Chapter 3
Liv
The reception room hits me like a wall of heat and noise when I step back through the doorway, candlelight and crystal and sixty conversations happening at once, and for a second, I almost turn around and go straight back to the cloakroom bench.
Instead, I find a quiet stretch of wall near a column, close enough to the room to look like I belong in it, far enough back that nobody's likely to walk up and try to sell me a marriage proposal in the next thirty seconds.
I cross my arms and breathe and remind myself that Katriona is somewhere in this crowd too, that I'm not actually alone in here even if it feels that way.
That's when I hear him.
A laugh booms out from somewhere near the entrance, big and unselfconscious.
The kind of laugh that makes three or four other people start smiling before they even know what the joke was.
I follow the sound and find a man taller than anyone else in the room, broad through the shoulders in a way his suit clearly isn't trying to hide, with dark hair pushed back like he ran a hand through it once and decided that was good enough.
He's got a woman in blue laughing on one arm and a blonde wearing the latest Versace on the other, both incredibly beautiful.
He doesn't look like the other men here. They move through the room like they're closing deals, careful and contained, eyes weighing business behind polite smiles. He moves like he already owns the place and finds the whole arrangement hilarious.
He steers both women toward the dining hall with an easy hand at each of their backs, and for one unfair second, I find myself almost jealous of how simple it looks, being swept along by someone who seems entirely without the capacity for cruelty.
Then I catch myself being jealous of that, of all things, and I have to press my lips together to keep from laughing at my own ridiculous heart.
Dinner gets called not long after. A small, sharp-faced man with a clipboard reads names off in pairs and trios, assigning seats the way you'd assign cattle to pens, and I end up near the middle, sandwiched between another beautiful woman who smells like gardenias and a man who is simply terrifying.
The man who had the two women on his arms is four seats down and across, directly in my line of sight whether I want him there or not.
I tell myself I'm not watching him. I'm watching the room, generally, the way Katriona told me to, taking inventory the way she clearly already had. It just so happens that my eyes keep landing on the loudest part of it.
He's telling some story with his hands, big sweeping gestures that nearly take out a candelabra, and the whole end of the table is laughing, even a stone-faced man two seats over who looks like he hasn't smiled since the Cold War.
Then he looks up, and he catches me watching him.
I intend look away immediately. That's the socially correct thing to do, the thing a sensible, dignified woman does when she's caught staring at a stranger across a dinner table. Instead I just sit there, frozen, heat climbing up my neck, while he holds my gaze for one long, unhurried second.
He doesn't smirk or do the thing men do when they catch you looking, that smug little tilt of the chin that says I know. He just smiles, easy and real, like he's genuinely glad I exist, and goes right back to his story.
My heart does something stupid and traitorous in my chest.
The food comes in courses I barely taste.
Gardenia woman tells me at length about her late husband's yacht.
The man next to me seems enraptured by Katriona.
I push food around my plate and try not to look down the table again, and fail, more than once.
Every single time I look back up, he's either already looking at me or he turns to look a half second after I do, like we're caught in some ridiculous, silent game of tag neither of us agreed to play.
The third time it happens, he raises his wine glass an inch off the table, just for me, just enough that I understand it's a private joke between the two of us and nobody else at this table is in on it.
I bite down on a smile and look at my plate.
By the time dessert arrives, he's somehow gotten loose from his dinner companions and is making a slow, unbothered circuit of the room, stopping to talk to people like he's got nowhere else on earth to be.
I watch him charm an elderly man into actually laughing out loud, and then say something to Rita, the hostess who handed me my file and my fate, that makes her swat his arm.
Somewhere in the middle of watching him be effortlessly, infuriatingly likable, he ends up beside me.
"You," he says, like we're already mid-conversation, "have been staring at me all night."
My face goes hot instantly. "I have not."
"You have. I counted four separate occasions. I'm flattered, genuinely, but I have to ask. Is it the suit? Everyone says it's the suit."
I smile despite myself. Then shake my head, more at my own embarrassment than his humor. "It's not the suit."
"Devastating. I had Rita compliment it twice tonight specifically to build my confidence before this conversation.
" Up close he's even bigger, broad enough that the chair looks almost comically small underneath him, and there's something in his eyes, quick and warm and a little wicked, that makes it very hard to remember I'm supposed to be terrified of every man in this room.
"I'm Volody," he says.
"Liv."
"Liv." He says it like he's testing the weight of it, the same way Katriona did in the cloakroom, except his mouth curves around it like he likes what he finds. "Short for something?"
"Alivia."
"Alivia." He says that too, slower, and something in my stomach flips over without permission. "That's a name someone thought hard about. Family name?"
"My mother liked it. Said it sounded like it belonged to someone who'd do something with her life."
"And have you?" he asks.
The question catches me sideways, because it isn't the question men usually ask in rooms like this. Nobody's asked me anything tonight that wasn't really about my brother or my family name. This is just a question, plain and curious, like he actually wants to know the answer.
"I raised my little brother," I say, before I can decide whether that's something I want to admit to a stranger at an auction. "After our parents died. So. Something, I suppose. Just not the kind anyone puts on a résumé."
"That's the only kind worth putting anywhere," he says, and there's no flattery in it, no smooth recovery line.
He just says it like a fact, looks at me like he means it, and something in my chest goes soft and unguarded in a way I don't have time to examine before he's grinning again, the mood shifting like he flipped a switch.
"So. Tell me something terrible about yourself.
Quickly, before someone interrupts and I have to go be charming at strangers again. "
"Something terrible?" I ask, a frown pinching my forehead.
"Everyone here is presenting their best self tonight. Frankly, I find it exhausting. Give me something real."
I think about it, which surprises me more than the question did. "I once told my brother I'd read an entire book series with him so he'd stop bothering me about it. I didn't read a single page. I just watched enough of the show to fake it."
He stares at me like I've handed him a gift. "Which series?"
"I'm not telling you. You'll quiz me."
"I absolutely will." He's laughing now in the way that crinkles the corners of his eyes, and the sound of it does something warm and unexpected low in my stomach.
"That might be the most deeply human thing anyone's confessed to me in three years of these dinners.
Everyone else tells me about their charity work. "
I almost snort. "I do charity work too.”
"Liar."
"Fine. I did one fun run. Once. I walked most of it."
"There she is," he says, like he's been waiting all night for exactly this version of me to show up, and I laugh before I can stop myself, a real laugh, surprised out of me, the first one all evening that doesn't have fear stitched into the back of it.
I catch myself mid-laugh and go still, because I shouldn't be doing this.
I shouldn't be sitting in a chair beside a man I've known for four minutes, in a room where I'm currently being priced like livestock, feeling my pulse pick up over a joke about a fun run and the irony that I believed this was a charity dinner.
He notices the shift and I'm starting to suspect there isn't much that gets past him.
"You went somewhere," he says, quieter now, the teasing dialed back. "Just then."
I shake my head slowly. "I'm fine."
"You don't have to be fine. Not with me, anyway. I’d rather take the ugliest reality than the prettiest performance." Something flickers behind his eyes, there and gone before I can name it. "But I'll let you have it if that's what you need tonight. Pretend with me a little longer, if it helps."
I look at him properly then, past the suit and the size of him and the easy charm he wears like a second jacket, and I find something underneath all of it that I wasn't expecting. Attention. The kind that doesn't come with a price tag attached.
"Thank you," I say, and I mean it more than the words probably suggest.
"For what? I haven't done anything yet." He winks, and the moment breaks open into something lighter again, easier, like he's decided I've had enough weight for one evening and it's his personal mission to lift some of it off.
"Although I should warn you, the night is young, and I have several more terrible jokes prepared. "
"I look forward to being disappointed."
"That's the spirit." He stands, straightening his jacket, and for a second I think that's it, the conversation’s over, whatever this strange small spark between us extinguished as easily as it caught. Instead he leans down, close enough that I catch the warm, clean scent of him.
"I'll see you again tonight, Alivia Beckett," he says, low enough that it's just for me. "I'd put money on it."
He walks off toward a group of men before I can answer, and I sit there at a half-abandoned dinner table, feeling something dangerously close to hope flickering where dread should be sitting instead.
I don't know what he does, what kind of family put that look of wary respect on every face he passes.
I just know that of every terrifying man here, he is the only one who tried to make me feel safe.