Rovin nods, takes a portfolio from the woman and moves to the far side of the room.
Rita turns to me. “Would you also like a portfolio this evening?” she asks.
I hold out my hand with a sigh that’s as long-suffering as it is full of resignation.
“Better had," I mutter.
I have already decided that I’ll select the most suitable candidate based on three criteria: intelligence, composure, and the absence of visible terror. The last qualification has proven the most difficult to satisfy at previous events.
I move through the reception room as my brothers spread out with their own binders. The women are arranged in small clusters, holding champagne flutes and speaking in the careful,modulated tones of people who know they are being evaluated. Two blondes, a brunette, a redhead. All beautiful. All polished. All radiating varying degrees of anxiety that they're attempting to conceal behind expensive makeup and designer dresses.
I feel nothing.
I haven’t felt anything close to real interest in a woman for years, and I’ve made my peace with that. Whatever I once had for that sort of thing has worn down into something colder and more useful. I don’t need to want the woman I marry. I need her to fit. Wanting is a thing I can manage. Fitting is the part that actually matters.
Rovin has found a seat at the table as far away from anyone else as humanly possible, and I smirk in his direction just as he looks up. I should join the reception. I should review the profiles. I should begin the process of elimination that I have been employing, with disappointing results, at every previous dinner.
Instead, I hear a voice.
It's coming from the hallway, low and warm. I hold still and listen.
"Hey. Look at me. You're okay."
Another voice, smaller, wobbling. "I can't do this. I thought I could, but I can't. They're all, they're so..."
"Terrifying? Absolutely. That one with the jaw could cut glass with his cheekbones alone. But you know what? He puts his trousers on one leg at a time, same as anyone. Probably has someone iron them first, but the principle holds."
A wet, shaking laugh.
"Listen to me," the first voice continues with a steadiness and a warmth that has edges of iron underneath. "If we're going tobe sold to terrifying billionaires tonight, at least let's do it with waterproof mascara. Here. Tilt your head back."
Silence. The sound of a tissue being pulled from a packet. A sniffle.
"There. You're gorgeous. Now. We're going to walk back into that room, and we're going to hold our heads up, and we're going to remember that those men need us more than we need them, because without wives, they're just men with guns and property portfolios, and that's not a dynasty. That's a bachelor party that never ended."
The smaller voice laughs again, stronger this time. "You're funny."
"I'm hysterical. It's my primary coping mechanism. Shall we?"
I hear movement. Footsteps approaching. I step to the side of the hallway entrance and wait.
Two women emerge. The first is young, early twenties, with red-rimmed eyes and a grateful, fragile expression. She's pretty in a conventional way, the kind of woman the broker would position near the top of his compatibility rankings.
The second woman is different.
She is dark-haired, pale-skinned, with cheekbones that catch the light and eyes that are an unusual shade of gray-green, the color of a winter sea. She's wearing a midnight blue dress that covers her from neck to wrist, and she's standing with the careful posture of someone who is managing something the rest of the room can't see.
She is beautiful. But that isn't what stops me.
What stops me is the way she guides the younger woman back into the reception room with a gentle hand at her elbow, murmuring something reassuring, before straightening her own shoulders and walking to the sideboard to pour herself a glassof water. She doesn't take champagne. She lifts the glass with a hand that is perfectly steady and takes a measured sip.
And as she lowers the glass, her left hand moves to her side, pressing briefly against her hip with a pressure that is too controlled to be casual. The gesture lasts two seconds. Then her hand drops, and her expression smooths, and she scans the room with the composed attention of someone assessing a chess board.
She is in pain.
I know pain. I’ve caused it. I’ve watched it in men who’d sooner die than admit to it. I can spot it the way you catch a wrong note in a song, that one tiny thing that doesn’t sit right under everything that does.
This woman is faking being well the way everyone else in this room is faking being relaxed. And she’s better at it than anyone here would ever clock.
