“Yeah, why are we doing this tonight?” Claire asked curiously. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to have the chance to get dressed up and go to a fancy party with my closest friends, but an engagement party seems…”

“Over-the-top?” Audrey said. “Tell me about it. Though it makes a little more sense if you’ve met Clarke’s mom. Crazy as this is, I can kind of get why he wanted to call her bluff on this party. She was just so smug when we were there for dinner. I’d probably have agreed to just about anything to knock her down a peg.”

“I’m dying to meet Clarke’s parents,” Naomi said.

“Same,” Claire admitted. “I imagine they’re a vital part of the puzzle that is Clarke.”

Audrey blinked in surprise. “What do you mean?”

As far as she was concerned, Clarke was an open book.

“Just that when you first meet him, he seems so easygoing, without a care in the world,” Claire explained. “But the more you get to know him, the more you realize something’s going on beneath the surface. Based on the way he talks about his parents, I figured they had something to do with it.”

“Yeah,” Audrey said, looking down at her champagne. “They’re very… I don’t know. They’re not bad people. I just think they’re not suited to being parents. They’ve always treated Clarke like an extension of them rather than a person in his own right. His dad’s blind to just about anything other than the company. And I know it bugs Clarke that Alton always just assumed Clarke would follow in his footsteps, and yet at the same time he makes it clear that it’s not a foregone conclusion that Clarke will inherit the CEO title one day. It’s like he wants Clarke to earn it but won’t tell him how.”

“What about his mom?”

“Control freak,” Audrey said, taking a sip of champagne. “Her husband does everything she says, and it’s always bugged her that even as a kid, Clarke would never comply with her demands the way his dad does. Clarke played baseball when she wanted him to study. He was prom king when she wanted him to be valedictorian.”

“Classic rebellion,” Naomi said knowingly.