Chapter 7 #2
His fingers closed around mine. He did not pull me close. He did not perform possessiveness for the cameras already gathering near the curb. He simply held my hand as we walked inside.
The whispers began at once.
I knew the sound. Weddings taught you the difference between admiration and appetite.
This was appetite. People wanted a story.
The broken engagement. The Voss name. The sudden marriage.
They wanted to decide whether I was a victim, an opportunist, or a woman who had finally revealed what she had always been.
I smiled at Natalie, checked the seating chart, directed a server around a late floral delivery, and treated every person who looked at me as though I had not noticed.
Damian stayed at my side until I told him to stand near the bar and look less like he was guarding a foreign diplomat.
"I do not know how to look less like that," he said.
"Try pretending you are having a normal evening."
"That seems dishonest."
"You are impossible."
His eyes warmed. Only slightly. "So I have been told."
I was arranging place cards near the far end of the room when a shadow fell across the table.
Salvatore D'Angelo was shorter than Damian by several inches and twice as theatrical. He wore a tuxedo with a white pocket square and a smile designed for photographs. His hair was silver at the temples. His hands were clean, manicured, almost delicate.
He looked at me as though we had met before.
"Mrs. Voss," he said.
My pulse changed. I made sure nothing else did.
"Mr. D'Angelo. Welcome. Your table is near the east windows."
"I know. I wanted to congratulate you. Your wedding was quite the surprise."
"It was intimate."
"That is one word for it."
I slid the last place card into alignment. "Was there something you needed for your table?"
He smiled. "Only a moment. Your father is recovering, I hope."
The room did not move. I did.
I turned to face him fully. "My father is receiving care."
"Good. I would hate for old business to become a family tragedy."
"Then perhaps you should stop treating people like invoices."
His smile thinned.
Behind him, Damian was speaking with Natalie’s uncle. He had not seen us yet. Or perhaps he had and was choosing not to make a scene. I did not know which possibility made me feel more aware of him.
"You have more spirit than I expected," Salvatore said.
"You expected the wrong thing."
"Your husband is going to find that expensive."
I stepped closer, lowering my voice. "You are at a private event.
My client is about to walk into a dinner she spent months planning.
You will take your seat, you will smile for photographs, and you will not bring your threats near her family.
If you do, I will make enough noise that every person in this room hears it. "
His eyes sharpened. Then he laughed softly.
"You are learning the value of a name."
"No," I said. "I am learning the value of using my own."
He held my gaze for a second longer, then turned away.
Damian was beside me before I could exhale.
"What did he say?"
"Nothing worth ruining Natalie’s dinner over."
His eyes darkened in a way that should not have made heat move through me. I hated that my body noticed him even now. I hated that he seemed to notice me noticing.
"Elena."
"I handled it."
"I know."
"Then let me."
His gaze shifted to D'Angelo at the bar. "That is not easy for me."
"I am beginning to understand."
He looked back at me. The music started. Guests moved toward their seats.
"You handled it well," he said.
The approval in his voice was not patronizing. It was not a reward. It was recognition.
For the rest of the evening, he stayed close enough that I could find him in a crowded room and far enough that no one could say he had taken my work from me.
When a florist's assistant fainted from heat in the service corridor, Damian carried her to a quiet room without making anyone look at him.
When a drunk cousin tried to corner Natalie near the cake table, Damian merely appeared behind him and asked if he needed help finding his seat.
The cousin disappeared so fast I had to look away to hide a smile.
For the next two hours, I worked the event as though no one had mentioned the D'Angelo name.
That was the hardest part of being good at my job.
You learned to divide yourself. One part of you listened to the bride talk about how the dessert plates were too small.
Another part watched the groom's father scan the entrance every time the doors opened.
A third part kept the whole room moving so smoothly no one had to admit that anything was wrong.
Damian watched me do it from a distance.
He had positioned himself near the bar, exactly where I told him to, with one shoulder turned toward the entrance and the other toward the dining room.
He did not look like a guest. He looked like the consequence of one.
But he did not interfere. When a server knocked a glass of red wine onto a stack of menus, he stepped back and let me handle it.
When Natalie's aunt cornered me with a question about the lighting, he did not appear at my elbow.
When Salvatore D'Angelo spoke too long to a city donor near the dance floor, Damian only watched.
It was not nothing.
At nine, the couple's first dance began. Natalie had chosen an old song with strings swelling softly beneath the lyrics. Guests formed a loose circle around them. I stood near the edge, checking the timing in my head, until a hand appeared beside me.
"Dance with me," Damian said.
I looked at him. "This is my event."
"You have been working for three hours."
"That is what I do."
"I know."
His hand remained open. Not insisting. Waiting.
I could have said no. I considered it. Then I looked at Natalie turning beneath the lights, her face pressed to her fiancé's shoulder, and felt a strange ache for the version of my life where a dance was not a political statement.
"One song," I said.
Damian led me to a quiet space at the edge of the floor. He moved well, which annoyed me. Of course he did. His hand rested at my waist with enough distance that I could have stepped away at any time.
"You are staring," I said.
"You are working while you dance."
"I am monitoring the room."
"The room is fine."
"The room is never fine."
His mouth almost smiled. "That sounds familiar."
I looked over his shoulder. Salvatore was speaking with a man I recognized from a city permits office. Damian noticed the direction of my gaze.
"Do not," I said quietly.
"I am not doing anything."
"You are thinking about it loudly."
His eyes came back to mine. "That is your line."
"You stole it first."
The music carried us slowly around the floor.
For one minute, I let myself focus on his hand, his shoulder beneath my fingers, the warmth of his body close to mine.
I had been angry at him for days. I was still angry.
But attraction had its own terrible logic.
It did not ask whether a person was convenient.
"Do you regret the engagement?" he asked.
The question startled me.
"With Sebastian?"
He nodded.
"That is a dangerous question to ask your wife at a wedding."
"I have terrible timing."
"You do."
I considered the truth. "I regret that I did not see him more clearly. I do not regret loving him. He was kind to me when I needed kindness. That mattered. But kindness that disappears when it costs something is not the same as a life."
Damian's hand tightened once at my waist. "He did not deserve you."
I looked at him. "Do not make that about you."
"I was not."
"You were a little."
He exhaled. "Probably."
The song ended. We stepped apart. There was no applause for us, no witnesses except a server who smiled politely as she passed.
Before I returned to the schedule, Damian caught my wrist lightly.
"You did not answer," he said.
"What?"
"Do you regret marrying me?"
The room continued around us. Guests laughed. Glasses clinked. Somewhere, an aunt was crying because the couple had chosen a song from her own wedding.
"Ask me when I have had more than four days to know what it means," I said.
His face changed. Not disappointment. Understanding.
"Fair," he said.
Then he let me go.
At eleven thirty, the last guests left beneath umbrellas. I stood in the empty Conservatory, checking the final list while staff cleared glassware. Damian came up behind me, close enough that warmth brushed the back of my neck.
"You are done," he said.
"I have three more things."
"You are done."
"You are not my employer."
"No."
His voice was low. It carried something that made my fingers tighten around the clipboard.
I turned.
He was standing too close. The glass ceiling above us held the night like a dark mirror. Rain traced thin lines down the windows. Somewhere in the kitchen, someone laughed and a tray rattled.
"You lied to me last night," I said.
The moment changed. He knew what I meant.
"Yes."
"The photograph. The watch. Who was Rafe?"
He looked past me toward the empty tables.
"A friend."
"That is all you are going to say?"
"It is all I can say tonight."
Anger rose. Not because he would not tell me. Because his voice had made it sound like he was afraid to.
"You promised."
The Calder Hotel had two ballrooms, one terrible loading dock, and a florist who believed problems could be solved by speaking to them in French.
Walking through its service entrance with Nico two steps behind me was not how I had imagined returning to work.
“You are too close,” I told him as we crossed the kitchen corridor.
“I am six feet away.”
“You are six feet away in a suit that makes you look like you are about to question the pastry chef.”
“The pastry chef looked suspicious.”
“He was carrying éclairs.”
“Exactly. No one carries that many without a reason.”
I turned to face him. Nico stopped with the annoyed patience of a man who had been asked to distinguish between a bomb and a dessert.