I forced myself to smile back, to slide my hand into his and not succumb to the urge to break all his fucking fingers.
Nice to see you, too, Dad. You won’t be smiling for much longer.
23
Stella
“Mr. Lawson,” Theo said, releasingRichard’s hand. “How are you?”
“Good,” Richard said, shooting a sideways glance at my dad. “This one’s been filling my inbox with work, and I’m half-tempted to give my two weeks’ notice and flee to a Tuscan vineyard of my own.”
Mom grimaced. “And turn into one of those insufferable people who does nothing but talk about grapes?”
Richard rubbed a hand over the back of his head like he’d been caught. “So what if I did?”
Mom’s look was chiding. “You’d be out of your mind with boredom within a month and beg us to come back, but by then we’d have hired someone far more qualified than you to fill the position, and it would all become unbearably awkward.”
Richard looked to Theo. “Thirty years, I’ve been putting up with this kind of workplace harassment.”
Theo chuckled, and to anyone who didn’t know him, it probably sounded fine, but my ears caught a forced note. Was he still thinking about Maddie? Had he spotted her through the crowd? I searched for her, adrenaline-laced blood pumping through my veins as my fight-or-flight kicked in. Wherewasshe? In my head, I saw her lurking behind every group of people, waiting to pounce the second my guard was down.
“Oh, Jerry!” Richard said, raising his glass to someone across the room. He sent us an apologetic smile as he stepped away. “I know we’re not supposed to talk about work at these things, but I want to thank him for getting a report to me ahead of schedule.”
My parents left us a few minutes later to make the rounds, and I noticed Theo’s gaze still tracking Richard.
“Does he always attend these parties alone?” he asked.
“Yeah, he’s been single as long as I’ve known him. I mean, he’s dated, but I can’t remember him ever being in a long-term relationship.”
Theo snorted. “Typical.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He eyed me. “Just another wealthy playboy.”
“Richard isn’t like that.”
His answering laugh was condescending.
“Heisn’t,” I insisted. “There was some big drama when I was younger, and he and his wife had a very long, very ugly divorce. I think he met someone else during it? But then she just up and vanished, and he’s been alone ever since.” There was more to the tale, including Richard’s desperate search for the woman who’d vanished, and a child he’d been trying to find for over two decades, but I wasn’t about to spill his secrets.
“Quite a story,” Theo said, sounding like he wasn’t buying it, which made me feel defensive. Richard was a good man, and I didn’t appreciate the insinuation that he wasn’t.
“You know, just because he’s rich doesn’t mean he’s a liar.”
Theo opened his mouth, a cruel look on his face, but then he seemed to think better of it and slugged back the rest of his champagne. “I need something stiffer than this to get through tonight. Where’s the bar?”
“I think it’s in the Cretaceous period.”
He gave me a blank look.
“This way.”
I kept my eyes peeled for Maddie as we walked, my shoulders inching upward, muscles clenched with tension. Where the fuck was she? From the way Theo tracked the crowd, I could tell he was wondering the same thing, and by the time we reached the bar, we were both silent and tense.
After ordering (a water for me, an old-fashioned for Theo), we meandered our way into the Hall of Human History, trying to act casual when we both knew what we were really doing: hunting down Maddie.
“Oh, look,” I said as we approached a particularly ugly caveman. “Now we foundyourtwin.”
