“You look beautiful, darlings!” my mother croons as we settle into the limo. “Charli, that dress is smashing. Vera has outdone herself.”
I inwardly wince at the shape of that compliment. As if Vera were even ten percent responsible for how Charli looks in that dress.
But Charli doesn’t appear to care. Her back is as straight as a goalpost and her ivory chin is held high. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “You look lovely as well.”
“The white mink looks divine against your hair,” my mother continues.
“Thank you for letting me borrow it,” Charli replies dutifully.
“My pleasure, darling. Formal wear in the wintertime is such a challenge.”
“Indeed,” Charli says so sweetly that she may as well have been snatched by aliens. “It’s a good thing we have dead animals to keep us warm.”
My mother blinks, and I hold back a snort of laughter. My hand steals across the leather seat to find Charli’s. Her smooth fingers close over mine and give a conspiratorial squeeze.
I love that. I lace my fingers through hers and settle in. I can tell Charli is outside her comfort zone, but she’s still one hundred percent herself.
She’s doing this all for me, and I’ll never forget it.
Charli asks my mother a polite question about the foundation, which is a smart move, because my mother begins talking and doesn’t stop until we’ve almost reached the midtown venue.
“How was your game last night, darling?” she asks as we finally roll down Lexington.
My snort escapes this time. “Well, we lost. Badly. And it was my penalty that allowed Boston to score the winning goal on us. So you could say I had a bad night. But thanks for asking. Charli fared better, though. If you won’t watch my games, you could try hers.”
“You know hockey isn’t my thing.” She smooths her own fur coat as the car rolls to a stop.
I hold back my comments, as always. Although I’ve spent the last decade wondering why my family doesn’t care that I’m better at hockey than at running a corporation. “Hey, Mom?” I ask as the driver circles the car to open the door for her. “You didn’t put Iris at our table, right?”
Charli stiffens beside me at the mention of my ex.
“The gala is her event, Neil. She planned it. She can sit wherever she wants. If she feels that table number one is her right, why would I argue?”
Fuck. I rub the back of my neck and wish I could rip off this bowtie. “It just seems obvious that my ex and my wife should not be seated on either side of me. Put Iris with the celebrity and put me at table two.”
My mother makes an irritated sound and steps out of the car. She pastes on a smile, and a million flashbulbs go off at once.
“Tell me what to do,” Charli whispers beside me.
I put a hand on her knee to stop her from getting up. “We’re not getting out quite yet.”
The driver closes the door, proving my point.
“Why are we still here?” Charli asks.
Sometimes I forget how much of my life is a stupid charade, and it depresses me to explain it. “We’re A-list guests, so we arrive second to last. The car has to make a circuit of the East Sixties before he’ll stop and let us out again.”
“Who arrives last?”
“The celebrity speaker.”
“Oh. That’s bonkers, Neil.” She picks up my hand, which has been absently stroking her knee through the silk of her dress.
Oops.
“You’re going to pucker the fabric,” she chides. “If they’re going to take my picture, I’d like to at least look like I tried.”
“Sorry,” I say quickly, moving to withdraw my hand from hers.
But she holds tightly to it. “One more thing…”
“What? And I apologize in advance for whatever dirty looks we get from Iris tonight.”
Charli waves a dismissive hand. “I’ve always been invisible to Iris.”
She won’t be anymore, though. “What were you going to say?” I curl my fingers around hers, surprised that she’s letting me hold her hand. Maybe she’s getting into character.
The car glides around a corner, and I’d honestly rather spend the evening talking to Charli in the back of the limo than at any damn benefit.
“It’s funny,” she says, turning to gaze out the windows at the lights of Manhattan. “I thought you and I grew up with zero in common. But it’s not exactly true. Because nobody ever came to watch my games, either.”
“Yeah, sure. You’re right. We’re twins like that.”
“And the thing is?” Her pretty face swings around toward mine, and I experience a jolt of longing. It’s the fierce look in her eye that always knocks me flat. Charli has a fighter’s energy, and it’s so fucking sexy. “It took me a while to figure out that it was better this way.”
“Hmm?” I stroke the soft skin of her wrist with my thumb. “What’s better?”
“Focus, Neil. The fact that nobody came to my games was a good thing. Hockey was all mine. There was nothing else in my life that didn’t belong to someone else first. Not clothes, not shoes, not a single book. That’s not your life—I get that. But Neil, when I went to Draper, I saw what those hockey parents were like—all the pressure and the expectations. You didn’t have that, and that’s why you’re a star. You had to find the drive inside yourself. And look where it got you? All the way to the top.”
Her sharp gaze has finally burned off my lust-fueled haze, and I realize she has a point. “I never thought about it like that.”
She pokes me in the ribs. “Neglect can be a gift. Trust me on this one.”
“Okay, I will.”
She pats my hand. “They’re serving food at this thing, right?”
“Absolutely. There will be a seated dinner, followed by speeches during dessert, followed by dancing.”
“Dancing,” she repeats. “Really? I thought I’d already counted all the possible means of humiliation.”
I laugh. “Your job is to hang onto me and look smitten. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?” I give her a cheesy wink, and she smiles. “The celebrity guest is Justin B., and—”
“Wait. Really?” She sits up straighter. “Justin B.—as in Justin Branaman, the front man for Tears of the Stag?”
“That’s the guy. He’s a type 1 diabetic.”
Charli lets out the kind of girly shriek that I’d always assumed she despised. “Omigod! This night just got so much more interesting. I love that band!”
And now she’s giving me the exact kind of smitten look that I wished she showed me all the time. “You are hard on my ego, Higgins.”
She reaches up and pats my cheek with a smooth hand. “Someone should be, Cornelius. And that someone is me.”
TWENTY-ONE
DRUNK LOGIC
Charli
When we arrive—again—at the venue, I see a lot of people on the sidewalk. And several photographers. There’s even a damn velvet rope holding onlookers back.