Page 75 of Carry on Wayward Son

Standing in this room with my water glass and my upswept hair, I knew I was the only person here who understood what such a belief actually produced when you followed it to its end.

Jace’s hand was warm at the small of my back as we moved through the first cluster of guests, and I kept my face arranged in the pleasant, engaged version of me that had learned long ago how to be in rooms like this without actually being in rooms like this. I watched him navigate it with the fluency of someone who’d grown up speaking this language, even if he’d chosen not to use it, and underneath the social ease I could feel the different operation he was running.

He was tracking something. Or someone. Maybe multiple someones. My job was to remain decorative and attentive, to pick up on the things he might miss.

A man separated from a nearby group and crossed toward us.

Tall. Silver-haired. Carrying himself with the settled ease of someone who’d spent decades being given what he wanted and stopped noticing when it wasn’t universally available. I saw Jace’s jaw, Jace’s cheekbones. Even his eyes moved through a room the same way, assessing the machinery running beneath a warm social surface. He was what Jace might have become if Jace had made entirely different choices about what to do with himself and what to do to other people.

“Jace.” The warmth was calibrated precisely. A tool deployed with expertise rather than an expression of genuine affection. “You look well. It’s been too long.”

“Dad.” Jace’s voice was even in a way I knew required effort. “Good to see you.”

The tension moving through his arm wasn’t the complicated weight of a difficult relationship. I’d felt that in him before. The heaviness of something unresolved, the grief of a person who’d expected more from someone and stopped expecting it but hadn’t stopped feeling the gap. This was different. More focused. He was watching his father the way I watched witnesses when I suspected they were managing the truth, looking for the tells underneath what was being shown. I understood without being told that whatever Dax had sent him for Christmas had added a layer to this evening, and I didn’t have the full picture yet.

John Hollingsworth turned to me, and the warmth redistributed itself across his face with the seamlessness of long practice. “And who is this?”

“Layla Murphy.” I gave him my hand. “I’ve heard a great deal about you.”

“All flattering, I hope.” He held my hand a beat past the natural end of a handshake. Just enough to register. Not enough to call out. The exact amount a man like this knew he could get away with, which told me something about how much he’d it tested over the years.

“Of course.” My smile gave him nothing.

“Layla Murphy.” He repeated my name in the way men repeated names when they were filing them. “What is it you do?”

“Photojournalist. Investigative work, mostly.”

“Remarkable.” The word landed as an appraisal rather than a compliment. His eyes moved over me once, brief and practiced. “Jace has always had excellent taste.”

Not she seems wonderful. Not it’s lovely to meet you. Taste. As though I were something he’d selected off a dinner menu.

I smiled pleasantly and said nothing.

“How long have you known Mr. Ashmore?” Nothing in Jace’s delivery telegraphed the importance of the question.

“Oh, a few decades now. We crossed paths through the development space. A mutual contact introduced us.” John’s warmth shifted register slightly, the warmth he reserved for people he considered genuinely useful. “Remarkable man. Considerable vision. The kind of reach that takes generations to build.” He paused. “You should spend some time with him tonight. There are opportunities along this coast well worth knowing about.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Are you still with the Navy?” The question was wrapped in the language of paternal interest and was really about something else entirely.

“Still active, yes.”

“Mm.” John turned his glass in his hand. “You’ve been home a while now. I’d heard months.”

It had actually been only weeks, but Jace didn’t correct him.

“The island needed some attention.”

“Of course.” John paused. “I only ask because there are things opening up. Development projects that would benefit from someone with your particular skill set and your family’s history here. If you were ever thinking about the next chapter⁠—”

“I appreciate that,” Jace said. “I’ll give it some thought.”

John looked at him for a moment with the eyes that were Jace’s eyes and weren’t, and then he smiled. “That’s all I ask.” He turned to me one more time. “Lovely to meet you, Layla. Take care of him.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

He moved back into the crowd with the ease of a man who had gotten at least some of what he came for, and the tension in Jace’s arm didn’t release completely. It redistributed, settled in the way of a man putting something away to deal with later.