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“Sorry about this,” I murmur once people start eating.
He pops a seared duck crostini in his mouth. “This is delicious. Invite me over anytime. Besides,” he says, lowering his voice. “This is part of the show, right?”
Yes, it’s part of the show.
The show where I’m fun and young and sexy enough to be Finn Hughes’s girlfriend.
Not reality. Which would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
“Part of the show,” I murmur in agreement.
He leans close enough that I can see the deep green in his hazel eyes. “Besides, I wanted to come. I’m looking forward to seeing you in your natural element.”
“It’s not that interesting,” I assure him.
“I doubt that.”
I’m distracted from that cryptic comment when I hear Sophia’s voice rising at the end of the table. Her expression tells me that Mom has been criticizing her again. My sister loves avant-garde art and nightclubs that serve fifty-dollar cocktails. It’s harmless, really. But my mother acts like my sister is about to become a stripper for five-dollar tips.
“Mom,” I say to distract her. “When did you invite Finn? You could have told me.”
She waves her hand, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Sophia’s expression of relief. “It was a last-minute thing,” she says, lying through her teeth, because the next course is fatty tuna and caviar, which is probably two hundred dollars a plate. “You know I love seeing my children, but it’s sad with Carter gone. I thought Finn could fill the empty place.”
“Does anyone actually know where he’s gone?” Daphne asks.
“The Republic of the Congo,” Tiernan says in his low rumble.
“He mentioned something about Thailand,” Elaine says, glancing at her husband, my brother Lucian. He shrugs, clearly more interested in gazing at his wife than speculating about his brother’s whereabouts. He was possibly the meanest of all the Morellis, even including my father, before Elaine tamed him.
Lizzy snorts. “The last time I asked him where he was going I got a thirty-minute lecture about this endangered deciduous shrub that’s only found in a particular five-hundred square miles in Siberia.”
My father claps his hand on the table. “I don’t know why my son has to go off chasing endangered panda bears when we have a company to run right here in New York City.”
“It was a shrub,” Lizzy says, somewhat mulish.
“Actually, panda bears aren’t endangered anymore.” My brother’s wife, Bianca, wears an earnest expression. Her love for the environment comes up often. “There are over eighteen hundred of them living in the wild thanks to conservation programs in China.”
“Carter is a professor at Oxford,” Sophia says, scrolling on her phone, probably booking luxury villas in all the places we’re mentioning. “Why does he get to have adventures? I thought they were supposed to wear tweed and have gray hair.”
“Put your phone away at the table,” my mother tells her.
“Didn’t your aunt have a panda?” Emerson asks, his expression thoughtful.
Finn winces. “I was hoping no one remembered that.”
“It made quite a stir in the rare collectibles community.”
“Your aunt had a panda?” I ask, afraid to hear it will be a hide or something. I’m not passionate about the environment the way Bianca is, but I still don’t like hunting for sport. Especially when it comes to not-quite-endangered species.
He sighs. “She was having a midlife crisis. She read something about this woman who captured the first baby panda and brought it to America. And decided to try it herself. I found out when an alt-PETA group decided to break into Hughes Industries at night to express their displeasure. It took forever to get the grass stains out of the upholstery.”
“What happened to the baby panda?” Bianca demands to know.
“It was returned safely,” he assures them.
Bianca still looks suspicious, but the conversation moves to Daphne’s wedding, something that my mother never tires of talking about. My father is only interested in the guest list. He wants the most prestigious people to attend. Daphne is fighting for it to stay small, but it definitely runs the risk of turning into a circus.
Or a gladiator ring, as it were.
