“Doesn’t she!” Hannah says happily.
“I picked it out.” Piper preens.
“Amazing taste.” Hannah fist-bumps her.
“It’s going back on the rack,” I inform everyone.
“Tragic,” Hannah says.
“Heartbreaking,” Piper adds.
Gran shakes her head. “A loss for femininity.”
“I don’t need to look amazing. This is basically a work event,” I protest.
Graham watches me quietly. Then his face steels.
“Suit yourself.” He turns to my mom. “Just make sure she looks suitable as my girlfriend when I pick her up tomorrow evening.”
18
GRAHAM
“You know what your problem is? You make people uncomfortable,” my brother tells me. He slings an arm around my shoulder.
“No, I don’t,” I snap at Spencer. “People like me.”
“Your girlfriend”—he uses his two index fingers to make quote marks—“looks supremely uncomfortable in all those photos she posted.”
“She always looks like that. She doesn’t like taking pictures. I think it has to do with her mother, to be honest. I need to convince her to move out. I think her mother is tanking her self-esteem.”
Spencer’s staring at me.
“What?” I feel defensive. “I had to go to therapy after… everything. So did you.”
“Yeah, but I thought you hated this girl. She’s blackmailing you and keeping you from living out your kidnapper fantasies.”
“Can you shut up?” I grab him.
He and I are early at the venue in the historic hotel to set up for the Haven Foundation fundraiser. The silent auction items are in the drawing room off of the ballroom. Candles light upthe stone terrace that leads out to the rose garden—a winter wonderland sprinkled with freshly fallen snow.
People are starting to show up in their finest evening wear.
“Weren’t you only here to talk to the owners of Northwell Medical Group?” I snap and turn to my brother.
“Sweet. I’m talking to them, then I’m out of here. Going to Monaco for the F1 race.” He salutes me.
It hits me suddenly as I stare out over the beautifully decorated historic hotel ballroom—I’m completely and totally fucked if anyone finds out I kidnapped Dani.
And it’s not just me who will suffer. Everyone around me will be collateral damage as well. The Haven Foundation, all the people they help. My family. My brothers.
Ethel, who cochairs the Haven Foundation to combat trafficking of women and girls, lightly touches my arm.
“There’s my big strong cochair.” She’s already tipsy. “It’s always nice to have a man involved in these things.” She pats her shellacked white beehive updo. “I wish more men in this city would get off their behinds and actually give back to their communities. But then, if men took initiative like that to be a positive force for good, we wouldn’t have to have a trafficking charity, would we?”
She beams at me.
“You’re such a good man. Nothing like your father.”
