Chương 2
Dead people became simpler if you let them.
Nathan had spent eight years refusing to let Daniel become simple.
Now an eight-year-old girl stood behind him holding two stolen dinner rolls.
“Daniel was my brother,” Nathan said.
Eleanor’s expression did not move.
“So tell me why his daughter is hiding under your table.”
Color left his mother’s face.
Not dramatically.
It simply drained from around her mouth.
For the first time that evening, Eleanor looked sixty-four.
“Nathan,” she said, “this is not the place.”
The girl’s grip tightened on his jacket.
Nathan glanced toward the guests.
His mother was right about one thing. The ballroom was the worst possible place for whatever this was.
He looked down.
“What’s your name?”
“Mia.”
“Mia what?”
“Harper.”
“Where’s your mom?”
Mia’s eyes moved toward the service doors.
Eleanor stepped forward.
Nathan raised one hand.
His mother stopped.
It was such an unusual thing between them that even Nathan noticed it.
He turned to Simon Wells, Cole Meridian’s head of security, who had appeared at the edge of the gathering crowd with the quiet speed of someone accustomed to problems rich people wanted solved without looking like problems.
“Simon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is there a woman named Harper in the building?”
Simon hesitated.
Nathan saw the answer before he heard it.
“Was,” Simon said.
Nathan stared at him.
Simon cleared his throat. “She was escorted from the service level approximately ten minutes ago.”
“Why?”
Another hesitation.
This one was worse.
“At Mrs. Cole’s request.”
Eleanor closed her eyes briefly.
Nathan turned back to her.
“Where?”
“She was disruptive,” Eleanor said.
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Nathan.”
“Where is she?”
Simon answered.
“Loading entrance on Fifty-Third.”
Nathan looked down at Mia.
“Is your mom’s name Lauren?”
Mia nodded.
The movement almost broke whatever control Nathan had managed to hold onto.
He had never heard the name.
That fact mattered.
He did not yet know how.
But it mattered.
Nathan removed his phone from his jacket.
“Simon, bring Ms. Harper inside.”
Eleanor’s voice sharpened.
“No.”
Nathan looked at her.
“Excuse me?”
“She is not coming into this ballroom.”
“I didn’t say ballroom.”
“Nathan, you don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“Then you’ll have a chance to explain it.”
His mother glanced at Mia.
It was not contempt Nathan saw there.
That would have been easier.
It was fear.
Nathan slipped his phone back into his pocket.
“Simon, my office upstairs. Quietly. No security around the child unless there’s an actual safety issue. And tell whoever is working the east corridor to stop anyone taking photographs.”
“We can ask,” Simon said carefully. “We can’t exactly—”
“I know what we can and can’t do.”
Simon nodded.
Nathan appreciated the correction. A man who agreed too fast around him usually wanted something.
He looked toward the nearest member of the event staff, a woman holding a tray and pretending very hard to be invisible.
“Could I get some water?”
The woman nodded quickly.
Mia tugged his jacket.
“Can I keep these?”
Nathan followed her gaze to the bread bag.
“Yes.”
She held it closer.
Eleanor turned away for a moment.
Nathan saw her shoulders rise with one measured breath.
When she faced him again, she had recovered.
“We have four hundred people downstairs,” she said softly. “Three reporters, two state commissioners, half your board, and investors who flew in from London for tomorrow morning. Think before you decide how public you want this to become.”
Nathan almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the sentence was so perfectly his mother that it made him feel, for one ugly second, fourteen years old again.
“I’m not the one who put a child under a table.”
“I did not put her under a table.”
Mia spoke from behind him.
“You told me to stay there.”
Eleanor’s jaw shifted.
Nathan looked at the girl.
Mia seemed frightened by her own interruption.
She dropped her eyes.
Nathan said, “You can tell me.”
Eleanor’s voice hardened.
“Do not coach her.”
Nathan turned so fast Mia’s fingers slid from his jacket.
“Careful.”
His mother’s face changed.
Not fear this time.
Offense.
That, too, was familiar.
Nathan had spent much of his adult life learning that Eleanor considered accusation a greater breach of manners than wrongdoing.
He held her gaze for several seconds.
Then he looked at Mia.
“Come with me.”
Mia did not move.
“Your mom will meet us upstairs.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
He could not promise more than that.
So he did not.
The ballroom had gone almost quiet around them.
Nathan hated spectacle. Daniel had loved it until he didn’t. Eleanor knew how to survive it.
Mia had no idea what kind of room she was standing in.
Nathan took off his suit jacket and held it out.
“You don’t have to wear it. Just thought you might be cold.”
Mia stared at it.
Then at him.
“I’m not.”
“Okay.”
He put it back on.
One of the nearby guests gave a nervous little cough.
It was absurdly normal.
Nathan almost thanked him for it.
He walked toward the east corridor at a pace Mia could manage.
After three steps he realized she was following two feet behind rather than beside him.
He slowed.
Eventually she came even with him.
Behind them, Eleanor said something to Simon in a voice Nathan could not hear.
He did not turn around.
The private office on the mezzanine had been installed when the hotel renovated the ballroom seven years earlier. During galas it served mostly as a place for donors to take confidential calls or recover from too much wine.
Nathan had used it once.
That was to hide for nine minutes during the foundation’s fortieth anniversary dinner after someone introduced him to the daughter of a senator and then trapped them both in conversation while smiling meaningfully.
Now he sat on the edge of a leather sofa while Mia stood by the door and refused to sit.
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The room smelled faintly of lemon polish and coffee.
There was a bowl of decorative green apples on the desk.
