I look around quickly, making sure no one else is here to see the failure. I’m protective over those bad dance moves now.
I’m surprised how much fun I’m having with him. I’m not surprised how fun he is; he’s built his whole brand around it. But I didn’t think we would get to the point where we would have funtogether.
But here we are.
“You work on that. You work on that until dinner, and don’t bother doing any other work.”
“You wish, Riya.” He straightens and walks to his own door, opening it. “See you at dinner.”
“See you.”
Safe in my room, I can pretend that I’m not affected by Gavin. It’s not true, but in these four walls, with no judgmental, mind-reading cousins around, I can pretend whatever I want.
I might as well make myself a princess of England while I’m at it. Very nice houses. And very nice art collection.
I work through the emails and voicemails I’ve been blissfully ignoring for most of the day.
Anything on fire yet?I text Sonia.
It’s been a fire free day...except for the fire in your loins!
This is what I get for trying to be a good supervisor. I ignore her shenanigans so I can review the intelligence that our client development team found.
I call them my Gossip Squad, because they’re on the lookout for any collectors who’ve said they want to sell their art, or a big collector experiencing one of the big three Ds that lead to art sales: divorce, debt or death. They compile them into nice gossip reports thatPage Sixwould kill for. Making them my favorite people.
I start setting up meetings to schmooze. But subtly, so the clients don’t think they’re little guppies being stalked by shark me.
Do sharks eat guppies? I’m not up on my oceanography.
And I’m not looking it up, because I have guppies to hunt here.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dinner tonight isn’t as elaborate as the nine-course dinner we were graced with the first day, and my stomach is thankful I won’t gorge myself as much again.
The reasonable amount of food we’re offered is amazing and the conversation is an enjoyable side dish.
Nate brings up the tips we talked about to get his first collection going, and everyone jumps in to contribute their opinions. Harrison, Pari and Jack, as well as Gavin of course, are knowledgeable in the field, making a lively debate over what Nate’s first piece should be.
Nate picks mine, of course. I mentally brush dirt off my shoulder.
But it’s hot to see Gavin in his element, talking about art with so much competence. Even debating me about art with points that are just as good as mine, if I’m honest, he’s still hot. About as attractive as he was when we did the auction together or when we were in the sex room and he compared me to artworks.
And he’s wearing another one of his shrunken shirts. I know he wore it on purpose because he caught my eyes from across the table when he sat down and flexed, with a devilish wink. I almost missed the wink because I got a little distracted by the way his chest looked when he flexed it, which he also noticed.
After the deconstructed ice cream sundae dessert (which is just a dessert that I have to assemble...dessert with homework), Harrison gets our attention.
“If you would all follow me to the evening drawing room, we can start the after-dinner entertainment.”
He leads us through the labyrinth of hallways to a room we haven’t seen yet. Which is an impressive feat since I’ve poked my head in a lot of these rooms while getting lost. This one has dark purple damask walls, with matching purple-and-gold damask couches.
There are giant mirrors on top of golden peacocks on each side of the room, like the birds are holding the mirrors up. And there’s a giant clock on the mantel with Athena surrounded by a temple made of golden columns, sitting on a couch with an intricate and tiny battle scene on the side. All the tables and couches are moved to the sides of the room.
The furniture pieces are so beautiful that I wish I could spend more time studying them. Is that on the schedule? I hope so. Maybe instead of the dancing.
“Since a lot of you might not be up on your nineteenth-century quadrille, we have teachers here to help everyone out,” Harrison says.
Thank god. Because that’s one thing that isn’t on the private school curriculum anymore. But I think they replaced it with science, so I can’t complain.
