Chapter Four: HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Three years earlier

"You look bored."

I turned. A man was standing at my elbow holding two glasses of champagne, and I hadn't seen him cross the ballroom.

"I am bored," I said. The executive who'd been explaining interest-rate futures to me for fifteen minutes had finally wandered off toward the shrimp tower. "Is it that obvious?"

"Only to someone else who's bored." He held out one of the glasses. "Truce?"

I took it.

He was handsome in a way that seemed almost unfair: broad shoulders, a custom tuxedo, dark hair styled to look effortless, and warm brown eyes with gold flecked through them. I'd noticed him earlier, across the room, standing in a circle of people who all leaned in when he talked and laughed half a beat after he did.

I'd told myself he was exactly the kind of man I wasn't interested in. Too smooth. Too aware of his own charm.

"Miles Morretti," he said.

"Lila Clement."

His eyebrows went up. "Richard Clement's daughter?"

"Lila Clement," I repeated, "MBA, as of three weeks ago. Thank you."

He laughed. It was a real laugh, surprised out of him, and it made him look younger and less polished. "Fair. I deserved that. Lila Clement, MBA. What did you think of the speeches?"

"Honestly?"

"Please."

"I think we all paid fifteen hundred dollars a plate to eat rubber chicken and congratulate ourselves for funding arts programs we'll never visit." I took a sip of champagne. "And I think the man in the bow tie has given that same speech at three different galas this spring, because he made the exact same joke about the canapés every time."

Miles stared at me. Then he leaned closer and lowered his voice. "He gave it at four. You missed the hospital fundraiser in March."

I laughed so hard I had to put my glass down.

"So why are you here," he asked, "if you hate it this much?"

"My father's company is a sponsor. And I'm trying to prove I'm more than his last name."

"How's that going?"

"I've been here two hours, and you're the first person who's asked me anything except how my father's doing."

He looked at me for a long moment, and something in his expression shifted. "What do you want to do, Lila Clement, MBA? Not your father. You."

Nobody had asked me that all night. Nobody had asked me that in months.

"I want to build things," I said slowly. "Not buildings exactly. Partnerships. I like figuring out what someone actually needs, underneath what they say they need, and then finding the person who has it. I'm good at it."

"I bet you are." He set his own glass down beside mine. "I run a development company. Small, but growing. Morretti Development."

"I know. You're in my father's trade magazine every other month."

"Am I?" He looked pleased. "Well. Now I know at least one person reads it."

The band shifted into something slow and jazzy, the kind of song that belonged in an old movie. Miles glanced at the dance floor, then back at me, and held out his hand.

"Dance with me."

"I don't know you."

"You know I hate the bow-tie man's speech as much as you do. That's a foundation." He smiled. "One song. If I step on your feet, you can walk away and never think about me again."

I hesitated just long enough to make him wait. Then I put my hand in his.

He was a good dancer, confident without showing off, leading without pushing. We talked the whole song and halfway through the next one about everything and nothing: the worst restaurants in the city, whether the silent-auction vacation packages were worth what people bid, the time his professor had failed him for arguing with a case study and then hired him three years later.

Halfway through the second song, I looked over his shoulder and saw Alexander.

He was standing near the terrace doors in a black tuxedo, holding a glass he hadn't touched. I hadn't even known he was coming. He'd been in Singapore for a month, and his last text had said he'd be back Thursday.

It was Saturday.

He was looking at me. When our eyes met, he lifted his glass a fraction of an inch, a small toast across the room. Then he set the glass down on the nearest table, turned, and walked out through the terrace doors.

"Something wrong?" Miles asked.

"No. I just saw a friend."

"Do you want to go say hello?"

I looked at the terrace doors. They'd swung shut.

"He left," I said.

I'd known Alexander Calvert since I was seven years old. In sixteen years, he had never once left a party without saying goodbye to me.

---

"So," Alexander said. "Miles Morretti."

It was Sunday morning. I had the phone wedged against my shoulder while I made coffee, and I could hear traffic behind him, the hum of a city waking up.

"You left without saying goodbye."

"You were busy."

"Alex."

"You were," he said mildly. "You were dancing. You looked happy. I didn't want to interrupt." A pause. "Did you have a good time?"

"I did." I stirred two sugars into my mug. "He asked me out. Friday."

The silence on the other end lasted half a second too long.

"Good," Alexander said. "That's good, Lila. He seems—charming."

"You say charming like it's a medical condition."

He laughed, and the strange tightness in his voice was gone. "I say it like a man who just spent eleven hours on a plane next to a toddler. Ignore me. Coffee Thursday? I want to hear everything."

"Thursday," I said.

---

Miles took me to a steakhouse downtown, a place with leather booths and waiters in white jackets who called him Mr. Morretti without being told. When the waiter came, Miles ordered for both of us without looking at the menu.

"Trust me," he said, "the filet here will change your life."

I would have ordered the duck. But the filet was very good, and he looked so pleased watching me eat it that I didn't mind.

That was how it went for months. Miles picked the restaurants, the shows, the galleries, the weekend trips. He was good at it. Every plan felt like a gift: Broadway opening nights, a rooftop bar nobody could get into, long weekends at his family's beach house in Montauk with the windows open to the sound of the ocean.

On one of those weekends, sitting on the deck after midnight with a bottle of wine between us, he told me about his family.

"My mom died when I was twelve," he said. "Cancer. It was just me and my dad for a long time. Then, when I was twenty, he met Margaret."

"Your stepmother?"

"For two years." He turned his wineglass slowly. "She had a daughter. Valeria. She was fourteen, all elbows and attitude, and she hated me on sight." He smiled faintly. "Then she didn't. She started following me around. Asking me to drive her places. I'd never had a sibling. I didn't know I wanted one until I had one."

"What happened?"

The smile went away. "Six years ago now. They were driving back from my aunt's, in the rain. A truck crossed the median." He was quiet for a moment. "Valeria was supposed to be in the car. She'd faked a stomachache to stay home with me and watch movies. That's the only reason she's alive."

"Miles." I took his hand. "I'm so sorry."

"I was twenty-two. She was sixteen. Her real father left when she was a baby, so overnight it was just me." He squeezed my fingers. "My dad used to say, Take care of your sister. Every time he left the house. Like a joke. Take care of your sister. So I do."

"Where is she now?"

His whole face lit up. "Cambridge. Studying business. She's brilliant, Lila. She's going to finish early." He pulled out his phone and showed me a photo: a slim, dark-haired girl in a navy coat on a stone bridge, wide hazel eyes, a shy smile. "That's her."

"She's beautiful."

"She's fragile," he said. "She's been through so much. But she's getting stronger. You'll love her when you meet her."

I fell asleep that night with my head on his chest and the ocean outside the window, thinking that a man who loved his family that much would know how to love a wife.

At two-forty in the morning, his phone rang.

He was out of bed before the second ring. "Val? Val, what's wrong?"

He took it into the hall. The beach house had thin walls. I lay in the dark and listened to the low murmur of his voice go on and on, ten minutes, twenty, forty.

Near the end, I caught one sentence clearly.

"I know, Val. I know. She's not going to replace anyone. Nobody could replace you."

The bedroom door was cracked. I lay very still and stared at the strip of light on the ceiling.

They were talking about me.