Page 167 of Boardroom Ties
“You give him a run for his money, though.” I grin and look up at him.
He cocks an eyebrow at me, and oh, God, that eyebrow hasn’t lost an ounce of its power over the last fifteen months. He’s got Galina’s spit-up drying on the lapel of his linen blazer and the top two buttons of his white shirt are undone enough to expose the very top of one of his tattoos, that dagger aiming up over his collarbone like it’s reaching for his throat. His dark hair, a little overgrown lately because new dads don’t have time for barbers, falls across his forehead in a way that makes me want to drag him into the coat closet of this loading dock and see what’s what.
And then there are the eyes. The Blue-eyed Bastard is alive and well. The exact shade of the gas flame on my stovetop when I’m browning butter for Galina’s bedtime bottle. Hot at the center. Cool at the edges. Always, always,alwayswatching me like I’m the only thing in any room worth looking at.
I’ll never get used to it.
I never, ever want to.
“What?” he asks.
“It pisses me off sometimes how good-looking you are,” I inform him.
His grin widens and he reaches out to grab an absolutely scandalous handful of my ass. “Just trying to keep up with you, baby.”
I shriek and smack him away playfully, but the fire in my cheeks is lit and it’s not going anywhere now. I get the feeling it’ll be there for the rest of my life.
I’m wearing a slip dress in deep red, on purpose, because Susan Oglethorpe once told me it was brave, brave,brave, and I have decided that one of the small ways I will carry her with me is to wear red, in winter, in summer, in alleys, in cemeteries, at weddings. I hope, wherever Susan is, that she’s resting well.
Speaking of the Oglethorpes, Caroline is somewhere in this crowd, too. I look around and clock her near the cake table, in a lilac green jumpsuit, talking politely with one of Chad’s firehouse buddies who is, by the looks of it, trying to flirt and failing spectacularly. Caroline has a knack for being very kind and very far away at the same time.
She’s become a good friend over the last year, but I get the feeling that she’s still keeping me at arm’s length. That makes sense. We all have our walls and our heartbreaks, and we all heal at different speeds from the things that have hurt us.
I just hope, for her sake, that she learns to let someone love her soon. She deserves it.
Matvei follows my gaze and a lightbulb goes off in his eyes. “Ah. Almost forgot. Stay here—I need to go do something quickly.”
“Mysterious.”
“Until the day I die.” He kisses my knuckles. “I’ll be right back.”
He cuts a clean line through the crowd, exchanging nods and handshakes with the other wedding guests as he goes. I watch as he approaches Caroline, touches her elbow lightly, and turns her slightly away from the crowd. He pulls something from the inside of his jacket—a cream-colored envelope—and passes it to her.
Just before she tucks it inside her clutch, I manage to decipher handwriting on the back that saysFor Carrie.
I am no detective, but I am a wife-in-training, and I know my husband-presumptive’s tells. That envelope is something he has been carrying for a while. I wonder what it says.
But when Matvei comes back to me a moment later, he shows no interest in explaining what the hell that was all about.
Not that that stops me from asking. “Gonna fill me in?”
He looks at me sidelong, then shrugs. “It’s not for me to say. Bill kept an envelope in his deposit box.It got lost in the chaos and I only just rediscovered it last week. I don’t know how I missed it.”
“You read it?”
“Hell no.” He tips his beer to his mouth. “Wasn’t mine to read.”
I lean my head against his shoulder for a second. Out the side door, through the propped-open vestibule, I can just see the shape of Caroline sitting on the curb, her shoulders very still, the envelope’s contents unfolded in her hands.
“Should one of us go check…?”
“Let her have it,” he demurs. “She’ll come back when she’s ready.”
I nod. He’s right. There are some things you need to process alone, with the city sounds around you, and not in a wedding hall where Lizzo is reminding you, at considerable volume, that you are 100% that bitch.
But it does give me a very different kind of idea.
I tilt my chin toward the outside world. “Want to get some air?” I ask cheekily.
