Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Charles arranged to be at the same charity dinner three weeks later, which told me he'd either developed sudden, passionate interest in pediatric hospital funding or he'd specifically maneuvered his way onto a guest list he knew I'd be working.
I assumed the latter, correctly, given how quickly he found his way to our table once the main course arrived.
Donovan had warned me, in the car on the way over, that Charles would likely make some kind of move that night.
"He's the type who needs an audience to feel brave," he said, adjusting his cufflink without looking at me.
"Give him a private room and he folds. Give him a dinner party and he'll find his nerve eventually, usually right around dessert, once he's had enough wine to mistake his bitterness for charm. "
He was right down to the course. Charles was smooth about it at first, complimenting the venue, complimenting Donovan's recent acquisition of some shipping conglomerate I hadn't bothered to learn the details of, working his way slowly toward the only subject he'd actually come to discuss. By dessert he'd landed on it.
"Quite the whirlwind," he said, smiling at me in a way that didn't reach his eyes. "Most people take years to build the kind of trust you two apparently built in a few months. Almost makes a person wonder what the rush was."
He couldn't say it outright, not with no proof and a room full of witnesses who'd report every word back through the city's gossip channels by morning, but the implication sat on the table between us like a centerpiece nobody had ordered.
You married him for money. You married him for revenge. This isn't real, and we both know it.
Donovan set down his wine glass with the unhurried calm of a man who'd been waiting his entire life for someone to hand him an opening this clean.
"I imagine it does look fast from the outside," he said, voice level, almost pleasant.
"Though I'd think a man in your position would understand better than most how quickly things move once you finally recognize what you actually want, rather than what you'd convinced yourself you were entitled to. "
The table went quiet in the specific way a room goes quiet when everyone present understands exactly what's just been said and exactly how badly it landed.
Charles's smile thinned at the edges. He had no response that wouldn't require admitting publicly what he'd done to get here, and Donovan knew it, and the silence stretched just long enough to make sure everyone else knew it too.
I waited a beat, long enough to let Donovan's blow land fully, and then I finished it myself, because some satisfactions deserve to be delivered personally. "You taught me a great deal, Charles," I said, lifting my own glass. "Mostly about the value of choosing better the second time."
Nobody at that table missed what I meant and quiet laughter broke out around us. Charles excused himself shortly after, citing an early morning he clearly didn't have, and I sat there feeling something I hadn't felt in months, which was entirely, uncomplicatedly satisfied.
Donovan's hand found mine under the table once Charles had gone, a small, private gesture that nobody else at the table could see, and he didn't say anything about it, didn't make a show of comfort the way he made a show of everything else that night.
He simply held my hand for a moment, his thumb moving once across my knuckles, and then let go and returned to his conversation with the woman seated on his other side as though nothing at all had happened.
I sat there for the rest of dinner with the ghost of that touch still warm against my skin, trying to decide whether it had been part of our theatre roles, too, and finding, for the first time since the terrace, that I genuinely couldn't tell.