Page 136 of Dial F for Finance

“You are a lot to take in, Mr. Cruz.”

“Yeah. But every part of me is yours, sweetheart.”

Her fingers curl against the nape of my neck. “I love you, Dominic.”

For a few beats, Thursday disappears. So does the speech, the box against my heart and every careful thing I’ve arranged to persuade her to stay.

She loves me.

Every time she says it, the truth lands a little deeper.

I press my mouth to her temple. “I love you too.”

I hold her like that for a moment, just swaying to the music and thinking about how lucky I am. Then she pulls back an inch to look at me.

“Are you about to try and make this weird?”

“I’m trying very hard not to express my enthusiasm by breakdancing in the center of this dance floor.”

“Do you even know how to breakdance?”

“No.”

“You’re insane.”

“Insanely in love with you? Yes.”

She laughs and then kisses me, and it’s a little harder than necessary and doesn’t give a fuck for decorum. I hear Bennett Mercer’s laugh somewhere behind me.

“Get a room, Cruz,” he calls, voice carrying over the music.

I wish.

Dinner is called at nine. The migration to tables begins—two hundred guests’ worth of silk finding their place cards. Willa’s personal guests sit at Willa’s table, front and center beneath the stage—the rest of us banished to the regular tables—so I walk her to her seat with her hand tucked into the crook of my elbow.

“Is Hailey with me or you?” she asks, looking around for her sister. She spots her standing at the edge of the room laughing with Miranda and her husband, not even hunting for their seats yet. But at least they seem to be having a good time.

“She won’t be with you. But I’ll make sure she’s either at my table or Bennett’s. She won’t be sitting with strangers.”

“Thank you,” she says, flashing me a smile. “You’re a good husband.”

A skitter of adrenaline spikes through me. “I aim to be a phenomenal husband.” I kiss her hand and deposit her at her table. “Try to remember us little people when you’re running this town.”

“Dominic.” She catches my hand, and her eyes come up, and for a second the whole night is just in them, bright and terrified and happy—happy, my wife, in public, unarmored. “Thank you. For . . . before. And for tonight. It’s meant a lot.”

“Tonight,” I tell her, “is only half over.” And I kiss her knuckles and walk to my table like a man who isn’t planning the greatest grand gesture of all. Besides the slight hiccup when Jenna doubted her worth, tonight is going off without a hitch.

I plant myself at my designated table—Mercer, Layla, Logan and Audrey, Serena and Caleb, even David and Nora are already spaced out around it.

“Something tells me you’ve all been swapping name cards,” I say, glancing at the table beside us where Roz and her husband sit with Mercer’s COO Vicky.

Caleb just smiles. “Mercer Capital and Cruz Financial are so mixed up in business it makes sense to blend us all together.”

“Of course,” I say. “And where have we put Hailey Pemberton and Jenna’s best friend, Miranda?”

Nora laughs at that. “They’re sitting at the Canfield table. Xavier Field and Miranda’s husband, Rob, hit it off earlier.”

I glance over and see Hailey and Miranda talking to each other like old friends while Rob and Xavier do the same. There’s no sign of Thomas Canning, which is a shame because Hailey still hasn’t met him.