She sipped her soda as they drifted away from the bar to a less crowded spot. Though he didn’t normally like telling people about his sobriety, Mira was unusually easy to talk to and he was happy to keep her distracted. She didn’t look tense, but her knuckles were white. “I don’t remember you drinking much when we were together.”
“Because I was a highly functioning alcoholic. I also stepped up my drinking more after we broke up.”
Mira drew back. “Because of me?”
He stopped under a tree. He had been bummed Mira had broken up with him, but he’d faced rejection and disappointment before. “No. It would have happened with or without you. It was me. I was under a lot of stress.” The higher that pressure got, the better the alcohol had tasted. He took a big gulp of his ginger ale, savoring the sweet bubbles as they quenched some of his thirst. “Alcohol was a big part of my firm culture. My family’s too. It was a quick slide for me from social lubricant to something I needed to function, what I used to treat anything bad I was feeling.”
“What made you quit?”
“A few things went wrong all at once. I lost three big clients, my fiancée left me, and, well, I drank too much one night at a bar, drove home, and got a DUI.” He could say the words easier now, but they hadn’t exactly been easy experiences. “My grandpa came and gave me a wake-up call, but I was already thinking that the best thing to do was to get rid of one of the things actively making me miserable. I just didn’t know how to do it. Rehab helped a lot with that.”
She had stilled, and he wondered if she was thinking about the DUI. “I got pulled over before I got into an accident or anything,” he hurried to assure her. “No one was hurt. Trust me, I know exactly how wrong I was for getting behind the wheel.” Explaining it to his mother, and the state bar, and a judge had been the most humbling and mortifying experiences of his life. He could only thank God he hadn’t injured someone.
“Good,” she murmured. “Did you say fiancée?”
He tried to remember if he’d told her that he’d been engaged after their relationship. “Yes. I told you Hema Auntie introduced me to someone else after you.”
A line appeared between Mira’s eyebrows. She seemed almost disturbed? “You didn’t tell me you were engaged to her.”
He’d felt so much pressure to get the second relationship right, that he’d proposed before either of them were ready. If he could not talk about Payal, though, that would be fine. “It was a short engagement.”
Mira opened her mouth, but before she could respond, the sound of metal hitting glass filled the air. They turned their attention to the stage in the center, where the quartet had paused in its playing to make way for a tall man.
Naveen knew from pictures on the internet that this was Steve Wyatt. He looked exactly like he did there, tall and imposing, with a solidly muscular bulk around his middle. His nose was crooked, like it had been broken a few times, and his ears were big. Despite the cost of it, his suit was vaguely ill fitting, as if he’d run out of the tailor’s before he was finished.
Some rich men looked soft. Wyatt looked like he got in a boxing ring regularly to get his face rearranged for fun.
All smiles, revealing one gold tooth, Wyatt clinked the metal tines of his fork against his champagne glass. Once the crowd had quieted, he stretched his arms wide. “Friends, thank you so much for coming.” He spoke into a microphone, but Naveen didn’t think the man needed it, his voice was so booming.
Mira moved, and Naveen looked down at her. He wondered if she’d consciously placed her body between him and their mark.
It was cute, either way.
Wyatt cleared his throat. “As you all know, my family has long suffered from heart disease. I’m happy to do anything I can to help with awareness and raising funds. To that end, I hope you’ve all seen the silent auction items, they’re fantastic. I know you’re wondering, where’s Steve’s contribution? What, is this house not enough? You all are eating and drinking me into the poorhouse.” There was a polite laugh, and Wyatt waved it away. “No, no, I know. So, here’s my contribution.” He waved at someone, and they brought a covered item out. He whipped the covering off, revealing a large painting underneath.
Naveen didn’t know art, but even he could spot a Picasso when he saw it. The gasp that echoed through the crowd would have tipped him off either way.
Wyatt introduced the painting, then smiled. “We are starting the bidding at five hundred thousand dollars. Do I have five hundred thousand?”
“A million!” Came a shout from the crowd.
“Two million!”
Wyatt lifted his hand. “Do I have three million?”
Mira stopped a server who was walking by, his neck craned to watch the spectacle of millionaires and billionaires blowing their money like it was candy. “Excuse me, where’s the restroom?”
“Oh, it’s inside, to the left. If that one’s full, there’s two more, down the hall, before you reach the kitchen.”
She gave Naveen a look, and he waited a beat, then followed her. Smart, to infiltrate the house while their host and the crowd were too busy to notice.
He caught up with her and grabbed her hand when she walked right past the bathroom, and tried not to notice how natural the move felt. “This way,” he murmured.
“I thought the stairs were near the kitchen?” she asked.
“They are, but staff will be crawling around the kitchen like ants. There’s a servants’ elevator. We’ll take that up.” He walked as confidently as possible down the hall, even when a waiter turned the corner and walked right toward them. The man didn’t give them a second glance, though they’d blown past the restroom. Fake it.
They made it to the elevator. It was an old-timey one, with a metal door that had to be manually closed. “This is probably a bad time to tell you that I’m a little claustrophobic,” Mira said.
Naveen would have assumed she was joking, but for the way her eyes shifted around the space. If it was possible, he would have said they could take another route, but it wasn’t possible. He closed the door behind them and pressed 3. Then he drew his arm around her and pulled her to his side. “Close your eyes,” he commanded her.
She rested her head against his shoulder and did that, and though he should have been watching the elevator climb, he couldn’t take his gaze off her sweet, round face. He’d never noticed how stubborn her chin was, or how fine her eyebrows were. Though she wasn’t frail, she felt small next to him. He wanted to pick her up and shove her inside his coat to protect her.
What are you thinking, buddy.
He wasn’t sure. He tried to reach for any of that anger that had protected him, but she’d poked so many holes in it, all of the steam had escaped, to be replaced by hunger.
The lurch of the elevator stopping shook him out of his daze. “We’re here.”
She blinked her eyes and pulled away, leaving his entire side cold and bereft. “Oh.”
Naveen cleared his throat and opened the elevator door. The floor was deserted when he peeked his head out.
He didn’t need to check the blueprints on his phone—they were burned into his brain, along with the location of the security cameras—and he thanked his photographic memory for that. He kept an eye out for any security protocol that hadn’t been in the dossier Sunil had sent them, but there was nothing new.