Chapter 2—Simon
I SEE CHOLERA ACROSS the Caldwell ballroom and nearly choke on a twelve-hundred-dollar glass of scotch.
Noah notices because Noah has spent thirty-one years noticing anything that might eventually embarrass me. He follows my stare across the room, then turns back slowly. “No.”
I swallow carefully and lower the glass. “What?”
“No.” He says it more firmly this time, adding a slight shake of his head for emphasis.
“I haven’t said anything.” I resent having to defend myself before committing an offense.
Noah glances across the ballroom again. “You don’t need to. I’ve known you since you ate paste.”
“I never ate paste.” At least the accusation gives me a reason to look away from the woman across the room.
“You absolutely ate paste.” Noah points his glass toward me. “St. Matthew’s, first grade. You said it smelled like almonds.”
“It did smell like almonds. I investigated.” I straighten my cuff. “There’s a difference.”
Noah doesn’t dignify that with a response. His attention returns to the other side of the ballroom before he looks at me again. “You’ve finally lost your mind.”
The possibility has occurred to me. Maybe I’ve had a stroke.
The woman standing near the Caldwell Foundation display is Charla Kaffey. Except something is wrong with her.
Nothing obvious. Unfortunately, she remains physically beautiful.
She’s wearing a dark-blue dress that leaves one shoulder bare and falls in a simple line to the floor.
Her pale-blonde hair ends just above her shoulders instead of halfway down her back, but Charla changes her hair often enough that the difference shouldn’t matter.
Everything else is familiar. Same height, same face, and the same blue eyes.
She’s also the same woman who arranged to be seated beside me at three charity dinners in six weeks, despite being told twice by my office and once by me that I wasn’t interested in dating her.
She sent a bottle of wine to my hotel room in Monaco after somehow discovering where I was staying.
At Noah and Misty’s anniversary party last year, she kissed me after I explicitly told her not to.
I’ve spent years finding Charla Kaffey beautiful in the same abstract sense that certain venomous snakes are beautiful. I prefer both from a safe distance.
Tonight, I can’t stop looking at her.
This is alarming. If not a stroke, maybe a TIA? Something has damaged my brain.
Noah leans closer, lowering his voice even though nobody nearby is listening. “Do I need to call Misty?”
I finally drag my attention away. “Why would you call your wife?”
“Because I don’t think I can handle this alone.” His grin ruins any attempt to sound concerned.
I give him a warning look. “Handle what?”
“You staring at Cholera like you just discovered women.”
“I’m not staring.”
Noah looks across the ballroom, counts silently for a second, then turns back to me. “You’ve looked away once in the last two minutes. That was to lie to me.”
I take another drink. “Something is different.”
“She cut her hair.” Noah gives the obvious answer.
“It’s not the hair.”
“New dress?”
“No.”
He glances at me. “Different makeup?”
“I don’t know what her makeup usually looks like.”
Noah smiles. “That might be the first sensible thing you’ve said.”
Despite myself, I look again.
Charla is speaking to an older woman I vaguely recognize from the museum board. She isn’t touching her hair, checking the room, or positioning herself to be seen. She listens while the woman talks, smiles at something she says, then tips her head back and laughs.
My stomach reacts in a way I refuse to examine, so I stare into my scotch. Did my doctor do a neurological work-up at my last physical? Do I need an MRI?
Noah sees that too. His delight grows offensive. “Oh, this is bad.”
“Be quiet.” I take another drink to give myself something else to do.
“You like her.”
“I don’t.” The answer comes immediately.
Noah gestures toward my face. “You just made the same expression you made when Misty told you she’d accepted my proposal.”
“That was concern.”
“That was delight.”
“I was concerned for Misty.” I mean it enough that he laughs.
Noah points at me with his glass. “She says the same thing about you.”
I don’t answer because the woman across the room has crouched beside a little girl in a white dress near the edge of the dance floor. The girl’s shoe strap has come loose. Charla fixes it, says something that makes the child smile, then sends her back toward a nearby table.
I’ve never seen Charla do anything remotely like that. More importantly, she did it without checking who was watching.
I narrow my eyes. Maybe Charla is the one having a neurological event.
Maybe this is some elaborate campaign. That would be excessive even for Charla, though I can’t dismiss it completely. She once joined the board of a literacy charity after hearing I donated to it.
She doesn’t particularly like reading.
“She seems different,” I mutter.
Noah gives me a sidelong look. “People change.”
“Not that much.”
“You haven’t talked to her in months.” Noah reaches for a passing tray and exchanges his empty glass for a fresh one. “Maybe you’re ready to catch Cholera.”
I send him a warning look. “I haven’t voluntarily talked to her in years.”
“That hasn’t prevented conversations.” He takes a sip and grimaces at whatever the bartender gave him.
No, it hasn’t.
Charla is remarkably resistant to social cues, verbal cues, direct statements, strategic retreats, and, on one memorable occasion, a locked car door.
I watch her accept a glass of champagne from a passing server. She takes one sip, makes a face, and puts it on another tray.
Charla loves champagne.
I know this because she once spent twenty minutes explaining her preferences while I contemplated walking into the Atlantic.
Something is very wrong.
“Maybe she’s ill.” I say it mostly to myself.
Noah laughs. “Your explanation for finding a woman attractive is that she has a neurological condition?”
“I’ve always known she’s attractive.” I turn toward him, irritated that I have to explain this. “Attraction and wanting someone aren’t the same thing.”
Noah’s smile widens. “You’ve always described her as a communicable disease.”
“Privately.”
“Very gentlemanly.”
“I’ve never called her Cholera to her face.” I glance across the room again.
Noah raises his glass in mock acknowledgment. “An inspiration to us all.”
I ignore him.
The woman across the ballroom has wandered toward the eighteenth-century escritoire Caldwell inexplicably included in the foundation’s silent auction.
I looked at it earlier because the piece is attractive enough to catch my attention and damaged enough that I wouldn’t buy it without having someone competent inspect it.
Charla bends closer.
She doesn’t glance at the auction card or check the bid sheet. She studies the front, moves to the side, then lowers her head to inspect something beneath the writing surface.
I frown. “What is she doing?”
Noah follows my attention. “Admiring furniture?”
“Charla doesn’t admire furniture.”
His expression turns incredulous. “You know an alarming amount about a woman you claim to avoid.”
“I know she once called a Chippendale cabinet ‘that old brown thing’ in front of the curator who loaned it.”
Noah winces at the memory. “I remember that.”
“Everyone remembers that. The curator probably still wakes up angry about it occasionally.”
Across the room, Charla straightens and speaks to one of the Caldwell volunteers. The woman responds, and Charla looks back at the escritoire before reaching into her evening bag for her phone.
“She’s taking pictures of it.” I watch her crouch again to photograph one side.
Noah turns his body toward me instead of the furniture. “Simon.”
“What?”
“You’re narrating Cholera’s evening.”
I glare at him. “She hates antiques.”
“Apparently, she doesn’t anymore.”
“She hates anything that requires maintenance.”
“Except her campaign to acquire you.” Noah’s patience begins to fray. “Perhaps she’s grown.”
“She replaced a six-month-old Mercedes because someone scratched the passenger door.”
“That was three years ago.”
“It was eleven months ago.”
Noah exhales and looks toward the ceiling. “I don’t know why I know either of you.”
“You married my assistant.”
“I married Misty because she’s brilliant, beautiful, and inexplicably attracted to me.”
“Through me.” I enjoy reminding him of this.
He points at me. “Don’t ruin this.”
“I’m merely establishing why you’re still here.”
“I’m here because Misty threatened me if I left you unattended at a Caldwell event.” Noah checks his phone as if expecting her to verify the threat personally.
That sounds plausible. Misty has been my executive assistant for nine years and Noah’s wife for six. She loves both of us. She also regards us as two unusually expensive children she’s somehow been forced to supervise.
I look across the ballroom again, and the woman is gone. Disappointment hits harder than it should.
I search the crowd before I can stop myself.
Noah watches me do it and grins. “This is the best night I’ve had in months.”
“Your life is empty.”
“I have three children under five.” Noah slips his phone back into his jacket. “My life is never empty. It’s usually sticky.”
I find her near the terrace doors, and relief arrives immediately.
This is becoming humiliating. I’ve officially become a man whose mood depends on Charla Kaffey’s location within a ballroom. I should leave.
Instead, I watch her. She’s stopped beside a man I know well enough to dislike.
Tate Meade.
I don’t do business directly with Tate, though our paths cross often.
The Meades have been wealthy for generations and influential for almost as long.
Tate runs the family holding company with his father and carries himself with the confidence of someone who has never entered a room without knowing his place near the top of it.
He’s also married.
I vaguely remember the wedding because my mother attended and spent the following month mentioning that I should consider having one of my own.