“Malone?”
“Oh, sorry.” He turned his beautifully mismatched eyes to me. “It doesn’t matter what he thinks, but I also won’t let anyone take you to the glue factory.”
“Great. You look like you just saw a ghost.”
Movement across the room caught his attention again. He sighed and took his wallet from his back pocket, flipped through some bills, and handed me a fifty.
My head jerked up, my eyes searching in the direction he’d been looking.
Sure enough, there was Blake Malone, glad-handing and shoulder slapping his way to his grandfather. When he came to us, he stopped, his faux smile fading from his face.
“Ty.”
“Blake.”
He had almost dismissed me entirely when it clicked for him. “You!”
“Yes?”
“You’re the b—one who’s conspiring with my wife to take everything I own.”
So many things I could’ve said about logical consequences, not sleeping around on your spouse, not stealing from your own company. I said none of them, which only proved monumental personal growth on my part. Instead, I said, “I was hired to deliver papers. I delivered them.”
“You’re withhim?” He said the last word with such disgust that Malone recoiled.
“Yes, quite happily so,” I said, putting a hand on my date’s chest.
“Iwouldhave the one process server who’d actually met my cousin,” he muttered under his breath before recovering his earlier persona with a ghost of a smile. “No matter.”
He jerked his chin upward and moved toward his grandpa.
“Remarkable restraint, Stark,” Malone said softly.
“See? I can keep all your secrets,” I said.
He started to say something, but a tapping on a microphone stopped him. We sat down at our table, waiting for stragglers to find their way to their assigned seats.
It was time for the show to begin.
An hour later, we’d watched a slideshow about Malone Menagerie, Lucius Malone’s literal pet project, while consuming rubbery hotel chicken with equally unappetizing vegetables. While we ate above-average cheesecake and drank questionable coffee, Selena treated us to a recitation of everything Malone Construction had accomplished so far that year, along with sneaking in a not-so-subtle hint that the company was looking to go public.
Aha. If the company wanted to go public, then that would explain a good deal of why Malone was so cagey. Might also explain why he hadn’t corrected me when, after our Habitat date, I’d called him Blake.
Habitat date?
Not a date.
But I could see where it might be handy to have my Malone sit in on a Zoom call while othersassumedhe was Blake. That would give the company time to figure out what had gone wrong and to clean up their mess before going public.
Seemed like a scheme Lucius Malone might concoct, but it was also conjecture on my part.
I snapped back to the present when Selena called Lucius to the podium. He pretended to be embarrassed at first but then did an excellent job of pontificating as well as insinuating he had no plans to retire anytime soon.
After dessert, Selena declared the silent auction open and called folks to the sizable dance floor that sat to the side of the dais. Malone excused himself, presumably to visit the little boys’ room, and I wandered the edges of the ballroom to ostensibly check out the auction items, which were displayed on white-clothed tables. Each had a sheet of paper and a pen for bids.
Not a single item started at less than $500.
Which hadn’t stopped Nana from adding her name in neat cursive to a sheet of paper for a cruise to the Caribbean.
