“Eleanor, I’m seventy years old. I’ve built an empire, traveled the world, accomplished everything I set out to achieve. But there’s never been a single day when I didn’t wonder what my life would have been like if your mother hadn’t interfered, if I’d been able to find you before you married Robert.”
“We can’t go backward,” I said quietly, though my heart was pounding.
“No,” he agreed. “But we’re better now than we were then. We know what we want, what really matters and what’s just noise. We’ve lived enough life to recognize real value when we see it.”
My phone buzzed insistently in my purse. I checked it to find seventeen missed calls from Brandon and a series of increasingly frantic texts.
“Mom, call me immediately. Do you have any idea who Theodore Blackwood is? What is your relationship with him? Vivien’s father is desperate to meet with him. Can you arrange an introduction? Please call me back.”
I showed the messages to Theo, who read them with obvious satisfaction.
“Interesting how quickly their interest developed,” he observed drily.
My phone buzzed again, this time with a call from Vivien herself. Against my better judgment, I answered.
“Eleanor!” Her voice had transformed completely from this morning’s cold dismissal to warm enthusiasm. “I hope you’re having a pleasant evening. Brandon and I were wondering if you might be free for dinner tomorrow night. We’d love to have a proper conversation with you and Mr. Blackwood. We feel terrible about the seating confusion today.”
The transformation was stunning in its shamelessness. Twelve hours ago, I’d been an embarrassment. Now I was suddenly worth courting because of who I was sitting with.
“I’ll have to check with Theodore,” I said, savoring every syllable of that sentence, of having someone whose schedule mattered more than my perpetual availability.
The frustration in Vivien’s silence was palpable. “Of course. Please do let us know at your earliest convenience.”
I hung up and looked at Theo, who was grinning like he’d just won something valuable.
“Well,” I said, raising my wineglass in a toast. “This day certainly didn’t go as I expected when I woke up this morning.”
“The best days never do,” he replied, touching his glass to mine. “Now, shall we discuss what happens next?”
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