Page 90 of Julian

“What?” she asks softly.

“You’re beautiful.”

A blush rises into her cheeks, and despite the elegance of the gown and diamonds and Manhattan glitter surrounding us, that reaction remains wonderfully unchanged.

“You’ve made today really special,” she says. “The salon and the massage and…” She laughs, shaking her head. “Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever been this relaxed in my entire life.”

“Oh, come on,” I say.

“I’m serious,” she insists, turning more fully toward me now. “I didn’t realize how tense I always am until today.”

Harper carries so much external weight—Dylan, work, bills, responsibility, survival. She moves through life braced for impact and still somehow manages to remain warm and open and generous beneath it all.

I take her hand lightly in mine as the car slows.

“Well,” I say, brushing my thumb across her knuckles, “I intend to make relaxing a more regular occurrence for you.”

The Rainbow Room occupies the sixty-fifth floor of Rockefeller Center, and even after years of attending events here, the space still carries a certain grandeur impossible to replicate anywhere else in the city. The elevator opens directly into gold light and music and old New York elegance—the chandeliers, the dance floor, the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan glittering beneath the winter sky.

The room is already full when we enter.

Power moves easily through spaces like this. Finance, media, politics, real estate. Power players from all walks of life—all of them wrapped in tuxedos and couture, gathered beneath one ceiling.

The second we step inside, all eyes swing not toward me but toward Harper.

“You’re a head-turner,” I murmur near her ear.

She glances up at me. “Yeah, yeah.”

I smile faintly. “You belong here more than half the people in this room.”

Before she can respond, a familiar voice cuts through the crowd.

“Julian!”

Jon Roth barrels toward us with the confidence of a man who has spent forty years bulldozing Manhattan into whatever shape best benefits him financially. He’s in his early sixties now, silver-haired and broad through the shoulders, still carrying the swagger of a real estate magnate who knows half the skyline bears his fingerprints.

If a gleaming glass tower appeared in Midtown during the last twenty years, odds are Jon Roth had his hands on it.

Beside him glides his third wife, Vanessa, who looks like she was assembled entirely from luxury labels and expensive contempt. Hermès clutch. Versace gown. Diamonds the size of ice cubes framing a face pulled slightly too tight by modern cosmetic science.

“Happy New Year,” Jon says, clasping my hand before his eyes dart toward Harper with open curiosity. “And who is this?”

Harper tenses beside me.

“This,” I say, “is Harper Hawthorne.”

Vanessa’s gaze sweeps over Harper in one quick, assessing pass. Judgment disguised as observation.

Ordinarily, I’d ignore it. Tonight, I dislike it intensely.

But Harper, to her immense credit, simply smiles warmly and extends her hand.

“Nice to meet you both.”

Vanessa smiles politely.

Jon grins broadly. “Well, Julian, you’ve been holding out on us.”