| |
The dress she’d laid out was a custom, one-of-a-kind order. Thanks to her family’s good fortune, back when her great-great-grandmother had been a Barratt and started several property developments under the guise of a male business name, Fin had more money than she would ever know what to do with.
Nights like tonight were her obligations to her ancestress’s legacy. It wasn’t W4HAV that Mel was pushing tonight, but another charity based out of St. Louis that was designed to help victims of human trafficking.
She shivered. The things people chose to do to each other sickened and disheartened her on so many levels.
Virat was early. By a few minutes. She had already finished prepping her hair and makeup and when the butler, who was far too old to be doing the job but still insisted since he’d been around since she’d been in diapers, showed him in she almost forgot to breathe.
Viril Virat suited him.
The black of his tux made his shoulders look even broader. He’d trimmed up the beard a little and had his hair combed in a style he didn’t normally favor.
He looked...delectable. Perfect.
Fin felt like a tongue-tied idiot. “You’re here.”
He held something out to her, and she took it. It was a daisy. Where had he found a daisy so quickly? “Thank you.”
It had been a long time since anyone had given her anything like this simple flower.
Other than the cliched white rose left on her car this afternoon, anyway.
“Shall we? Are we headed to the Barratt or to the—how does Jillian put it?—the Fortress of Ostentatiousness?”
“The fortress.”
“Then, shall we? I have an umbrella by your door.”