15. Soleil
FIFTEEN
SOLEIL
His face in sleep was the only version of him without the guard.
I lay on my side watching him — tracing the lines, reading what the artist left exposed.
His jaw was slack, the tension that lived there during waking hours dissolved into something softer.
Younger. A scar on his right knuckle I'd never asked about caught the early light.
His hand was curled around my hip even in sleep, his fingers pressed into the curve of bone like he was holding me in place.
I slipped out from under his arm and padded across the cold floor to his closet. The row of black suits hung in perfect formation. I reached past them and found the navy. The one from the fitting room. The one I'd unbuttoned with my teeth while the mirror fogged behind us.
I laid it across the chair beside his bed, found a pen on his nightstand, and wrote on the back of a receipt: Wear this. For me.
His kitchen was becoming mine. I knew where the mugs were, which burner ran hot, how to angle the French press so the grounds didn't escape.
The coffee I made was terrible. I knew it was terrible.
He knew it was terrible. He drank every cup I gave him without expression, and the fact that he never said a word about it had become one of my favorite things about him.
I was pouring the second cup when his footsteps came down the hall. I turned.
He stopped in the doorway. His eyes moved from my bare legs to the hem of his shirt hanging mid-thigh to my face, and the look he gave me — slow, unhurried — warmed my skin.
"Morning," I said.
He crossed the kitchen. His hands found my waist and lifted me onto the counter.
I wrapped my legs around him. The coffee sat untouched behind me, steam rising between us. His mouth found mine — warm, tasting like sleep, the kiss slow and deep, his hands sliding up my thighs beneath the shirt.
My fingers traced his jaw. The stubble was rough under my fingertips. I pulled him closer. The kiss deepened, which made my toes curl against his lower back.
I pulled away. My forehead against his. Both of us breathing hard.
"Tonight," I said. A promise.
He held my gaze. His thumb traced the bone of my hip. "Tonight."
I left to get ready for the gala. My apartment was a disaster of fabric and options — three dresses draped across the bed, two pairs of shoes on the floor, earrings scattered across the bathroom counter.
Margaux arrived at 4:00 p.m. with a garment bag, a curling iron, and the particular expression of a woman who had cleared her evening to perform a miracle.
"Sit," she said, pointing at the bathroom stool. "Don't move."
My phone buzzed while she worked on my hair. Daddy.
"Tonight is going to be special, sweetheart." His voice was warm, bright, the voice he used when he was proud of something and wanted me to feel included in his pride. "I have something planned."
"For me?"
"Who else?" I could hear his smile through the phone. "Wear something beautiful."
I hung up and caught Margaux's eyes in the mirror. "Daddy has a surprise."
Her eyebrow lifted. The curling iron paused mid-twist. "What kind of surprise?"
"He didn't say. But he sounded excited."
The eyebrow stayed up. She said nothing. She went back to my hair.
The dress was gold. Not the bright gold of the birthday dinner — darker, deeper, the color of honey held up to candlelight.
It skimmed my body from shoulder to floor, the neckline cutting straight across my collarbones, my back bare to the waist. Margaux zipped me in, stepped back, and pressed her lips together.
"Well?" I turned.
"If he doesn't lose his mind when he sees you, I'll kill him myself."
Nolan was waiting outside in the car. I climbed in and his eyes found me in the dark. The gold fabric, the bare shoulders, the curls Margaux had pinned up with a few left loose at my temples. His hand found my knee. His thumb pressed into the bare skin above the hem.
"The navy looks wonderful on you," I said, touching his lapel. The suit fit him — the severity softened, the man underneath more visible. He'd worn it because I asked. The private victory of it settled in my chest like a flame.
The ballroom was already full when we walked in.
Crystal chandeliers threw fractured light across a room designed to make people feel small and important at the same time.
A string quartet played something classical beneath the hum of three hundred voices.
White tablecloths. Silver flatware. Arrangements of white roses and eucalyptus on every surface, the scent so thick it pressed against the back of my throat.
The room turned when we entered. Heads swiveled. Conversations dipped.
I felt the attention, and I tightened my grip on Nolan's arm and walked through it.
Hugh commanded the center of the room in a charcoal suit, silver hair swept back, a glass of champagne held at chest height like a scepter.
Gerald Ashworth flanked him, shaking hands with a steady rotation of donors and board members.
Rhys was at the bar. Already. His tie was loose, his glass dark, his laugh carrying across the room with a volume that didn't match the conversation he was in.
A woman beside him said something, and he threw his head back, the laughter rolling out too loud, too fast.
Camille materialized in cream silk, air-kissing my cheek.
Bianca followed in emerald. Dominique, Sloane, Petra — they arrived in formation, their compliments landing like confetti, pretty and weightless.
"The dress is stunning, Sol." "You two look incredible together. " "Your father must be so proud."
Declan and Thea stood near the dance floor.
Thea's ring caught the chandelier light every time she moved her hand, and she moved it often — touching Declan's arm, adjusting his lapel, the unconscious gestures of a woman still getting used to the new weight on her finger.
Declan's hand rested on the small of her back. They were solid. Easy.
Julian was holding court with a circle of donors, his sleeves somehow already rolled despite the black-tie dress code. A champagne flute in one hand, the other gesturing broadly as he delivered a punchline that made three grown men laugh like schoolboys.
Margaux was somewhere in the room. I could feel her watching even when I couldn't see her. The one person who was never performing.
The evening built.
Dinner was elaborate — courses I stopped counting, wine I stopped tracking.
Nolan's hand found my knee under the table.
My fingers laced through his. Hugh gave a toast to the room — to Lattimore Holdings, to legacy, to the people who made it possible — and the three hundred guests raised their glasses in unison, the crystal catching the light like a constellation.
After dinner, the quartet slowed to something softer. Nolan took my hand and led me to the floor. His arm circled my waist. His other hand held mine against his chest.
We moved together — close, slow, his mouth near my ear.
"You're the most beautiful woman in this room," he said.
I bit my lip. My fingers tightened on his shoulder. "Keep talking like that and we're leaving early."
"That's the plan."
I laughed against his neck. His arm tightened around my waist.
I pressed my face into the warmth of his collar and breathed him in — the soap, the starch of the navy shirt, the scent underneath that was just him, clean and dark and mine. I felt powerful tonight. Confident. The woman who'd been growing all these months was standing at full height.
Across the room, Rhys leaned against a pillar.
His eyes were closed. His glass dangled from his fingers, half-empty, his body swaying slightly like a building in wind.
A conversation partner had walked away mid-sentence.
He stood alone with his eyes shut and his jaw working, and the sight of him — the golden boy going dull in real time — pulled at something in my chest.
I started to step toward him. Nolan's hand caught mine. "One more dance."
I looked at Rhys. Looked at Nolan. The music swelled. I let myself be pulled back.
I stepped away from the dance floor twenty minutes later. Bathroom. Fresh air. A moment where nobody was watching and I could breathe without performing. The corridor outside the ballroom was cool and quiet, the noise of the gala muffled behind heavy doors.
Two men stood near the end of the hallway.
Hugh's associates — I recognized one from the birthday dinner, the other from a board meeting I'd attended with my father.
They were speaking in low voices, their bodies angled toward each other, the posture of men exchanging information they didn't want overheard.
I caught my name. My feet stopped.
"— Lattimore girl's gallery. Hugh's been propping it up for years. The lease alone is worth three times what she pays."
"The Hargrove Foundation grants too. All routed through Hugh's philanthropic arm. And Eleanor Voss — you think she walked in off the street? Hugh sat next to her at the Harrington benefit and pointed her straight to the daughter's door."
They saw me. The conversation died. Two smiles appeared — polished, professional, the smiles of men who knew they'd been caught and were calculating whether it mattered. They nodded. Moved on.
I stood in the corridor.
The floor beneath my gold heels was marble.
Cold. Solid. It didn't move. But everything above it did.
All this time I'd told myself he just opened a door or two.
That I was the one who walked through them.
The lease. The foundation. Eleanor Voss walking through my gallery door because my father sat beside her at a benefit and pointed.
Every collector who found me. Every grant that arrived.
Every door that opened too easily, every break that felt like luck, every moment I'd stood in my gallery and believed I'd built something real.
He hadn't helped, he'd orchestrated. None of it was luck. None of it was mine.