She wore a silver slip of a dress. Her grey hair marked her as being in her late fifties, but she was incredibly well-preserved—plastic surgery had tightened her pale, blue-veined skin and made her look even more like a literal ice queen, sharp-nosed, hatchet-chinned, eyebrows that could cut diamonds. Eyes like blue lasers cutting right into me.
“Uh, uh, yeah,” I said. “Grant Devlin. Me. Making a—honest, yeah. We’re going out! We are. That’s what we’re doing. Him and me.”
I was not exactly going to sweep the Oscars with this performance, but I feel like even Katherine Hepburn would’ve gotten thrown by the Snow Queen doing a Jack-in-the-box act over her shoulder.
“‘Going out,’” she repeated, drawing out my words incredulously as though I’d said ‘snorting cocaine’ or ‘making a snuff film,’ or ‘selling my panties to Japanese business to finance my dream of opening my own fried chicken franchise.’ “How…interesting.”
She managed to infuse the word ‘interesting’ with an entire epic saga’s worth of doubts, suspicions, and general disdain.
“Lacey,” I said, belatedly remembering that humans introduced themselves to people they hadn’t meet. “My name. I’m Lacey Newman. Nice to meet you, Ms., uh…”
“Dalton,” she said with a sniff. “Portia Dalton. Grant’s godmother.”
“Oh wow,” I said. “I had no idea you were going to be here! I’m sure you must have some great stories about Grant growing up—”
“Oh yes, where to begin!” she interrupted, the biggest fake smile ever cracking her face like an earthquake fault line. “Perhaps with that time he seduced the youngest daughter of a Swedish client his grandfather was desperately trying to land, or the time he brought a drunk supermodel to his high school graduation party, or the fifth college he flunked out of because they didn’t offer a major in his preferred field of fucking the highest class whores he could find—really, I don’t know where to begin, all the many and varied incidents with sluts in various states of undress do tend to blur together.”
She looked me up and down and gave a short, cutting laugh.
“I don’t think I’ll forget you, though, you are so incredibly…far outside of his normal type. I don’t know what he’s playing at with you.”
My head was spinning under the verbal assault, filled with whirling pictures of a young and even more devil-may-care Grant going through women like tissue paper.
She leaned closer and gave me a smile, all friendly, like she was actually on my side.
“Darling, I’m sure all those self-help books and women’s magazines are telling you to be strong and confident and love your body because it’s yours and it’s beautiful, but you really must face facts: they’re only saying that because they’re selling something.”
And with a dismissive sneer on her face, she swept past me before I could think of a single thing to say.
? ? ?
I don’t know how long I stumbled around the party, but I think I pulled myself together before any of the bigwigs we’d been networking with saw me.
I hope I did, anyway.
Once it hit me how bad I could screw everything up if people saw me getting all weepy and red-eyed when I was supposed to be vibrant and happy and over-the-moon in love, I beat a hasty retreat to the coat check, where I hid behind a rack of furs that could have clothed a thousand minks if they hadn’t been desperately needed by the upper crust to look as fabulous as possible.
I took deep breaths until my heart was thudding along at something resembling a normal speed, and I pulled out my compact to wipe my eyes and fix my makeup. Thank Heaven for waterproof mascara.
Most of all, I repeated this mantra to myself: It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.
This was all an act. It didn’t matter what people thought, what Portia said, just as long as it got Jennings on our team and helped save the company.
Eventually, I got myself to the point where I believed it. I started to step out from behind the coat rack—and then I saw Portia.
I practically dove back into the safety of the sable and fox fur forest. Fingers trembling, I pulled my cell phone out of my clutch purse and hit the speed dial for the one person I could always count on to be in my corner.
“Laaaaaaaaaacey!” Kate shrieked the second she picked up the phone, only halfway through the first ring. “How’s it going? Tell me how it’s going! Is it going great? Or is it terrible? Tell me all the terrible things he’s done! Are they a little bit hilarious or really really hilarious? How does he look in a tuxedo? Does he look good enough to eat in a tuxedo? Lacey, tell me all the things! Why aren’t you telling me all the things?”
“I will if you stop for breath!” I said, laughing in spite of myself. “Um, it’s—well, he looks great, of course he fucking looks great, and he’s been just great all night and it’s actually really weird and this thing just happened that—that—”
And then, like the calm and mature professional that I am, I burst into fucking tears.
“Lacey! Lacey! Lacey!” Kate said, sounding more alarmed each time she said my name. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? Was he a dick? Did he hurt you? Do you want me to pick you up? I will get in my car and pick you up right this second if you say to.”
“No, no, nothing like that, don’t worry about that,” I said. I took a handful of blue-dyed bear fur in my hand and steadied myself against the rack. “He’s been a perfect gentleman. He’s…he’s been beyond great. But there are all these other people here, and they all know so much and they have so much more than me going for them …” I stopped, hearing myself whine. “Ugh, forget it. It’s okay, Katie, I’m okay—”