Page 42 of Velvet Vaughn

He tasted the champagne and decided he was going to find out soon.

“Don’t look at Brad again for the next five minutes,” Anja murmured, steering them both gently toward the far side of the cocktail floor. “He noticed you watching.”

“I didn’t watch him.”

“You looked at him for two seconds after I asked who he was.”

“That’s normal human behavior.”

“Not tonight, it isn’t.”

Leo pointed his gaze at the string quartet and kept it there. “You’re going to be like this all evening, aren’t you?”

“You say that,” Anja replied, taking a sip of champagne, “like it’s a problem.”

#

Dinner was announced at eight. Leo found his seat, held out Anja’s chair, and watched the table fill in around them. Brad arrived with Renee on his arm, his tie looser than it had been an hour ago, his cheeks redder. Jasmine Ortega, Pinnacle’s general counsel, took the chair across from Leo. Two senior partners Leo liked, Marv Collins and Hal Blake, filled the far end with their significant others. Curtis sat at the head, Lydia beside him, and they moved through it all with the ease of having hosted these events for two decades.

Devonte and Andrea landed on Leo’s right.

Devonte Cross was six-four and built specifically to make cornerbacks regret their life choices, but none of that was what you noticed first. It was his laugh. It arrived before he did, rolling ahead of him into whatever space he was about to occupy. Leo noted it the first time he’d walked into a film room at LSU and found a twenty-year-old kid making the equipment manager lose it over a story about a missed flight and a very confused airline employee.

He dropped into the chair beside Leo and brought it in with a fist bump that turned into a shoulder grip. “Uncle Leo. Looking clean.”

“You’re not bad yourself.” Leo glanced at Andrea, resplendent in something golden that had clearly not been bought in a ninety-minute back-room fitting. “Andrea, you look stunning.”

“Thank you.” She reached past Devonte to squeeze Leo’s arm, then fixed her attention on Anja with open curiosity. “Hi. I’m Andrea.”

“Anja.” She waved. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

“Leo never brings anyone to these things.” Andrea shot him a look that was equal parts delight and accusation. “I’m going to need details later.”

“You’re going to be disappointed,” Leo told her. “The details are boring.”

“They are never boring,” Andrea replied, and turned back to Anja with an expression that communicated the conversation was not over, merely tabled.

Devonte was grinning, clearly enjoying himself. His posture was easygoing, with no tension visible in his neck or hands. But Leo had known him for years. He’d sat with him in waiting rooms and contract negotiations and, once, in a hospital corridor at two in the morning when the baby came early and the doctor’s update was running long. He knew how Devonte reacted when something was working beneath the surface.

The salad arrived. Leo asked Devonte about the Titans’ offseason, which was a conversation Devonte could recite on autopilot, and he let him run it while he listened for the thing underneath the words. The story was good. It involved a new defensive coordinator, a rookie receiver who’d apparently shown up to camp with opinions about route trees, and a scene in the weight room Leo was fairly certain had been embellished for the table’s benefit. Andrea interjected twice to correct the exaggerations. Devonte refuted both corrections. Brad Hatton laughed too loudly at the end of it and reached for his wine, downing half the glass in one gulp.

Leo ate his salad and waited.

The bread arrived. Andrea chatted with Christine Collins about a restaurant in Nashville she’d tried the week before. Anja, to Leo’s left, was in private conversation with Jasmine Ortega about something that had started with corporate liability and had apparently become genuinely interesting to them, which was both useful and, if he was being honest with himself, not remotely surprising.

He angled slightly toward Devonte.

“Hey.” He kept his voice easy. “You good?”

Devonte turned his fork over on his salad plate. “Always.”

“You look tired.”

“It’s April. Every receiver in the league looks tired in April.” He took another bite and chewed. “Andrea had me up at six to get a run in before the event. She’s on a wellness kick.”

“Six in the morning in April. Damn, that’s rough.”

“Tell me about it.” Devonte’s smile was forced. He set the utensil down and reached for his water glass.