lips. If I was going to make an entrance, I might as well do it. And if the stubborn man insisted on being here this weekend, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. Maybe I should…but I was starting to learn that when it came to Matthew, I had very little control.
By the time I finally drew up the courage to walk out to the patio and pool, a large party had assembled. Eric’s guests of honor weren’t due until tomorrow, but everyone else was well known to me: neighbors, extended family members, and society acquaintances, all likely summoned by Mother, who was sitting on one of the loungers at the far end, presiding over the party like Cleopatra. It all looked very…normal.
The staff wove in and out of the crowd with trays of canapes while Marcus, Mother’s butler, mixed drinks under a large umbrella. I recognized several neighbors and their children splashing around the large kidney-shaped pool along with Olivia while a few board members cornered Eric near the lawn. Jane, with her blue-streaked hair standing out in a crowd of polite neutrals, sat on one of the lawn chairs making conversation with a few distant cousins. She brightened and waved when she caught sight of me, but I could barely respond when I spotted him.
Matthew sat on a lounge chair next to my mother, each of them nursing what looked like Marcus’s famous gin and tonic. Like me, Matthew had changed into more appropriate poolside clothing. But as much as I missed his shirt sleeves and tailored trousers, I couldn’t deny that he still made the simple black shorts and short-sleeved button-down work well, particularly with the tawny, rigid lines of his stomach flexing under the open shirt front, the silver cross and saint’s medallion on his chest gleaming in the sun. Add the vintage browline sunglasses and straw fedora, and he looked good enough to eat.
Not for the first time, I wondered how a man like him could exist in the twenty-first century.
He opened his mouth and laughed at something my mother said, his teeth shining white from across the lawn. Mother tittered into her drink and tossed a hand into the air, gesticulating a little too much. I rolled my eyes. She was a terrible flirt—always had been, much to Grandmother’s disapproval.
For a moment, I considered turning back. It wasn’t too late. No one else would notice me, and Jane certainly wouldn’t say anything.
“Nina!”
Well, I could have turned back.
I turned to find Edith Stacy, one of my mother’s oldest friends, winding her way around the pool to give me a kiss. Just beyond her, Matthew turned at the sound of my name, and started when he found me. His mouth dropped open, and his glasses slid down his nose so that his deep green eyes betrayed the expression of pure lust—and yes, love too—as they swept over me.
I swallowed and stood a little taller, thankful that the large shades I’d popped on before coming down were firmly in place. Who knew what kind of emotions were reflecting back at him?
“Come join us,” Edith said, taking my arm and guiding me around the pool before I could answer. “Your mother has been asking about you for the last hour. We’ve all been dying to say hello.”
I was summarily deposited on the lounger beside Matthew, who shifted uncomfortably as our thighs touched.
Mother sat up in her own chair. “Edith, be a darling and ask one of the staff for an umbrella out here, will you? We’re positively roasting.”
Edith, acting more like a handmaid than an equal friend, immediately darted off at the command. I barely masked a snort. It hadn’t taken my mother long to adjust to her self-appointed role of queen bee of the family.
“Well, look at us,” she said, tipping her enormous sunglasses down her long de Vries nose to look me over. “Putting on quite the show, I see.”
“Mother,” I said. “I just changed. I promised Olivia I would go for a swim.”
My mother’s gaze wasn’t anything as penetrating as Celeste de Vries’s, but Violet de Vries still had at least some genetic ability to look through a person like they were made of glass. Everyone in my family was like that.
It took everything I had not to grab at the sides of my cover-up.
“I see,” she said as she eyed me up and down. “Well, I daresay you can’t now. They’re animals in there. Just look at that. Olivia positively tore Mr.