Chapter One
As she stood in skinny-heeled shoes instead of boots, a gown instead of trousers, Eve Dallas thought whoever invented the gala should be brutally murdered.
Maybe they had been, and their body fed to wild dogs.
Since that would’ve happened decades, maybe centuries before this September night in 2061, she considered the case closed.
Regardless, the strange institution of the gala remained a part of society’s fabric. At least it did if you happened to be a murder cop married to a billionaire.
The Marriage Rules demanded it.
The whole deal supported Sarah’s Song, a worthy charity, a national network for victims of domestic abuse founded around the turn of the century. While she couldn’t argue with the cause, she wondered why people needed to wear fancy clothes in a big, fancy ballroom, stand or sit around making small talk, spend buckets on drinks and dinner instead of staying home, comfortably, and sending those buckets.
But that was just her, obviously, because people packed the big-ass ballroom and the big-ass space outside of it where various bars served various drinks.
In the rosy light and flower-drenched air of the ballroom, hardly anyone sat at the swankily decorated tables yet. She’d learned the gala had a specific order to things.
You had your arrival time, where you had to walk a kind of media gauntlet while society-type reporters took photos or videos so they could tell people who didn’t rate an invite what you were wearing.
Then it was for-God’s-sake-get-me-a-drink time, where you hit one of the various bars.
Fortunately, she’d crossed both those off the list.
Now it was mill-around time, where you stood in those skinny heels and talked to people you didn’t actually know, and likely wouldn’t have any further business with unless they ended up in the morgue.
After mill-around time came sit-around time, while servers served some sort of salad, and people went up onstage to thank everybody, to make their speeches.
Blah blah blah.
Then a meal, but you had to keep talking around the table, or to people who decided to come by and talk while you were trying to eat the fancily plated whatever they served you.
She had no doubt the food and the service would be top-notch. After all, the ballroom and the whole damn hotel belonged to Roarke. Which probably meant the gala people hadn’t paid buckets for the space.
Once the servers whisked away those plates, brought out dessert, someone would make another speech—applause, applause.
Then the entertainment. Which, since Roarke had connections, would be Avenue A, with a guest appearance from Mavis.
Bright spot, she admitted, except she’d probably have to dance, and inthese damn torture shoes. Dancing with Roarke, okay, fine, but dancing with whoever?
Marriage Rules, she reminded herself, and took another sip of very nice wine.
And even after all that, when it was finally socially acceptable to get the hell out, there was departure time, where you had to have yet more conversations before the mercifully short drive home.
Maybe the gala inventor should’ve been thrown to those wild dogs while still breathing.
Then Roarke, gorgeous in his tux, as comfortable in the formal wear as she imagined he’d once been in cat-burglar black, smiled at her.
“It’s only a few hours,” he murmured with the Irish flowing through it like harp song over green, mist-soaked hills. “And for a cause that matters, in so many ways, to both of us.”
“You say that, but you’re not standing on stilts.”
“Fashion’s a killer even you can’t toss in a cage, Lieutenant. You’re stunning.” He took her free hand, kissed her fingers while those impossibly blue eyes looked into hers.
“All right now, time to share this beautiful woman.”
Eve recognized the man who approached and the woman at his side as the heads of Sarah’s Song. She knew the story—he’d been eight when his widowed mother had remarried. The abuse began shortly after the I-do’s. Eventually, she’d taken her little boy and run, but not far enough or fast enough.
Now, some sixty years later, the boy who—on his mother’s orders—had run for help that had come too late, held out a hand to Roarke.
