“Did you hear that?” he called to the room, turning so the investors, politicians, and socialites could enjoy the joke. “She called her daddy.”
Scattered laughter answered him.
“What’s he going to do?” Prescott continued, grinning now, recovering because the crowd was giving him permission. “Drive his rusted pickup to the front of the Weston Grand? Offer to rotate the valet tires?”
More laughter. Cruel this time. Comfortable.
I stared at him and said nothing. He mistook silence for weakness. That was the mistake every one of them made.
An hour earlier I had been seated at the head table in a fitted black gown so simple it was practically an insult in a room like that. Prescott had hated it the moment he saw me that evening.
“You couldn’t try for one night?” he had asked while adjusting his cuff links in our bedroom. “You always make it look like I married my accountant.”
I had almost laughed at the accuracy, considering I had been the anonymous consultant keeping his family’s finances from collapsing for three years.
Instead I had only said, “It’s a dinner, Prescott. Not a coronation.”