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They laughed.
“So, I made my choice, Cole. I chose you,” she said, pressing her hand to the side of his face.
“Me wanting you here was never about proving anything. I just wanted you by my side. Enjoying your company. Feeling your support. Dancing with you in my arms as I celebrate. Seeing you cheer me on,” he admitted with total honesty.
Her eyes softened.
It struck a chord in Cole that rang loudly.
“But my mother will not be pleased,” he said.
“The choice is hers,” Jillian said, stepping back to open the small gold clutch hanging from her wrist.
He looked on as she replaced her lip gloss and checked her hair in the mirror of a compact. “Ready?” he asked when she snapped it closed and dropped it back in her purse.
She nodded.
He extended his hand and she slid hers into his. “Did you ever think we would be walking into a gala hand in hand together?” he asked as they entered the ballroom.
She chuckled. “Definitely not,butdefinitely happy to have been wrong,” she assured him.
He raised the entwined hands and kissed the back of hers. He felt her shiver.
She closed her lace overlay to cover her breasts. “Hard nipples,” she explained. “Don’t want to poke anyone’s eyes out.”
He laughed.
Her humor was entertaining.
As he saw his parents moving toward them, he knew they would need it. “Here we go,” he warned, bending to press a kiss to her temple.
Jillian’s height seemed to rise a bit beside him and he knew she had straightened her back. He hated someone feeling a need to prepare themselves to match his mother, but he also knew the two women in his life were about to bump heads because of the deal they’d brokered about him.
Nicolette patted her gray-streaked blond updo as she gave them a perfect smile that was as fake as a fifty-dollar Hermès Birkin bag. “Hello, Cole. Your father and I weren’t aware you were bringing a guest,” she said.
“I wasn’t aware that I needed to have a guest approved,” he countered in a pleasant tone.
“Cole,” Phillip Senior warned in a gruffly stern voice.
He eyed his father coolly. The desire to reveal his long-lost son to him dripped from his tongue. However, he refrained from the move for the love of his entire family and wanting to shield his mother still—as they awaited a new report from the private investigator.
When Phillip returned his look with a glare, Cole stepped into the familiarity of his anger and disappointment at his father, failing at growing beyond it.
“Needless to say. You’re fired,” Nicolette said to Jillian, her smile still in place as she looked around and waved at those whose eyes she found on them.
Jillian stopped a waiter, picked up two glasses of champagne and handed one to his mother. She reached into her clutch and removed her cell phone.
Cole looked on in curiosity as she dialed a number.
“Hello, Clark? Yes, this is Jillian. I’m here with Mrs. Cress—”
Clark? The manager of Cress III?
“Yes,thatMrs. Cress,” Jillian said with a nod and lick of her lips. “Please confirm for her that I handed in my resignation, giving two weeks’ notice, before I left last night.”
Cole bit back a smile, loving her even more.
She put the phone on speaker. “Go ahead, Clark.”
