Suitable for mourning.
Jim’s mother’s black pearls were in my ears and around my neck. My hair, freshly dyed for the event, was blonde again and pulled up on top of my head in a tight bun. I had the particular kind of headache that comes from having your hair pulled back too tight. But it distracted me from my nerves.
The Prince George Ballroom was decorated in Caroline’s traditional cream and gold. The cream roses and pale pink hydrangeas. It was breathtaking the first time I’d seen it and now, years later, it was still breathtaking. The power of classic.
Though there could be an argument that it was enough already with the white roses.
“Poppy!” It was Julie Dunbar coming out of the bathroom I was lingering beside.
“Julie. It’s so good to see you.” We kissed each other’s cheeks with equal fakeness.
“You look marvelous, darling,” she said. “Again, Dean and I are just so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” I said. A waiter went by with flutes of champagne, and I snagged one. A drinking game, I thought. Anytime anyone said they were sorry for my loss, I had to take a drink.
Oh, I thought. This was an excellent coping mechanism.
“He was a great man,” Julie said, taking her own glass.
“Was he?”
“Pardon?”
“He was,” I said and smiled my serene smile. “If you’ll excuse me.” I breezed past her and on the way to the door, three more people told me how sorry they were for my loss, and at the door to the ballroom, I got a new champagne glass.
I made a wide circle around the room, clinging to the outside where the shadows had the best chance of hiding me. But still, I was down another champagne glass by the time I was halfway through the room.
Looking over everyone it struck me, not just because I was a little tipsy. But I was so bored. So terribly bored with the dresses and the conversation. It wasn’t just people being sorry for my loss, it was the conversation about trade deals and Supreme Court nominees. It was the traffic out of the city and where to eat and drink the best whatever-was-popular-now.
Who cares? I wanted to ask them. Are we all so shallow that this was all that mattered in our lives? Wasn’t there more than this?
I can build a shower! Can any of you assholes do that?
“Hello, Princess.”
Like I’d summoned him out of my boredom, there was Ronan.
In a tuxedo and his fallen-angel face.
He isn’t boring.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I said, and his eyebrow kicked up.
“Are you drunk?”
“Let me check,” I said with a sigh and pretended to think it over. “I do believe I am.”
His blue eyes glimmered, but his mouth was set in a frown. My Irishman didn’t approve.
“It’s a drinking game,” I explained. “Every time someone offers their sincere condolences, I have a drink. It’s been effective.”
“You shouldn’t be drinking.”
“Yeah, I considered that. Do you know,” I said, “your eyes are smiling, but your face is not. How do you do that?” I attempted to copy his expression, but all I did was squint.
“You’re going to be a problem for me,” he said in a low tone. He gestured for a server, asking him for a cup of coffee and a plate of food.
“I’m not going to eat,” I said.
“Of course not.”
The coffee arrived, and he put in some sugar. A splash of cream.
“That’s not how I drink my coffee,” I said, like the joke was on him.
“It’s not for you,” he said and took a sip. He made a sound in his throat like it tasted good, and suddenly I wanted some coffee. But I was onto his reverse psychology.
“You work for Caroline,” I said.
“I do.” Another sip of coffee.
“What do you do for her?”
“Whatever she needs.”
The last of my champagne went down easily, and suddenly at my elbow there was a cup of coffee.
“I’d like another glass of champagne,” I told a passing waiter, but beside me Ronan shook his head. A tiny imperceptible movement, but I was conditioned to see those little things. The danger, I’d learned the hard way was always in those little things.
“Fuck off, Ronan,” I said under my breath and walked right past him. He caught my arm, touching me at the fragile bend of my elbow. His palm was big and wide where my skin was tender.
I gasped at the exquisite realness of it. The audacity of it.
“Poppy,” he said, and I blinked, trying to pull out of his grasp. I was . . . raw where he touched me. I felt too much.
“I never told you my name,” I said.
“You never had to.”
“That night. Did you know who I was the whole time?” I whispered, asking a question that had sat in the back of my brain like a thorn. Unasked, but there. Steady and hurtful.
“Was I only nice to you because you were marrying the senator,” he said. “Is that what you’re asking?”
I said nothing, breathing hard through my nose, looking at the starched white collar of his shirt where it met the black silk of his lapel.
“No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know who you were until the senator came to the door.”
His blue eyes caught me. Held me. And I couldn’t pull against him. I could barely even breathe. It wasn’t fear that held me. No. Not at all. It was something worse. Something I didn’t have the slightest clue how to manage.
I felt the touch of his gaze on my face. My lips, and they parted so I could pull in a breath. My chest lifted, and he glanced down and away. His jaw tight, and I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t know what this was.
A game. A trick.
Real? A lie?
He let go of my arm, his hand clenched in a fist at his side. And I reached for the coffee, drinking it down in three big sips. It burned my mouth, but the pain cleared my head.
This was some new game, and I didn’t know the rules.
I pulled my skirt back and stepped around him, a wide berth so no part of me brushed up against any part of him.
“Poppy,” he breathed, and my name in his voice, that low timber, that dark accent, it held me like no grip on my elbow ever could. He didn’t finish the statement, and I looked over at him.
His cold mouth was not folded in some charming smile. His eyebrow wasn’t lifted in a sardonic curl. Everything about him was sharp.
“What?” I asked. For a moment, a razor-thin one, there was something he was going to say. I could feel it.
“No more drinking,” he said, and just like that, he was gone.
Again.
By the time the lights dimmed and Caroline got up on the small stage to present me with the senator’s award, I’d had two more champagne glasses. And, frankly, I was feeling all right. I should have been drunk at all these events. Justin came up beside me, and I wasn’t sure how he managed to still look like someone’s assistant in a thousand-dollar tux.
“Are you ready?” he whispered, pressing the neatly typed notes I’d approved a week ago into my hand.
“Sure,” I said. How hard could this be? I’d done it a million times and, frankly, no one cared. I was doing it, and I didn’t care.
“There are some changes,” Justin said, and that jerked me into caring.