me, and I watch the recognition land.
This is the client.
The man Everett has been trying to impress all evening. The acquisition Sienna has been cultivating for four months.
His wife is sitting with me in the corner drinking Sancerre and laughing about French bakeries.
Pierre extends his hand. "Pierre Matisse. And you are?"