"You need to look successful," Margot had said. "But not threatening."
"Confident," Amelia added. "But approachable."
"Hot enough that Victor can't stop looking at you," Margot continued. "But professional enough that the board can't use your appearance against him."
The dress they settled on accomplishes all of those things.
Which is why I feel like I'm going to throw up.
My goal tonight is simple.
Survive the gala without humiliating Victor or giving the board ammunition to vote against him on Monday.
I'm already failing.
Because my hands are shaking so badly I can't get my earrings in, and Victor still isn't back from his meetings, and in thirteen minutes we're supposed to leave for the St. Regis.
I take a breath, try again with the earrings—delicate diamond studs that Victor insisted on buying me last week despite my protests that I could wear costume jewelry.
"You're going to be photographed," he'd said. "By industry press, by investors, by people looking for reasons to tear us apart. Costume jewelry will be noticed. These won't be."
The left earring goes in. The right one slips from my fingers and bounces across the hardwood floor.
"Damn it."
I'm on my hands and knees searching under the bed when I hear the penthouse door open.
"Harper?" Victor's voice carries from the entryway. "Where are you?"
"Bedroom! Don't come in yet!"
"Why not?"
"Because I'm on the floor and I've lost an earring and I look ridiculous!"
Footsteps approach anyway, and then Victor is standing in the doorway in a tuxedo, and as if I needed yet another reminder, the visual of him once again lets me know what a masterpiece he is.
Tall and broad shouldered in dark fabric, he is a standing beacon of male beauty. If I ever doubted if there was a God, I certainly wouldn’t anymore just by looking at him.
The man deserves an altar at his Armani-covered feet.
He takes one look at me—dress hiked up around my thighs, hair falling out of its updo, currently wedged halfway under his bed—and I hear his deep chuckle.
"This isn't funny," I mutter.
“I beg to differ, sweetheart.”
"I'm in the middle of a crisis.”
"I can see that." He crosses to me and offers his hand. "Come on. Let me help."
I let him pull me to my feet, and immediately I'm aware of how close we are, how good he smells—like smoke and cotton and amber. How the tuxedo makes his shoulders look carved from granite.
"You look beautiful," he says quietly.
"I look like a disaster."
“Disastrously gorgeous.” He tips my chin towards him. "Breathe, Harper."
