Chương 2
He crossed the foyer with one hand raised.
“No more phones,” he said to the guests. “Please. This is a private misunderstanding.”
The request had the opposite effect. Several screens lifted higher.
Adrian looked at him. “It wasn’t a misunderstanding.”
Charles ignored the correction and put a hand near Bianca’s shoulder without quite touching her. “My daughter reacted to what she believed was a security issue.”
Evelyn stared at him.
“What security issue?”
Bianca answered before her father could. “You were in the family lounge.”
“I delivered champagne to the family lounge.”
“You were handling something that didn’t belong to you.”
Evelyn opened her fist. A flake of blue enamel rested against her skin.
“This belonged to my mother.”
“That’s what you say now.”
Tessa made a small sound in her throat.
Martin looked from Bianca to Evelyn. His expression had become that of a man calculating how many policies were being violated at once.
“Ms. Vale,” he said carefully, “did you see Evelyn take property belonging to a guest?”
Bianca’s eyes moved toward her father. Charles did not nod. He did not need to.
“I saw her where she wasn’t supposed to be,” Bianca said. “I saw that necklace in her hand. When I asked her to explain, she became disrespectful.”
“I told you I couldn’t move the champagne tower,” Evelyn said.
“You refused an instruction in front of my guests.”
“The tower weighs more than my doctor allows me to lift.”
“You embarrassed me.”
“So you broke my necklace.”
“It fell.”
Tessa spoke before fear could stop her. “No, it didn’t.”
Everyone turned toward her.
She tightened her grip around Evelyn’s arm. “You stepped on it.”
Bianca’s eyes sharpened. “Who are you?”
“Tessa.”
“I didn’t ask your name.”
“That was probably smart,” Tessa said, then looked horrified by her own answer.
Evelyn felt her shoulders shake once. She pressed her lips together.
Charles turned to Martin. “You need to remove the staff from the foyer.”
Martin’s face reddened. “I need to preserve the scene and notify human resources.”
“This is my daughter’s engagement party.”
“And an incident occurred involving an employee.”
“An incident involving a trespassing server.”
“She was assigned to the lounge,” Tessa said.
Martin looked at her. “You’re certain?”
“I sent her there. Lucas cut his hand in the service hall, so I took his station and asked Evelyn to finish the family room delivery.”
A woman in cream silk whispered to the man beside her. The words security footage passed between them, low but distinct.
Charles heard. His expression did not change.
“Martin,” he said, “handle this privately.”
Adrian took one step closer.
“Handle it correctly.”
Charles finally looked at him. “You are emotionally involved.”
“Yes.”
“Then you cannot direct the investigation.”
“No,” Adrian said. “I can direct the protection of an employee standing in pain while your daughter invents a theft accusation.”
Bianca looked around, searching the faces of friends who had spent the evening complimenting her dress and diamond necklace. Most had become interested in the floor.
Evelyn slipped her arm from Tessa’s support.
“I want to sit down,” she said.
Adrian moved toward a velvet bench along the wall.
“Not with you.”
He stopped.
The sentence hurt him. She saw that and hated the part of herself that was relieved.
Tessa led her toward the staff corridor instead. Evelyn walked slowly, keeping the broken locket enclosed in her fist. Her black flats made almost no sound against the marble.
Behind her, Bianca said, “You can’t honestly expect me to apologize to her.”
Evelyn did not turn around.
In the service office, the fluorescent lights were too bright and the air smelled of coffee burned hours earlier. Tessa lowered Evelyn into a plastic chair and crouched in front of her.
“Are you having contractions?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve been kicked three times since the locket broke. Apparently the baby objects to bad manners.”
Tessa touched her own stomach as if the kicks had crossed the space between them. “Should I get water?”
“Yes.”
“Cold or room temperature?”
“Whichever requires less committee approval.”
Tessa hurried to the sink.
Evelyn opened her hand.
The locket looked smaller away from the ballroom. One side of the enamel had split into three blue islands divided by pale metal. The chain had broken near the clasp. The photograph was still inside, though the right edge had been crushed beneath Bianca’s heel.
Her mother’s face remained intact.
Nora Hart stood on the left in the old photograph, twenty-two or twenty-three, dark hair pinned behind her ears. The woman beside her wore the same cream service dress and held a folded napkin against her chest. Evelyn had never known her name.
Adrian had known her.
Tessa returned with water in a paper cup. “Was that really Mr. Cross?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re really—”
“Yes.”
Tessa sat on the edge of a filing cabinet. “I feel like there should be a second question, but I don’t know what it is.”
Evelyn drank. The water tasted faintly of paper.
“Most people ask why I’m serving drinks in a hotel my husband owns.”
“I was trying not to.”
“It’s not actually his hotel. It belongs to shareholders, lenders, pension funds, and people who like calling buildings assets.”
“That sounds like something someone married to the owner would say.”
Evelyn looked at her.
“Sorry,” Tessa said.
“No. It was accurate.”
The office door opened. Martin stepped in with Dana Cho, the vice president of human resources, who had left a charity dinner upstairs and still wore a dark green evening dress beneath her winter coat. Dana was in her forties, with blunt-cut black hair and the exhausted focus of someone accustomed to entering rooms after other people had made expensive decisions.
Adrian stood behind them.
Dana looked over her shoulder. “Not you.”
“I need to know she’s all right.”
“You can know when she authorizes me to tell you.”
His gaze shifted to Evelyn.
May you like
She looked down at the locket.
After a moment, Adrian stepped back from the doorway. Dana closed the door in his face.
