Tiffany nodded slowly. “This party is suddenly making a lot more sense.”
“What?”
“Nothing. But given that Blair is participating in ‘discussions about art and creativity’”—she made quotes with her fingers—“with you, not to mention putting you up rent-free, after you were a complete asshole to her, the least you can do is sing at her fucking Christmas party.”
Shit. And here Jack had just been thinking of Tiffany’s penchant for saying what she meant as a positive trait.
“What?” she asked. “What’s that face?”
He curled his lip. “It’s probably my you’re-right-but-I-don’t-like-it face.”
“Come on.” She took his drink out of his hand and set it on the counter. “Time to deck some fucking halls.”
“Only if you’ll sing with me.”
He expected that to shut things down, but she said, “Sure, but I get to pick the song.”
Next thing he knew, sheet music was being shoved into his hands and he was being shoved into the “stage” area in front of the pianist Blair had hired. There was a lot of shoving going on. He comforted himself with the knowledge that even if he was bad, he wasn’t going to be as bad as some of the people he’d heard earlier. In fact, his self-exile to the mudroom had been partly in response to a dirgelike, atonal rendition of “Jingle Bells” sung by none other than Mrs. Afonso, who was now apparently Blair’s best friend, judging not only by her presence here but also by the plethora of baked goods that had been exchanged between the two houses since the sting operation.
He clicked on the microphone as he surveyed the room, which looked like the Pottery Barn Christmas catalog had vomited all overit, looking for Blair among the guests, most of whom seemed to be her colleagues from work or Hollywood women she was friends with.
Ah, there she was.
Why was he watching her? Hard to say. Because he suspected she had thrown this entire party as an excuse to manipulate him into singing? Perhaps. But maybe thatwasmain character syndrome. Maybe she’d simply wanted to have a party. She’d seemed to enjoy hosting Thanksgiving. Except for the cleaning-up part.
He wondered if the cleanup tonight was going to be fraught. He didn’t want her to suffer. He hoped she understood that he understood.He hoped she understood that he understood? What kind of sentence was that?
Maybe he was watching her because that washowhe had come to understand her, by watching. He knew when something on one of their shows was going to make her snort with either laughter or derision, and he could distinguish between the two types of snorts. He knew when a situation was going to lead her to her quiet, internal panic.
Or maybe he was watching her because she was so pretty.
She was wearing an emerald-green pleated minidress. It was tied in a big bow at the back of her neck, leaving her shoulders exposed, and then it fell down loosely. Was that an A-line? Anyway, she looked like a green lampshade. She should have looked ridiculous.
She did not look ridiculous.
She was huddled in a corner talking to an extremely tall blond man wearing a suit and tie, and the way she was tilting her head as she listened intently to whatever he was saying was…
Oh. Oh, no. The music had started up, and it wasnotgood.
“We can’t sing this,” he whisper-hissed to Tiffany. He would admit to being functionally illiterate when it came to pop culture, but even he knew that “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” had been canceled.
“Calm down. It’s fine. Blair made everyone hand in their phones when they arrived.”
“So you’re not saying the song is fine; you’re saying there won’t be a record of us singing it.”
“I’m saying you’re overthinking this. Just sing.”
“Why do I still havemyphone?”
“Probably because you don’t have social media and the only person you text is Blair.”
“That’s…”
True. It was true.
“‘I really can’t stay!’”
Shit.Tiffany had belted out the first line of the song, and she had drawn the attention of the people closest to them.
