But as soon as the wedding was over, everyone started to funnel past the divider in the room to the open space beyond. The reception began immediately, and with everyone crowding around Nate, I couldn’t yell at him then, either. I had to play it cool.
Fortunately, I had enough experience working at Pierce Industries to know how to put on the charm, and I did so, greeting everyone that came up to us with a smile and a nod. Engaging in conversation with polite small talk. I was familiar with the standard topics of conversation among the elite. Nate seemed to be somewhat bored with that, but it was his job, so I understood. He was charming, nonetheless. I could tell that he liked talking to people, liked mingling with them when the conversations got real, and occasionally they did. One couple engaged him in a conversation about a recent vacation they’d taken to Tibet. Nate, it turned out, had once spent a couple weeks there climbing and buying antique Buddhist statues. Just listening to that was a fascinating fifteen minutes.
I was still mad, though.
And then, just when I thought we had a break in the swarm, just when I thought I’d be able to give Nate more than a scowl, we bumped into the one person I never wanted to see in a situation like this—my boss, Hudson Pierce.
“Patricia,” Hudson exclaimed, as surprised to see me as I was shocked to see him. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Are you a friend of the groom or the bride?”
“Hudson,” his wife nagged him. “Leave her alone. She’s off the clock. Her private life is her business. Not yours.”
Alayna gave me a tired grin. Likely she’d been up late with her infant twins. She was still in the phase where she always looked exhausted when I saw her. Poor woman. I remembered seeing that look on my mother’s face in photographs from when I was young, and then seeing it replicated on several of my sisters’ faces when their own babies were born.
“You look lovely, Trish,” she said, with moderate enthusiasm. “That color brings your eyes out.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Pierce.” I shook my head, realizing that calling her Mrs. Pierce was maybe a little too formal for the occasion. “Laney,” I said at the same time as she said, “Laney.”
Nate turned to me with a flute of champagne he’d just scavenged off of some waiter’s tray. “Here you go, babe.”
I felt my face turn fifty shades of red. Well, Nate Sinclair had just outed us to my boss.
And there wasn’t even an “us” to out!
Now not only was I mad, I was petrified.
“You’re here with Nathan?” Hudson remarked, his eyes darting carefully from me to his newest ad manager.
“Yes,” Nate said at the same time as I said, “No, we’re just...”
But what were we “just”?
There was nothing to say. There was no answer I could give, no excuse. “We came together, yes.”
“I didn’t realize you knew each other outside of the office,” Hudson said pointedly.
I searched my mental files to see if I could remember if there were any rules about dating people that walk through his doors, but I couldn’t remember that there were any. Those had just always been my rules. But even if they weren’t official policy, it still felt like the wrong answer to say that I was on a date with Nate. It felt like a conflict somehow.
And truth be told, I did know Nate from somewhere else. But I wasn’t about to admit where from.
“We—” I looked to Nate, searching for help.
Nate studied me, sensing the source of my dismay. “We met at the party of a mutual friend.” He saved the day. Thank God.
“So you’re dating,” Laney said, trying to make the moment celebratory but inadvertently making it weirder because I hadn’t had time to let him know we weren’t dating.
He was going to find out now. Sorry, Nate.
“I only came because Nate needed someone to accompany him. That’s all. Not for any other reason. I just… Just, you know. He needed a date. Because it’s his work thing. And he had to be here.” I sounded like an idiot. I’d never sounded like that in front of Hudson Pierce. My professionalism was a point of pride for me.
He probably thought I was drunk. Or lying. Or had something to hide. And only the last was true—but I wasn’t hiding anything that directly pertained to his business, so my secrets were my own to keep.
“And how are the babies?” I asked, wanting to change the subject as quickly as I could. “They sleep through the night yet? Is that a thing that they do at this age? All my nieces and nephews live on Long Island, and you know how it is with work and all… I feel like I mostly only see them on special occasions these days, so I never remember when the milestones happen...”
That sure sounded like a sincere interest in children, didn’t it? I was mentally face-palming myself.
“The babies are fantastic,” Alayna said, ignoring my flustered, incoherent babbling. “They’re probably too little still to sleep through the night, but we do have a nanny who helps us, and I’m not working right now. Soon, though. Though they’re four months old and that’s about when Mina slept through the night for the first time.”
Mina was their older daughter.
“She did?” Hudson asked. “It felt like it was a year before she was sleeping through the night.”
Laney rolled her eyes. “Men. They never remember things the way women do. Anyway, I’ll let you two enjoy yourselves. We’re about to get going. We just wanted to stop in and give our congratulations to the happy couple. But we’re both ready to be home. If I don’t nurse soon I’m going to burst.”
TMI, I thought. And I was the kind of woman who pretty much thought nothing was too much information. But anything even remotely related to the mysteries of babydom gave me the shudders. Women always assumed other women were waiting for one eventually. I supposed most of them were. That had just never been on my list of dreams. Did men deal with the assumption that the ultimate career was child-rearing? I doubted it.
But I was grateful for her smoothing over the awkwardness of her husband and I seeing each other in a social setting, and also that they were leaving. At least one pair of us got to.
“Good seeing you both. See you Monday…Hudson.” Ew. It was awkward addressing him with his first name, even though I referred to him as such behind his back all the time. Reason number four thousand and three why I liked keeping business and pleasure separate—it was easier to keep the names straight.
When they were gone and out of sight, Nate finally pulled me aside so that we could have a conversation, just the two of us.
“I sense you are maybe not so happy with me. Or not so happy about something?”
“You brought me to a wedding,” I hissed, perhaps a little too loudly, because a guest not too far away turned and sneered at me.
He arched a brow in question.