“Obviously,” I said.
He held out his hand, palm up.
I considered it. “If this is a handshake situation I should warn you I’m a hugger.”
“Your phone.”
“That’s a no.” I turned to face him fully. “My phone is my job. Two million people have voluntarily elected to follow my daily existence, which makes it less of a personal device and more of a public utility. There are active conversations in progress, Bree runs my calendar off that number, and if I don’t post in the next four hours my engagement metrics enter a decline that takes six to eight weeks to—”
My phone was in his jacket pocket before I finished the sentence. I didn’t see him move.
“I’m Rafe Coulter,” he said, as though that were a perfectly normal thing that had just happened. “We’re leaving the city today.”
I stared at him. “I have a fitting at two. I have a lunch that’s been in my calendar for three weeks. I have a brand partnership call at four that represents a meaningful percentage of my quarterly income, and I have Sebastian booked for Thursday because I have an appearance Thursday night and if you think a merger sensitivity is a problem, you have absolutely no idea what Sebastian does to people who waste his time.”
Rafe Coulter waited. Patient, entirely unmoved.
I tried a different approach. “What if I stayed in the hotel? My hotel, full security on site, no appearances, no tabloids. You could sit in the lobby. We have excellent coffee.”
“No.”
Not a negotiating-position no. A weather-report no.
“A modified schedule, then. I cancel the low-visibility events, keep the three I genuinely need, Bree coordinates everything with you in advance. You know where I am at all times, you approve each appearance.” I spread my hands. “It’s a better arrangement than what you currently have.”
“No.”
“Your contract is with my father,” I said. “Not with me. I’m twenty-six years old with legal autonomy and no documentedhistory of requiring supervision, which is more than I can say for several of my acquaintances.”
“I spoke with your father this morning,” Rafe said. “Pack a bag.”
I walked to the kitchen and picked up the handset on the wall — the hotel suite line, which I never used because I always had my phone, except for right now — and dialed my father’s cell from memory.
He picked up on the first ring, which meant he’d been waiting.
“Your man is refusing to cooperate,” I said.
“Good.”
“Daddy, he took my phone.”
“He has my full confidence.”
“That is catastrophically misplaced. You once told a room full of shareholders I was between projects when what I was actually doing was recovering from a parasailing incident in Mykonos — with someone whose name I’m not at liberty to share, though I’ll tell you his last name ends in Caprio — that required minor surgery. You are not a reliable narrator of situations involving me.”
“I have a board call.”
He ended the call. I set the handset down and turned to find Rafe watching me from across the marble island — patient, unhurried, arms crossed — with the kind of face that had no business being attached to someone sent to ruin my week.
I went to the kitchen drawer and retrieved the emergency envelope — not because I used cash, but because my mother had once told me a lady always kept emergency funds on hand, and I had interpreted that very liberally over the years, which meant I had three thousand dollars in hundreds for reasons I could no longer fully reconstruct. I placed it on the Carrara marblebetween us with what I felt was a reasonable air of let’s be adults about this.
He considered the envelope. Then me. His expression was not contemptuous — it was the specific look of someone who had been offered something they had genuinely no use for and was working out the most considerate way to communicate this.
“Ready?” he said.
I packed for Napa. My father’s crisis-management playbook had exactly one move: vanish someone to a vineyard, enforce a mandatory digital detox, and call it strategic recovery. I had been, on at least two prior occasions, the reason for this exact playbook. I knew the drill.
The good sunglasses. The string bikinis. The silk blouses. The heels I’d need if there were any dinners worth attending — two pairs, because there would be, and I packed for both. A jewelry roll, the dry shampoo I’d curated over eighteen months of trial and error, and the Gucci sunglasses as backup.
