About Last Night

Once she had that under control, she checked her reflection in the mirror. The woman staring back at her was Not Her. Her hair waved softly around her face, and her dress was elegant despite the slightly wrinkled lap. A long strand of freshwater pearls and irregular chunks of amber looped twice around her neck, glowing against the cocoa backdrop. With lips a bit swollen from Nev’s kisses in the driveway—his misguided attempt to calm her down, or so he’d claimed—and cheeks suffused with nervous color, she looked every inch the fresh, pretty bride Nev’s father supposed her to be.

God, but inside she was dying to get out of this place. It was one thing to pretend to be New Cath until the habits of respectability sank in and quite another to try to pass as the woman looking back at her in the mirror.

You can do this, Talarico. How hard can it be, pretending you want to spend the rest of your life with Nev? Grow a pair and get your ass back out there.

Thus encouraged, she returned to the parlor.

Nev was fielding a rapid series of questions from his mother when Cath sat beside him on the stiff sofa. He took her hand and squeezed it, but he felt about a million miles away. He was pure City in this parlor. Super cool. Super smart. Super rich.

She tried not to notice that she didn’t like this Nev all that much.

“And how did you two meet?” Evita asked.

Nev stilled, as if he hadn’t seen the question coming. She had. As soon as it had sunk in that she’d be meeting Nev’s mother, she’d invented a more appropriate backstory for the two of them. “We met at the Tate, actually—the Tate Modern, I should say. There was a reception for the new exhibit on Dadaism, and Nev and I literally bumped into each other. He was so charming and apologetic”—here she gave him a loving look—“that I let him take me on a walk along the South Bank. We ended up having crêpes from one of those riverside vendors. Banana Nutella, wasn’t it, darling? And we talked for hours.”

“She let me take her on a proper date the next day,” Nev added, rising to the challenge.

“Love at first sight, was it?” Richard asked, sounding bemused.

“Pretty much,” Cath agreed. Nev smiled at her, and the ice thawed. She stopped caring about her dress, and started thinking instead about how much she wanted him to lean down and kiss her, to cup her face in his hand the way he did when he planned to make torturously slow love to her, and then—

But this is all an act, you dope. Let’s not get carried away.

Thank Christ for the voice of reason. Cath tore her eyes away so she could stare at her feet, ensconced in a very pinchy, very boring pair of brown-and-tan pumps.

“What a charming story,” Evita said, her tone conveying she wasn’t the least bit charmed. “Tell me, Cath—”

But Richard came to the rescue again. “Evita, why don’t we let Nev and Cath get settled in their room? They must be tired from the drive. We’ll have plenty of time to talk this evening.”

Evita’s tightly clamped lips said she wasn’t happy about this plan, but she’d been outmaneuvered. “Brilliant, Richard, of course that’s what we must do. Now let’s see, where shall we put you? I don’t suppose your old room will do, Neville? I was going to put Winston and Rosemary there, but we can get another room ready for them.”

“That will be fine, Mother. If you’ll show Cath the way up, I’ll retrieve our things from the car.”

Evita led her to a large corner room on the top floor of the house. A four-poster bed in dark wood dominated the furnishings, while windows on both outer walls offered a beautiful view of the surrounding area. Cath spotted a formal garden, as well as paths leading to a small copse by a stream.

“Perhaps Neville will give you a tour of the grounds before dinner,” Evita remarked.

“I’d like that.”

The fifteen-year-old Chicago urchin in her head laughed. A tour of the grounds. How chaaarming.

“I’ll leave you to your unpacking then. I do so look forward to our getting better acquainted later on.” She squeezed Cath’s hand, crushing her rings rather painfully against her fingers. “I’ve longed to have Neville married. I would’ve liked to have had the wedding here, of course, but he’s never shown much regard for my wishes. In any case, it will be good to have him settled.”

S

he sounded as if she might actually mean it. Cath smiled sweetly. “We’re going to be happy together, Nev and I. We’re very much in love.”

“Yes,” Evita said in a strange, almost distracted voice. “Yes, I can see that. Well, dinner will be at seven. We can talk then.” And with another shoulder clutch and an air kiss, she was gone.

Chapter Fourteen

He must have passed his mother in the hall, because he showed up with their bags then. Dropping them inside the door, he pulled it shut behind him and flipped the lock. When he turned and met her eyes, she saw that City had taken a hike. Nev stood across the room, hot as the infernal regions, and he was looking at her like he wanted to screw her six ways from Sunday.

“Take it off,” he said.

He stepped toward her, shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it onto a chair. She backed toward the window. “Take what off?”

“Cath, if you don’t take that dress off right now, I won’t be blamed for what happens to it.”