When I had changed back into my navy wool dress and buttoned the cuffs, I folded the gown across my arms with more care than I had ever handled some men’s careers. Outside, the boutique remained suspended in that awkward hush reserved for public disasters and celebrity sightings.
Miranda took the dress from me as though receiving something sacred.
“Thank you for your time,” I told her.
“Vivian, wait.” Derek at last.
His voice chased me halfway to the door.
I stopped, but I did not turn.
He came closer, lowering his voice. “Don’t go like this.”
“Like what?”
He exhaled through his nose. “You know my mother. She gets… intense.”
I looked at him then. Really looked. At the handsome face I had kissed in candlelit restaurants. At the blue eyes that had once seemed so attentive, so warm, so unlike the calculating gaze of the men I worked with. At the mouth that had told me I was unlike anyone he had ever met. At the man who had just watched his mother tell his fiancée that she was unworthy of white because she came from nowhere.
And still he wanted me to help him make the scene smaller, more manageable, easier for him to survive.
“Enjoy the rest of your appointment,” I said.