would not ruin this evening with Nick. Nick, who was the perfect gentleman. I hadn’t seen him stare at my chest once, although I couldn’t say I’d mind if he did.
“So what’s the event tonight for?” I asked.
“It’s a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. Which basically translates as a bunch of rich people throwing money around, but it does raise a healthy amount for charity.”
“So you’ve been before?”
Duh, of course he would have been before.
“They have this event every year. I go if I’m in the country.”
“I’m not sure I’ll know what to do.” Words spilled out as nerves got the better of me. “Are the people all refined? What should I talk about? What if they realise I’m not like them? What should I say?”
Nick only laughed. “Not being like them isn’t a bad thing. There’s a limit to the amount of time I want to spend talking about golf or the stock market, and as for the women, you could make better conversation with a store mannequin. When Emmy goes, she just makes shit up to amuse herself. Did anyone tell you about the pickled egg thing?”
“What pickled egg thing?” I recalled the disastrous interview at Claude’s. “I do remember her having a jar of eggs in her purse once.”
“When we went to one of these dinners a couple of years back, I ended up stuck in a discussion on the NASDAQ, and Emmy got cornered by the country club set. They started yacking on about weird and wonderful ways of losing weight, so Emmy thought she’d tell them all about her new diet.”
“What kind of diet?”
“The Siberian pickled egg diet. She could eat anything she wanted as long as she had a pickled egg before every meal and swam ten laps of the pool backwards before breakfast.”
“Backwards? How do you swim backwards?”
“With great difficulty, trust me. A bunch of us tried the next morning, and it’s almost impossible. But those women ate it up. Literally. High society ladies were buying pickled eggs by the caseload. The Richmond pickled egg shortage made the New York Times.”
“I’m guessing there wasn’t really a pickled egg diet?”
“Hell no. Emmy looks the way she does because she works out for three hours a day, but now people keep buying her pickled eggs as a joke. You ever try pickled eggs? They’re disgusting. When she ran out of kitchen space last year, we lined them up out the back and used them for target practice.”
I sucked back my laughter, praying I didn’t split the seams of my dress. “I don’t think I’ve ever tried a pickled egg. I’m not sure I even want to.”
“Good call. Anyway, my point is that it doesn’t matter what you say. If you want to be yourself, be yourself. If you want to pretend to be a different person, do that instead. Everybody stands around talking bullshit no matter what.”
“If that’s the case, why do you need to go? Why not just donate some money?”
He grimaced. “Business networking. See and be seen and all that. It’s a necessary evil, unfortunately.”
“What do you do for a living?”
It was something I’d been curious about for a while. Nick was obviously well off, but I had no idea how he’d gotten that way.
“I invest in various companies. Sometimes I hold onto the investments and receive income in the form of dividends, and other times I sell my shares at a profit.” He grimaced. “Or sometimes a loss, if I fuck up.”
“That sounds interesting.”
“Occasionally, it can be. Day to day, it gets kind of dull.”
Nick’s phone rang, and he talked into it quietly for most of the journey. I watched out the window, seeing the world through different eyes on my first journey in a limousine. The car was a bubble, insulating me from everything I wanted to forget about.
Time sped by, then the limo drew up outside the Black Diamond hotel. Sylvia had told me this place should have six stars, and there was—I kid you not—an honest-to-goodness red carpet out front. As Nick helped me from the car, I felt like a movie star.
“Over here, sir,” a man called from beside the front door.
“Official photographer,” Nick whispered. “Smile.”
I paused, blinking as the camera flashed.
“Closer,” the man said.
Nick unlinked his arm from mine and wrapped it around my waist instead. His touch made me break out in goosebumps, although I wasn’t chilly. No, definitely not.
“Great,” the photographer said. “Enjoy your evening.”
Nick left his arm where it was as he steered