Page 24 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

I follow her eyeline.

A woman is coming down the corridor toward us.

She’s somewhere around fifty, though she carries it the way some women do, less like age and more like refinement, something time improved rather than diminished. Dark hair, swept back. A cream silk blouse and wide-leg trousers that belong in a magazine. Jewelry that is understated precisely because it doesn’t need to be anything else. She moves like someone who has never once had to announce herself because rooms have always done it for her.

She looks at Mallory first.

“Mallory.” Her voice is low and even and pleasant in the way that expensive things are pleasant, smooth all the way through. “I walked the terrace this morning. The centerpiece heights on the east row are inconsistent. The linen press on the board room chairs needs to be redone, two of them are unacceptable. And the wine station placement is blocking the sightline to the vineyard which defeats the entire aesthetic purpose of having it outdoors.”

Mallory’s smile doesn’t waver. “Of course. I’ll see to it that everything is up to standard before Saturday.”

“To my standard,” the woman says. “Not the general one.”

“Absolutely.”

The woman turns her gaze to me.

I’m in the black wrap dress I’d chosen for the day, professional and pulled together, and she looks at me with an expression that doesn’t change but somehow still communicates an assessment. Her eyes move from my face to my shoes and back without haste.

“And you are?”

“Harper Brooks.” I extend my hand. “I’m assisting with the summer events.”

She looks at my hand. Shakes it once, brief and cool. “Hmm.” She turns back to the corridor. “The executive suite lodgings need to be turned over before this afternoon. See to it.”

I blink. “I’m sorry, I⁠—”

“Evelyn.”

The voice comes from behind us.

I turn.

Killian is coming down the corridor in black from collar to shoe, button-down open at the throat, and he does not look pleased, and I don’t mean mildly displeased, I mean the specific controlled displeasure of a man who has walked into a situation he’d have preferred to arrive before.

His eyes find Evelyn first. Then Mallory. Then me.

Something moves through his expression when they land on me. Something he organizes away quickly. But I see it.

“Killian.” Evelyn’s whole register shifts when she says his name, warmer, smoother, and she lifts a hand toward him like a woman flagging down something that’s always been hers. “I was just going over a few items with your staff.”

“Mallory.” He nods at her, then turns to me. “Harper. How are you finding things so far?”

The question is directed at me and it’s direct and it’s warm and it is categorically different in tone from how he just said Mallory’s name, which I’m sure I’m imagining.

“Good,” I say, and I mean it. “The event infrastructure is more sophisticated than I expected. Mallory runs a tight operation.”

He almost smiles. “She does.”

“Why would you employ such a homely-looking child for event planning?”

Evelyn says it softly. Conversationally. Like she’s noting a curious staffing decision rather than saying something that lands in my stomach like a stone dropped from a significant height.

Nobody moves for a moment.

Killian turns his head and looks at Evelyn and the temperature in the corridor drops by several degrees.

“This is Harper Brooks,” he says. His voice is completely even. “Sophia’s closest friend. She has a professional background in luxury events and hospitality coordination and I brought her on for the summer season.” He pauses, and there is something in the pause. “I don’t run my staffing decisions by the board.”