CATERINA
What the hell was going on with Rahul? Was it the gel? Was it wishful thinking? Or the folie-whatever Rahul had called it, a psychological phenomenon? But something inside Caterina told her that this was real. This new Rahul was a flesh-and-blood person standing in front of her. Neither she nor Rahul was prone to hysteria. So why would tonight be different? Caterina had been in many far more stressful situations before, and she’d never lost her cool. She was sure that what she was seeing was really happening.
Rahul was… handsome. Actually, literally quite gorgeous. He was the kind of man Caterina would flirt with at any event, and she’d let him dance with her and hold her close all night.
As she studied Rahul looking at himself from every angle in the hotel mirror, her gaze traced his broad shoulders, his narrow waist, the large hands that suddenly looked graceful and strong. Had he always looked like this? Was it just covered up under bad clothes and no grooming whatsoever? Had he been a diamond in the rough, just waiting to be mined?
She couldn’t wait to take him to the gala. Because if her instincts were right and he really did look like this to everyone, then… then it would change everything for her. This could be her comeback, not just with Alaric but with her entire social circle. Showing up with this Rahul on her arm would tell everyone that she had truly landed on her feet, as Cats do.
Caterina picked up her clutch. “Are you ready to be the belle of the ball, Rahul?”
He turned to her, smiling a dashing smile that, if she were being completely honest, made her heart skip a beat. “Let’s go.”
RAHUL
If having a near anxiety attack in that claustrophobic dressing room of Oliver’s shop had been bad, this right here in Caterina’s private limo was a veritable tsunami of pain.
Trying to calm himself, Rahul attempted to talk to Caterina like she was a normal girl with a normal boy on a normal date. “I… uh, I really like your ring.”
Caterina smiled and leaned back against the cushioned leather limo seat as she gazed down at her gold, sapphire-encrusted ring. “Thank you. It’s an antique—Victorian era. My father gave it to me on my eighteenth birthday. It used to belong to my great-great-grandmother.”
Rahul nodded in what he hoped was a casual way, though his mouth felt parched. “It goes well with your dress, too. You’re just really good with all the fashion.” All the fashion? God. He couldn’t even string together a sentence right. How was he supposed to survive the night surrounded by well-bred socialites?
Caterina shrugged as the limo rocked them gently back and forth. “Thank you; it’s a passion of mine. I think I might minor in Victorian-era fashion in college, actually. With a major in business, of course.”
“Of course.” As Rahul sipped his Acqua di Cristallo Tributo a Modigliani water from a crystal flute (the water was stored in an actual 24-karat gold bottle in a mini-fridge; as if he needed any more reminders how little he really belonged here), the limo began to slow. He stared out the tinted windows at the rows and rows of journalists and other media personalities who were standing around with mics and cameras, thrusting said mics and cameras into people’s faces. Some of whom he recognized. He was pretty sure the tall dude with the dazzling smile was Vanya Petrovic, a friend of Alaric’s. And that short-haired blond girl over there, showing off her one-shouldered dress to a reporter, was Caterina’s friend Heather.
He was beginning to realize he’d made a very serious mistake. It was easy (or at least, it wasn’t panic-inducing) to be confident and suave in a hotel room when it was just him and Caterina, who wanted this to work as much as he did. It was an entirely different matter to be here, at the actual gala, and see the sheer scope of the thing. These were not his people. This was not his place. And all of this going through without so much as a tiny wrinkle hinged on his ability to be a handsome, debonair prince. Rahul Chopra was an avid collector of facts, and this one fact he knew to be unassailably true: he was no prince.
“We’re here. Ready?” Caterina asked as their limo inched along to the pull-off point. There, they’d get out and walk along an actual, literal red carpet to stand in front of the Hindman Foundation logo-plastered wall to get their pictures taken. She turned to look at him, her brow furrowed, when he didn’t answer. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Rahul said, his voice stronger than usual. He perked up. Wearing the outfit, it seemed, was bringing out a side of him he didn’t know he had. Maybe he could just fake it all night. Just pretend he was someone who swanned around drinking $60,000 bottles of water in limousines. “I’ll be fine. I am fine.”
“Good.” Caterina ran her gaze over his face. “Because it’s our turn now. Come on.”
The chauffeur was opening the door on her side then, and she was climbing out, immediately waving at someone and smiling her put-together, modelesque, Caterina smile. Rahul scooted out after her as she’d trained him, acting confident and graceful, feeling like he might throw up a little. Would they even notice? They were all probably staring at Caterina, anyway. He would, if he were them. She was radiant tonight, as she was every night. They should host an entire gala just for her.
And then he was following her on feet that felt like they were wrapped in cotton and numbing agent to the wall with the Hindman logos, smiling, smiling, smiling, without showing his teeth, as he’d been instructed. His hand had found its way back into the pocket of his trousers, and as far as he could tell, he was standing up straight.
But was he fooling them?
Rahul squinted a bit, trying to make out the expressions on the faces of the journalists and the camera people and other gala attendees, but it was hard to see anything, standing under the barrage of lights trained on him and Caterina.
“Caterina!” a woman in a yellow pantsuit holding a microphone called. “Who are you wearing?”
“This is a custom Balenciaga,” she said, smiling, doing a little twirl. The cameras went nuts.
“Ms. LaValle!” someone else shouted. Rahul couldn’t even see who it was. “What size do you wear?”
Caterina looked coldly into the teeming crowd and waited, silently, for the next question. It came soon after, and then another one after it, and another one, like a series of popping corn, pop-pop-pop. “Is indigo blue your favorite color? Is that why you chose that dress?” “Are you excited for your fifth time at the Hindman Gala?” “Which charities are you enthused to support this year?” “Will your father be joining you?” And finally, Rahul heard, “Who is that handsome young man beside you?”
There was a brief, infinitesimal moment when he and Caterina turned to each other, their eyes meeting, their eyebrows just slightly raised. Just a moment of, Oh my God, is it working? where Rahul felt, just like last year at the winter formal, that he and Caterina were in on something together, just the two of them. And then Caterina turned back to the crowd and said, into a bouquet of different microphones, “This is my dear friend, and he’s here to escort me tonight.”
“And does Prince Charming have a name?” someone called out, and the crowd laughed.
And then all the microphones were suddenly under Rahul’s nose. Right. A name. Rahul Chopra was out of the question. Why hadn’t he and Caterina practiced a name?? But obviously they hadn’t. They’d expected Rahul to fade into the background, as he usually did.