Page 39 of Velvet Vaughn

Anja faced the mirror.

The woman in the glass looked like someone who walked into rooms and understood them immediately. Who noticed everything and revealed nothing. Who could shake a managing partner’s hand and read his tells in the same breath. The neckline was clean and composed. Everything the back did was somebody else’s problem to manage.

She checked the weight shift, quarter turn, and reach. The skirt flowed with her, not against her.

“Can I move in it?”

“You can run in it if you have to,” Larisa acknowledged, which was either reassurance or a challenge. Possibly both.

Anja checked the mirror one last time.

Leo had gone silent.

He had the water glass halfway to his mouth, and it had stopped there. His eyes were on her with an expression she recognized from a wedding five months ago in Bloomington.

“De Luca,” she snapped.

He shook his head and set the glass down. Cleared his throat. “Yeah?”

“Is it appropriate for the room?”

The seconds that passed were longer than the question warranted.

“It’s appropriate for any room,” he murmured, and his voice had dropped half a register without him seeming to notice. He caught himself. “You’ll fit right in. Curtis’s wife wears Valentino to everything, so the bar is genuinely high. You’ve cleared it.”

Anja turned back to Larisa. “We’ll take it.”

Larisa reached for the garment bag.

Anja didn’t look at Leo. She didn’t need to. She’d registered what was on his face, and she was going to need a private minute in the car to put it someplace practical before the evening began.

Anja filed it in the drawer.

The drawer, as it had been doing since last night, declined to close fully.

#

The Chase Park Plaza came into view at 6:12, its limestone facade glowing against a dark-blue April sky. A line of valets moved amid the controlled chaos.

Leo pulled the Range Rover to the curb and left the engine running. He had talked little on the drive over, and she’d been equally content to let the silence ride between them.

The cover was that they’d met through Chloe. Technically, it wasn’t a lie. They’d been together a few months, nothing public, and he’d decided tonight was the right time to introduce her. That last detail was Anja’s, because it explained the absence of prior introductions without requiring a story that could unspool under pressure.

A valet appeared at his window. Leo stepped out, handed over the keys, and went around to Anja’s side. She was already out, which he’d expected, and doing the thing she did in new locations. It was an unhurried scan of the entrance, the adjacent street, the rooflines, and the other arriving guests. She did it so smoothly that nobody standing twenty feet away would’ve clocked it as anything other than a woman taking in an evening.

He offered his arm. She took it.

“Twelve o’clock,” she murmured. “Green sedan.”

He didn’t look. “Event security. They hire a detail for the gala every year. Black ties, earpieces.”

“Not earpieces. Single bead on the right ear.”

“That’s what I said.”

She arched her brows.

Fine. She was the expert after all.