Longbourne had put together the centerpieces, a few garlands, and the table display for the banquet portion of the evening, the “family” dinner that consisted of a cool three hundred guests at five hundred per head. Lila had planned this event, plus transportation for a hundred of those people to Noir, one of the hot nightclubs in town, which the Felix estate had rented out for the night. And it only cost them half a million dollars.

Chump change.

Charlie and I shook hands before I got to work, hauling arrangements out of the back and onto carts, which the staff transported into the venue. Lila’s interns waited with instructions to set up the centerpieces, and I would get the table display and garlands in place. A couple hours was plenty of time, thanks to Tess’s stellar organizational skills. She’d boxed, labeled, and color-coded everything, leaving me instruction sheets in triplicate.

The second I walked into the banquet hall, I saw her. As was her custom for evening events, she was in all black, the deepest, darkest of blacks against the cream of her skin. The pantsuit was tailored to fit her body in exact proportions—the V of her lapels, the bend of her waist, the flare of her jacket, the long, straight length of her pants that made her legs impossibly long. Her hair, which she usually wore up at events, was down and shining in waves like a starlet from the golden age.

When she saw me, she smiled in a stretch of red lips, sending an intern off with a word and striding in my direction. Without thought, I moved to meet her. There was nowhere else to go.

She kissed me, or I kissed her—I couldn’t tell and didn’t care. All that mattered was that we were kissing, brief and delicate as it was. When she leaned back, her gray eyes sparked like flint, bright and hot and lovely.

“What can I do for you?” I asked, my voice low and rough.

She hummed, watching her hand as it trailed down my shirt. “So many ways to answer that question. But let’s start with the flowers.”

I kissed her nose. “If we must.”

“Sadly, we must. But if you’re up for a late night—” She froze, her eyes flicking behind me.

I heard her laughter and knew exactly who was there. Turning confirmed that Natasha Felix stood behind me, tall and blonde and beautiful in that contrived way only achieved by makeup artists and plastic surgeons.

Judging by the way the man at her side looked at Lila and the proprietary way Natasha hooked his arm, I could only assume this was Brock.

He was handsome, I’d give him that. Strong jaw, cool eyes, easy smile. Rich and confident, the kind of guy who walked into a room and drew the attention of everyone in it.