Page 132 of Dial F for Finance

“I don’t believe in accidents, Jenna.” He shifts closer, the leather groaning softly under his weight. The heat radiating off him is palpable, and when his knee brushes mine, a sharp, unauthorized spark shoots straight up my thigh. “I believe in meticulous planning and flawless execution.”

“You either took my dress to a tailor or you colluded with Willa.”

“I will never reveal the source of my swatches.”

A laugh escapes me, short and breathless. “You’re incorrigible.”

“I’m a man who knows how to properly complement his wife,” he murmurs, his dark eyes dropping to my mouth. The atmosphere in the car suddenly feels impossibly dense, charged with the same electric current that has been humming between us for weeks.

It should terrify me. I’m used to managing Dominic, predicting his arrogant plays and batting away his flirtations like so many gnats. But this quiet, devastatingly intentional version of him is entirely unmanageable.

I love him.

The thought is still new enough to catch me off guard, but it no longer sends me searching for an exit. Every time I let myself acknowledge it without trying to qualify or contain it, the truth settles a little more comfortably inside me.

Fortunately, the Phantom glides to a graceful halt outside The Grand Chicago Hotel before I have to analyze it fully. Through the tinted glass, a gauntlet of flashing bulbs and velvet ropes awaits. The red carpet spills up the grand steps like a velvet tongue.

The driver opens my door, but it’s Dominic whose hand finds mine, his grip warm and impossibly steady as he helps me step out into the crisp Chicago night. The dull roar of the crowd and the staccato burst of camera flashes wash over us instantly.

“Jenna! Ms. Pemberton, over here!”

I brace myself, instinctively leaning toward Dominic’s solid frame, ready for us to run this press gauntlet as a unified, heavily coordinated front. But instead of wrapping his arm around my waist to claim his real estate, Dominic smoothly drops my hand.

I look at him, startled.

He takes a deliberate step backward, physically removing himself from the photographers’ frame. He offers a devastating, entirely private smile. “Go,” he murmurs, his voice a low, grounding rumble beneath the noise. “This is your night, sweetheart. Let them see exactly what you’ve built.”

He blends into the periphery with the event staff and the shadows, leaving me standing in the center of the blinding lights. I square my bare shoulders in the midnight silk, lifting my chin as the cameras fire rapidly. The anxiety that usually accompanies this kind of exposure vanishes, replaced by a dizzying, effervescent joy that bubbles up straight from my chest. I am the center of the universe, standing on my own accomplishments, and for the first time in my life, I don’t just tolerate the limelight. I let it hold me.

I walk the length of the carpet with a measured, deliberate glide. I offer the press a genuine smile, letting the midnight silk pool and flash around my legs with every step. For twenty yards, it’s just me and the blinding validation of a decade of relentless work. I don’t flinch. I don’t look for an exit strategy. I simply exist in the glow of my own making.

But as I near the entrance of The Grand Chicago Hotel, the shouting fades into white noise. Dominic is waiting for me exactly where the velvet ropes end. He stands near the heavy brass doors, his posture relaxed, watching my solo procession with a look of such absolute, unwavering pride it makes my breath hitch. He looks like a man who has just won a war without firing a single shot.

“Mr. Cruz!” a photographer near the entrance shouts as I slip my hand into Dominic’s. “Just one with the lady of the hour!”

Dominic arches a dark eyebrow, silently deferring to my jurisdiction. I give him a single nod.

He slips into position beside me, his large hand settling on the curve of my lower back—a searing point of contact against my skin—and instead of smiling at the camera, he turns his head to look down at me just as the flash fires. It’s exactly one frame. One perfect, undeniable shot of a man captivated by his wife.

“Enough press for one night,” he murmurs, his thumb stroking my spine and sending a shiver straight to my core. “Ready to hold court, Pemberton?”

“Always,” I reply, leaning into his heat as we step through the heavy brass doors.

The Azure Room is up a private elevator behind a door with no sign, and it is exactly as blue as advertised and twice as quiet. Thirty people, maybe forty, in light the color of the inside of a glacier. I recognize a Fed governor, two people from magazine covers, the GC of a company I once spent a year auditing, and a string quartet playing something French with no ambition to be noticed. Every conversation in the room is worth eavesdropping on. Nobody is performing loudly enough to be heard from three feet away. It is, and I say this with reverence, the best-behaved room I have ever entered.

“Jenna Pemberton.” Willa James detaches from a knot of donors and comes to us with both hands out, blonde-haired and bright-eyed and precisely as warm as her handwriting. She takes my hands like we’ve done this a hundred times. “The woman herself. I’ve been telling people you were coming all week—half of them wanted introductions and the other half wanted to know if the Nakamura paper was really as clean as advertised.” She leans in, conspiratorial. “I told them cleaner.”

“Mrs. James⁠—”

“Willa. I insist.” She tucks my arm through hers with the gentle tyranny of a woman who has run this city’s better rooms for many years, and steers me into it. To Dominic she says, over her shoulder, “I’m stealing your wife. Go do your rounds, Mr. Cruz. Landon’s at the bar pretending the boat isn’t new.”

“It’s always new,” Dominic says, and lets me go with a wink and a smile.

I surrender quietly to the abduction, letting Willa weave us through the glittering crowd with the effortless grace of a monarch surveying her court. Up close, Willa smells of expensive gardenias and money, but there’s a sharp, calculating intelligence in her steel-gray eyes that immediately puts me at ease. I understand calculation. It’s my native tongue.

“He looks well,” Willa murmurs, keeping her voice pitched perfectly for our ears only as we bypass a cluster of tech executives. “Dominic. I haven’t seen him look quite so . . . thoroughly dismantled before. It suits him.”

“He’s been practicing his dismantled look,” I say smoothly, though a treacherous flush warms my neck. “I believe it’s part of a broader corporate strategy.”