“I have this charity thing I have to go to tonight. Want to come with me and we can celebrate there?”

Two warring emotions struck me. The first, sheer excitement that while I logically understood it wasn’t a date, it still felt like a date. The second put me on an anxiety high alert. “Charity things” were my parents’ favorite way to spend their time. Other than belittling their children and trying to crush their dreams.

I had no desire to be in a ballroom with my mother, father, and Tyler. I was trying to be his friend. I didn’t want to scare him off with the crazy that was my life.

“Who’s hosting it?” I asked.

He looked confused. “I don’t know. Let me pull up the invitation.”

We walked back to our apartment as Tyler scrolled through his phone, finally finding what he’d been looking for. “Here it is. It’s the Women’s Texan League. It’s to help fund some local homeless shelters. My boss wants me to go and network.”

The Women’s Texan League was chaired by my mother’s mortal enemy, Bitsie Fernley. Which meant I didn’t have to worry about running into my parents and was free to show up and enjoy myself.

“Bitsie is hosting so, yes, I can go hang out and celebrate,” I told him. Thankfully, he didn’t ask me to explain.

But when we got into the elevator, he did ask, “I can’t believe you know who is hosting the event just based on the organization’s name. Do you think this is the kind of stuff I should know? Who hosts events?”

“I only know who’s in charge because I grew up with people that it mattered to. People with more money than they know what to do with. Didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t grow up with money.” His voice had a haunted quality to it and I immediately wondered what made him sound that way.

Then I immediately felt stupid because when we first met he said he’d grown up without money. “Right. You told me that. But I thought you meant ‘poor’ like your family had one yacht instead of three.”

He laughed. “Not quite.”

I think I’d forgotten about his upbringing because most guys that I’d met who worked in investing and finance usually had someone in their family to open a door for them. They’d grown up with wealth and felt comfortable in that world. My parents had some pretty strong prejudices against what they called “new money” and made it into a game to spot people at parties who “didn’t belong.” I’d seen Tyler’s custom-tailored suits. I lived in his very expensive apartment. He seemed at ease in his environment. I never would have guessed that it was recently acquired.

“Oh,” was my initial brilliant and insightful response. “You seem like you belong to all this.”

We went into the apartment and he sat on the back of the couch, facing me. “Then I’m a better actor than I’ve given myself credit for. It’s like I’m impersonating someone else. Maybe that’s the reason I always feel so out of place at these things. I graduated from USC. It’s not like I’m uneducated. But sometimes it seems like everyone there is speaking a language I don’t quite understand.”

He wasn’t wrong. I hung my purse up and came over to stand in front of him. “My people are look-down-their-noses-at-you rich. So I am fluent in snob. I could teach you.”

“Really? You’d do that?”

“For the guy who just spent his entire day helping me get a car? Absolutely.”

“I didn’t do anything to help.”

There was no way I could explain to him that him standing aside, letting me get my car on my own, had been the absolute best thing he could have done. It was just what I’d needed. At the time I’d also understood that if I’d asked him for advice on any part of the process, he would have given it to me, which I’d also found very reassuring. “You may not think so, but you being there was helpful to me. I appreciated you having my back. Now I can have yours. What’s the dress code for tonight and what time do we need to leave?”

He checked his phone again. “It says cocktail and it starts in about half an hour.”

“Is there a dinner? Dancing?”

“It doesn’t say anything about dinner, but yes to dancing.”

“Okay. That means we want to show up late. You never want to be on time for an event like this. I’m going to go start getting ready. Meet you back here in about an hour so we can drive over together?” I held my breath, wanting a yes.

Probably because of how date-like it felt.

“Sounds like a plan.”

I wanted to kick myself for not allotting enough time to get ready. I’d have to forgo a shower and get dressed. While all my formal gowns were in a closet at my parents’ house, I still had most of my semi-formal and cocktail dresses, given all the mixers and events our sorority had done in college. I picked out a midi-length dark-blue dress with delicate beading across the neckline. It was my favorite; I’d picked it up in New York during Fashion Week three years ago. I had always loved that it was one of a kind.

Since I was the kind of person who was overly committed to staying in bed until the last possible moment every morning, it had forced me to learn how to apply my makeup quickly and yet still make it look good. Expensive products and brushes helped, and now I used them only for special occasions like this one. I tried not to think about the day when I was going to run out of everything completely.

I tugged my hair up into a messy bun, using hair spray to tame the flyaways. I went back into my room to go through my jewelry box to see what I had to wear. I had a pair of square sapphire earrings deemed not worth enough money to be put into the family vault.

The diamond tennis bracelet Brad had given to me glittered inside the box. For a moment I was tempted to pick it up and put it on. But only for a moment. I closed the jewelry box, leaving the bracelet behind.

I grabbed a pair of black heels and then gave myself a once-over in the mirror I’d hung up on the inside door of my closet.

Satisfied with what I saw, I dug through the top closet shelf to find a small black clutch. I headed out toward the foyer to transfer over my ID, debit card, cell phone, and lipstick from my purse.

Tyler had apparently been sitting on the couch, waiting for me. He stood up when he saw me and my breath caught as I skidded to a halt, dumbstruck by how handsome he looked.

At some point I was going to have to get used to the sight of him in a suit. It emphasized his broad shoulders and the darkness of it highlighted his light-blue eyes. I gulped.

“You look nice,” he told me with a smile.

You look like I want to bear your children. Shaking off my gut response, I smiled back and said, “So do you.” As far as compliments went, “nice” was on the bland side, but I’d take it. If I’d been entirely truthful in returning his compliment, what I would have said was that he looked choke-on-your-own-tongue good, but I didn’t feel it was appropriate to say so.

“Should we go?”

I grabbed my purse and made the transfer of stuff I thought I’d need. “I’m ready,” I told him, as I reached for my coat.

“Here, let me.”

It had been a very long time since a man besides my butler had helped me put my coat on. And it was a totally different experience to be standing so close to Tyler, because he smelled like heaven and radiated a delicious heat that made me want to get even closer to him. The feel of him standing just behind me, so close that we were almost touching, made me tremble slightly. It took me two tries to get my left arm into the sleeve, but I finally managed it.