"He’s eccentric."
"I think he may be interested." Miley set the spatula down on the coffee table and looked me in the eye. "Have you been keeping anything from me?"
"He’s just my boss," I said.
"Your boss who bought you jewelry." She gave me a deadpan look. "Anna. Honey. Sweetheart. Light of my life. Bosses don’t send dresses to assistants they have no feelings for. Bosses send emails and meeting invites. They do not send midnight blue silk with a handwritten note."
"I’m going to call him and say I can’t go."
"You are absolutely not calling him to say you can’t go. You are putting on that dress and going to that gala and having the best night of your life."
"Miley—"
My phone rang. Not Jace.
It was Miles.
"Anna." He sounded cheerful, his tone a touch too bright for a man who never called just to chat. "I just wanted to say thank you."
"For what?"
"For getting Jace to agree to the gala. I’ve been trying for five years and you managed it in, what, three days?"
I looked at Miley. She was mouthing I TOLD YOU with her whole body. "I didn’t do anything. He just sent me a dress."
Miles went quiet for a second. "He sent you a dress?"
"And a necklace."
"And a… Anna, that’s..."
"It’s for work."
"Right." He sounded like Miley. The exact same tone. "For work. Well, whatever you did, it worked. He called me a few minutes ago and said he’s attending. First time in five years. And the only reason that changed isyou."
He thanked me again and hung up. I sat on the couch with the dress in my lap and the card in my hand. Miley was still staring at me, a knowing grin spreading across her face.
"Put the dress on, Anna. It's time to get ready."
I put the dress on. I did my makeup lightly. And when I was finally ready, I looked in the mirror—but couldn’t recognize myself.
It had been a while since I’d dressed up like this, in something this pretty. And the credit, annoyingly, went to Jace Hunter.
The venue was a renovated Art Deco hotel in South Beach. Arched doorways, gold leaf accents catching the light from chandeliers that hung low enough to warm every surface they touched. The ceiling stretched high above the crowd, pale and paneled, and the whole room had a bronze glow to it, like someone had dipped the evening in amber.
I clocked the exits on the way in. Both of them. The main entrance and the service door on the left side near the valet stand. I did this everywhere. It became a habit. Something I started after everything went south in my past life.
Jace was waiting inside the lobby.
I saw him before he saw me. For three seconds I just looked. Black suit. The one from the fashion house, single-breasted, cut close through the torso with a notch lapel that sat sharp against his shoulders. He hadn't forgotten the gray tie I'd knotted for him either.
His hair was combed back without a strand out of place, his glasses clean, his posture held with that rigid stillness that somehow looked natural on him because nothing about JaceHunter had ever arrived unplanned. The jacket followed his shoulders without a single pull at the seam, the trousers tapered clean to the break, and the gray tie against his white shirt made his eyes look almost silver under the chandeliers.
Then he turned and saw me.
His eyes found my face first. Then they dropped to the dress, slow, following the line of it all the way down before traveling back up to meet mine. He didn't say anything. But his jaw had loosened and the tension he carried in his shoulders had gone still. The look on his face wasn’t something I could describe. I just knew I’d never been on the receiving end of it before, and I wasn’t prepared for what it did to my poor heart.
"The dress fits," he said. His eyes traveled down the dress and back up again, the journey took about two seconds and I felt every millimeter of it.
