“You need some wine?” Violet offered me a glass. “Here, have some wine.”
Did I mention Violet was a movie star? And so was Brax’s friend Lucas? All through dinner, we had a steady stream of visitors looking for selfies and autographs, and after a while, I tuned them out. Until she strolled up. Lisanne Fulton. Spider kicked me under the table, and I almost dropped my glass.
“Nolan, I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
He gripped my thigh under the table, but he’d gotten so much better at keeping his nerves under wraps. Jay was a good influence.
“Why? Because you thought Dionysus would fail without you?”
“No, I…I guess because you’re more at home in the country.”
“Because I’d—let me see if I remember this right—I’d rather spend time with grapes and a dog than meet a woman’s needs?”
She leaned in closer, hoping for privacy. “I’m so sorry. I was angry, and I shouldn’t have said any of that stuff. Nolan, I made a mistake. I thought I’d be happier in the city, but it’s not the place, it’s me. I’ve been seeing a therapist.”
“Congratulations.”
“So, uh… What I’m trying to say is that I’m ready to come home.”
Jay did the honours. “Lisanne, have you met Nolan’s wife?”
All the colour drained out of her face. “His…his wife?”
Spider clasped both hands against her chest. “It was such a beautiful ceremony.”
“They wrote their own vows,” Violet added.
“Uh…uh… How long?” Lisanne managed.
“A week.” Nolan tucked an arm around me. “We both moved on. Good luck with the therapy.”
She turned without another word and scurried off. A hand came up to swipe at her eyes. Maybe I should have felt sorry for her, but I couldn’t—firstly, pity wasn’t part of my repertoire, and secondly, she was a dumbass bitch who’d thrown away a good thing and left Nolan in the lurch. She didn’t get to walk that back just because she felt like it.
She’d played stupid games and she’d won zero prizes. Too bad.
My parents were keeping their distance, thankfully. The others were tracking their movements, and Barbie said they hadn’t even noticed me. Figured. Mom and Dad had always been more interested in themselves than in the child they’d basically discarded. Their table was booked in a different name, and it turned out Dad had started a consulting firm with two other schmucks.
We knew this because Jay was a bit of a celebrity within the business community, and instead of movie fans sidling up, he got a mix of entrepreneurs pitching products, competitors trying to pick his brain, and folks just curious to meet a bona fide billionaire. The last group was mostly women. Even if he hadn’t been rich, they’d still have flocked around him because, as Chase put it, Jay’s face looked like a plot twist in a romcom movie. Sharp jaw, five o’clock shadow, artfully mussed dark hair, hazel eyes that missed nothing, and since he’d turned fanatical about his health, he had the body to match. But Jay always kept a polite distance. He’d make small talk, but he rarely let anyone get close, and he didn’t date.
Tonight, he asked a couple of people about “Reid Rockwell, what’s he doing these days?” and one guy knew and told him.
And then it got more interesting because it turned out the guy was actually one of Dad’s clients.
“I like the personal touch of a smaller firm,” he said to Jay. “No offence.”
“None taken. You have to do what’s best for you and your business.”
“A month back, we had a glitch with our finance system, dang thing wouldn’t bring up any records, and the company that made the software said ‘not our problem.’ Reid sent a team out the same morning. Six of them, and they worked all day and into the night until it was fixed.”
Seriously? What the hell were they doing all that time?
I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “You’re running FinPro, right?”
“How do you know that?”
“Because Astela ran into the same glitch. The operating system installed an automated update at midnight, which moved a file FinPro relied on. We identified the issue by three a.m., and we rolled out a patch to our clients by the start of business, even though it wasn’t technically our problem either.”
“Sorry, who are you?”
