“Ooh, ‘SexyBack’. Come on, Gerald.” Bonnie disappeared toward the dance floor with him hot at her heels.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think that woman was getting some,” James murmured.
“Yes, but fromGerald?” I whispered.
“Did not havethaton my Christmas bingo,” said Kelly.
We all grimaced and turned back to our drinks.
“Liam, so nice to see you again,” said Mum. “You know, I was thinking, you could be a model.”
“Ah, thank you, Celeste. I’ll give it some thought.”
“No, I mean it. You’ve got a great jawline. You’d photograph well.”
“Yes, Mum,” Eliza said, “Liam’s going to quit his billionaire investor career to be amodel.”
“You could be the new face of ErectaGel?” Ben said.
“Works for me,” James said quietly.
Liam choked slightly into his sherry.
I looked around the room—snow against the windows, candles flickering, Monish already debating cricket stats with Murray while Mum examined Liam’s bone structure. Eliza had her hands in the candied pecans like she’d never left.
It felt close to perfect.
“I’m getting a proper drink,” I said, slipping out from the bench. “And not one with cinnamon in it.”
“Champagne?” James asked. “And bring one for Baz, if you don’t mind? He’s just finishing a fare.”
“Anything for you.”
I made my way through the crowd, past the icicle lights and sheepskin throws. Bonnie was leaning against the bar, her cheeks flushed.
“I think I need a water,” she said. “Great party, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “You andBig Gseem to be getting along well.”
The corner of her mouth twitched like she wanted to say something and changed her mind.
Bloody hell… was this actually athing?
“We spent a lot of time together working on the resource redeployment,” she said. “The design of it. Once Liam decided that’s what he wanted.”
Andthatwas the turn-on?
“Gerald really cares about his team, you know,” she said. “All of you. I respected that.”
Was that why he’d been so concerned about making surenone of us screwed up? Was he just trying to keep us all… safe? I hadn’t thought of it that way before.
“Right,” I said.
“I’m glad it all worked out with you and Liam,” she added, her vowels slipping slightly. “He wasn’t… functioning well. Before.” She took a sip of her water. “I didn’t know how to help him.”
She suddenly sounded less like a period drama and more like… me.
“I knew after the Toby thing that you were all right,” she said. “Toby’s a dick, but you had Liam’s back. And then when you revised your statement… and resigned too. I mean, you didn’t have to quit, but I could see you really cared. About Liam. Meant I could stop worrying about him so much.”
