GAGE: You on your way?
BEA: We’re nearly there.
BEA: You just woke up?
GAGE: Yep. I’ve got a breakfast meeting.
BEA: Wow. Can’t even have eggs without talking business.
GAGE: I like my pain early and on my terms.
She shook her head, smiling. Masochist. Unethically hot, alarmingly competent masochist. Why was he totally her type?
BEA: Hope I’m half as ready for mine as you are for yours.
GAGE: Are you closing a deal?
BEA: No. Just walking into a room where everyone is the product.
GAGE: Then walk in like someone already paid top dollar.
“Bey, we said no boyfriends for today. Practicing for Harvest Summit,” Georgina complained from the front passenger seat.
“If you look like that when Gage isn’t even here,” Naomi teased, “I don’t think you’re going to last next weekend.”
She tapped the screen, slid her phone back into her purse. “Sorry. I’ll be good.”
The girls arrived just before twilight.
The Dahlia House had a red-brick facade framed by sculpted gardens and a riot of late-season blooms in cream, blush, and oxblood. Twisting chimneys and leaded windows gave it the air of a manor lost in time, but the glass conservatories gleaming at the back were evidence of very real and present currency.
Isabel parked and the five women got out. Georgina led the way, her maroon dress sleeveless and understated, pearls at her wrist. Isabel and Naomi flanked her in stiletto heels, groomed for this kind of gathering since they could walk.
Bea followed in a dress Georgina had insisted on—knife-pleated, in champagne—because apparently the only acceptable tones mimicked the dahlias themselves. Lillian, in thrifted alabaster linen and inherited earrings, her signature braid down her back, looked like she’d wandered out of a fairy tale.
A woman in nude gloves checked their invitations, then ushered them through the rose-stone arch. The villa opened before them in tiers of floral salons, mosaic courtyards, and manicured alcoves glowing with lantern light.
“It’s not official,” Naomi said, adjusting her hair with one hand. “But the weekend before Harvest Summit helps the ladies prepare. Ease in.”
They moved as a unit through the first garden, accepting drinks from a passing waiter. Girls clustered under ivy-twined trellises, sipping pale mocktails garnished with orchids and heritage citrus. It was louder than she expected—laughter, heels on stone, the energy unmistakably young and rich.
“I heard Natalie Stratton set up a gallery for today,” Isabel said. “Care to wander?”
The girls all nodded.
“Who’s Natalie Stratton?” Lillian asked as they followed the signs.
“We told Bea about her last year. Except then she was Natalie Wu,” Georgina explained. “She was the St. Ives girl who left for two years to party around Asia.”
“Her husband, Lucian Stratton, runs Stratton Shipping,” Isabel said. “They met in Rotterdam, fell in love in Paris, and married in Northgate.”
“Paris might be the city of love,” Naomi added, “but Northgate’s the city your man brings you home to.”
The makeshift gallery wasn’t large, more like a curated hallway lined with canvases, each spaced with intention. It feltmore private than public. Like a collection meant to be shown to the right people, not the most.
Bea didn’t know much about art, but the first stirred something wistful. A tangle of rose and smoke. Two forms reaching, almost touching, but not quite. There was yearning in it, and restraint. Not romance, exactly. Recognition. The kind that happens before anything is said.
The second painting made her throat tighten—a figure half bent in a field of color that bled upward. The posture was familiar. That shape of solitude. The loneliness of it.
