Page 131 of Dial F for Finance

“Convenient timing,” Audrey points out, giggling.

“OK. Fifteen-minute countdown,” Layla announces, and instantly the room moves as if released by a starter pistol—curlers pop, bodies shuffle, garment bags unzip, and even Sasha blinks in mild alarm.

Typically the shepherd, tonight I’m a sheep, swept into the current of these women in flawless choreography: hair team edits, lipstick swaps, a chorus of perfume mists.

Nora is ready first, her dress a soft green that flows down to her ankles. Suddenly the principal is a garden party in the best way. Audrey wears structured plum that Logan has apparently stress-tested for dance-floor mobility. Serena wears black with a slit she describes as “barely litigious.” Layla’s in a rose-gold gown that Bennett convinced her to model for him the day she brought it home, and “it almost didn’t survive his reaction.” Miranda’s in emerald, doing a slow spin for her phone camera while narrating to her husband like a QVC host. Hailey in the gold—the gold—backless and blazing and utterly unrepentant, and when she sees herself in the full-length mirror she goes still for the first time all day and whispers, “Oh no, Lucy is going to be a problem,” and Miranda says, “That’s the spirit.”

Then Sasha unzips the garment bag with my name on it, and everyone stops pretending to do anything else.

The midnight-blue silk I first saw folded inside Willa’s box looks completely different at full length. On me, it comes alive—almost black until I move, then running with light. My shoulders are bare, my waist cleanly defined. There’s no ruching, no camouflage, none of the strategic architecture I’ve spent twenty years requesting from clothes. This dress has no opinion about what I should hide. It simply assumes I won’t be hiding.

Sasha fastens the hook, and the woman in the suite’s big mirror is nobody I have ever successfully been before.

“Jenna,” Hailey says, voice thick.

“Don’t.”

“I’m just saying⁠—”

“If anyone makes me cry in this makeup, Sasha will kill us all and she’ll be right to.”

The hair team comes at me last, releasing the curlers and positioning my hair around my shoulders in a way that makes me look and feel like a star.

“Dominic is going to lose his mind when he sees you,” Audrey says, bouncing on her toes in a way that makes her curls spiral up and down like springs.

Layla’s phone chimes and she claps twice like a stage manager. “Ladies! The cars are here.”

The elevator disgorges us into the lobby as a single rustling organism—seven gowns, one shared cloud of setting spray—and through the doors I can see the limousines lined up at the curb, sleek and black and ordinary.

And then there’s the other car.

It’s parked at the head of the line like the thesis statement of the evening: a vintage Rolls-Royce Phantom, deep gunmetal, chrome polished to weaponry, older than everyone present and better dressed. A driver in gloves stands at the rear door. And leaning against it, in a midnight tuxedo that I realize—with a lurch I feel in my knees—has been cut to match my gown exactly, is my husband, holding a single white peony.

The girls flow past me toward the limos, entirely unsurprised, which tells me every one of them knew, the traitors. Miranda actually pats my arm as she passes and whispers, “Bestie, breathe.”

I cross the sidewalk alone. Dominic watches me come the whole way, and he doesn’t smirk, doesn’t deploy anything, just watches like the walk deserves his complete attention, and my heart is behaving in a manner I would flag if I wasn’t so used to Dominic turning it into a butterfly sanctuary.

“What are you doing?” I ask, doing a terrible job at hiding my smile.

“I’m escorting my wife to the gala.”

CHAPTER 37

Jenna

Dominic offers the peony with the smallest bow, and the streetlight comes on above us at that exact moment like the city is on his payroll, which, frankly, has never been ruled out.

“The girls have limos. There’s a whole convoy system. It’s been organized.”

“I’m aware. I reviewed the logistics.” He opens the door, and the interior is burled wood and cream leather and a small silver bud vase, empty, waiting, bolted to the pillar like the car was built knowing the flower was coming. “The convoy is for the party, sweetheart. This is for the belle of the ball.”

I should say something dry. I have a full inventory of dry things. Instead, I get into a seventy-year-old car holding a peony, and the door closes with a sound like a vault approving of you, and for a split second, my mind rewinds the clock and I’m a senior in high school again, and this time everything goes so perfectly right—but I push that thought away, because that was then and this is now. And I only want to focus on the now.

“You look absolutely stunning, Pemberton,” he says softly, mouth curving as he slides in beside me, the car swallowing us both in rich, silent space.

“And you look entirely too pleased with yourself,” I say, though my voice lacks its usual bite. I slide the single white peony into the silver bud vase. It fits perfectly, which only confirms my suspicion that Dominic Cruz leaves absolutely nothing to chance.

I let my gaze drag over his tuxedo. The midnight fabric is a dangerous, exact match to my silk. “I suppose you’re going to tell me this coordinated wardrobe was a happy accident?”