He looked at me with an expression that suggested I’d said something deeply naive. “Julius’s stuff is more suited to going out on the town, and Mika’s is for everyday wear.” He pulled out a fairly plain jacket that I was guessing came from Mika. “I can’t give a speech about human trafficking in a denim jacket.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. “Okay,” I said.
“I’ve been putting it off because—” He stopped. Let out a breath. “I don’t know. It felt like the least important thing, and now the Gala is in less than a week, and I’m standing here looking at a denim jacket.”
I understood this more than I expected to. The Gala had been a logistical problem for all of us the last few days. Entry points and exit routes, Chance Kelly’s agents, and The Hargrove’s floor plan. I’d been thinking about it in those terms, and Noah had been thinking about it in terms of what he was going to stand up and say and what he was going to be wearing when he said it. Both of those things mattered.
“So we’ll go get you something,” I said.
He looked at me. “You’d do that?”
“Go shopping?”
“Go shopping. With me.” He tilted his head slightly. “You don’t exactly seem like a shopping trip kind of person.”
“I’m not,” I said. “But I’m a keeping-you-safe kind of person, and if you need to go out, I’m going with you.” I paused. “Also, I’ve been told I have decent taste.”
He looked at my ratty old t-shirt and jeans and then smirked. “By who?”
“Wyatt. Once. Under duress.”
That got me a smile, which was what I wanted. “Okay,” he said. “Let me get my shoes.”
I knew just the place because all the bodyguards at Three Bears were required to have suits available for situations like this, and Caden had sent us all here. It was a men’s clothing store on the east end of old downtown calledFielding & Co. that had been there for decades and had recently been taken over by the previous owner’s daughter, who’d kept the good bones of the place and updated everything else. Caden had described it asthe kind of store where they actually know what they’re doing, which, coming from Caden, was the highest possible endorsement.
The storefront was the kind of place that didn’t have too much in the window because its reputation spoke for itself. A bell over the door announced us, and a woman in her forties looked up from behind the counter, assessing us both in about two seconds with the professional eye of someone who’d been doing this a long time.
“Help you find something?”
“He needs something for a formal event,” I said. “A gala. He’s speaking.”
She looked at Noah. “What’s your timeline?”
“Less than a week,” Noah said, wincing.
“So something off the rack then. No problem, we can do that.” She came around the counter. “I’m Diane. What are we thinking? Classic suit, something with more personality, somewhere in between?”
Noah looked at me briefly, then back at her. “Somewhere in between, I think. I don’t want to look like I’m trying too hard, but I want to look like I belong in the room.”
Diane nodded like that was exactly the right answer. “I’ve got a few things in mind. Come on back.”
I followed them to the back of the store where the fitting rooms were. Then I took up a position on the low bench outside the curtain while Diane pulled things from the racks with the focused efficiency of someone who knew her inventory and trusted her eye. She handed Noah a charcoal suit in a fabric that caught the light, a deep navy jacket with clean lines that she paired with a different pair of trousers, and a third option I couldn’t quite see from where I was sitting because she’d draped it over her arm.
“Start with the charcoal,” she said, and disappeared back into the store to give him room.
I sat on the bench and listened to the sounds of the fitting room. After a few minutes, the curtain moved.
He stepped out in the charcoal suit, and I understood immediately why Diane had pulled it first. The fit was close without being severe, the color doing something specific to hiscomplexion, the whole effect landing somewhere between put-together and at ease. He looked like himself but more so.
He looked at himself in the three-way mirror and tilted his head.
“Well?” he said.
“That’s the one,” I said.
He turned to look at me. “You haven’t seen the others.”
“I know. I don’t need to.”
