AllFreeNovel
Share Us
14
The charity event was held in the Plaza Hotel’s Grand Ballroom. With its arches, columns, gold trim, towering ceilings, and glass chandeliers, the cavernous room felt like a European fantasyland of luxury.
“Not as good as the Dubai’s,” Connor said as we entered the room. Fashionably late, of course.
Sebastian had been apoplectic in the limo (“Really? You just had to have sex right before a public relations appearance. Really. You couldn’t do it aaaany other time. Couldn’t control yourselves. Like high school seniors on spring break, or horny chipmunks. Just had to. REALLY.”), but in the venue itself he acted like it was completely natural that we were an hour late. In fact, he acted like the organizers should be happy Connor had deigned to appear.
“We had a presentation all prepared,” sniffed a rather stuffy, matriarchal lady in a blue ball gown that had probably been made fashionable by Queen Elizabeth. (The first one, in 1600, not Diana’s mother-in-law.)
“Well do it now!” Sebastian said gaily (no pun intended on ‘gay-ly’). “What’s stopping you?”
In the end, it all worked out. There was a receiving line arranged, and Connor stoically bore his fate to smile politely and shake hands as hundreds of New York’s high society came through to get their pictures snapped with him. And behind him, ever on guard, stood the Four Bodyguards of the Apocalypse, perpetually scanning the crowd for any suspicious characters or sudden movements.
It was funny; now, just by virtue of being at his side, the New York elite paid more attention to me than they ever would have before. They were either sycophantic, trying to curry Connor’s favor, or they gave me looks like, Why the hell is he marrying HER?
Well, to be honest, only the 20- and 30-something women did that, usually followed by lustful looks at my fiancé.
At which point I not so subtly pushed them out of the line to make room for women in their 70’s.
Bitches be mackin’ on my man.
Because I was right next to Connor the whole time, I gave Johnny the evening off. Well, sort of. He still had to hang out, but he and Anh canoodled over in the corner, laughing and stealing kisses.
“Don’t they look good together?” I whispered to Connor.
“Why do they get to have fun?” he complained in mock seriousness, right after he politely dealt with a coterie of old ladies who berated him for not spending an extra hundred million dollars to preserve the Nevada habitat of the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher (it’s a bird, by the way). “I want to have fun.”
“You had fun before we came,” I whispered.
“I had fun when we came,” he whispered back, and I could hear the arched eyebrow in the tone of his voice.
“Be good, and you can have some more fun later.”
“HELLO there!” he said brightly to the next person in line.
All in all, the night was going pretty well – until she showed up.
