Page 104 of How to Blow It with a Billionaire

“Ellery invited me. So, of course, I came.” Steyne smiled, a perfectly normal smile, easy, affectionate, and urbane. “It’s been a welcome opportunity to renew acquaintance with your family. I was always very fond of you.”

Maybe I was imagining things but Caspian seemed…flustered somehow. “I’m surprised she still remembers you. It’s been a long time.”

“She’s very loyal. She feels both friendship and betrayal perhaps too keenly. But”—another smile—“who would know that better than you? You are her brother, after all.”

A terrible shudder ran through Caspian’s whole body. I wasn’t sure it was visible but, God, I felt it. Something was very wrong here and I didn’t know what it was or how to help. All I could do was hold Caspian’s hand and hope it could be enough when it so clearly wasn’t. His silence had taken on this odd, almost defeated quality. I’d never known him lost for words before and it…frightened me.

And that was when Nathaniel turned up.

I wasn’t sure how I recognized him because I’d never seen him in the flesh before but somehow—even with the top half of his face covered by a golden mask—I did. Maybe it was the rich copper of his hair or the expensive whiskey sheen of his eyes. The kissable lips. The sculpted jaw of a curse-breaking fairy tale hero.

Or maybe it was the familiar, possessive way he put his arm around Caspian’s waist and the way Caspian didn’t flinch or pull away. I’d seen them standing like that in photographs. Friends. Lovers. Partners. Everything I still wasn’t quite.

“Oh here you are,” he said. “Can you come a moment, my prince? There’s been a cock up with the caterers.”

It was a shock to hear him speak. For Nathaniel to suddenly become real to me in a way he never had before, when he’d been safely contained in pictures and in the past. In Caspian’s assurances that it was me he wanted. Me who understood him. Me who made him happy. But it was hard to remember that when Nathaniel touched him so easily. Called him by a name that belonged to the life they’d shared.

Caspian glanced at him, his eyes too bright and desperate. “Of course.” He pulled his hand from mine, murmured something vague about being back soon, excused himself politely to the others, and then disappeared into the sea of formalwear with Nathaniel.

Lancaster Steyne watched him go. I had no idea what he was thinking.

Or, for that matter, what had happened. Only that I felt horribly dislocated. Caspian had brought me with him into this world—his world—and hadn’t even thought to prepare me for it. He’d just let me blunder into things, clueless and confused and blind. Which would have been, well, not fine but typical. I’d have coped.

Except he’d needed me.

He’d needed me, but he hadn’t given me the power to help him. He hadn’t trusted me enough. Or believed I could.

And so it had fallen to Nathaniel.

I couldn’t resent him for rescuing Caspian. But it hurt that it had been someone else. That I hadn’t been able to protect my man.

I suddenly realized Lancaster was departing as well—apparently he’d seen a viscount he needed to talk to. And then everyone was gone and I was alone with Mrs. Hart.

Chapter 26

I mustered a pathetic smile. Tried to think of something to say to her.

Thankfully she was on the case, smiling at me as if this wasn’t potentially excruciating. “It’s so lovely to meet you at last. Caspian has told me almost nothing about you.”

I should have been all out of hurt for one evening. But, apparently, I wasn’t. Though, this little sting was at least familiar. An old friend. “I guess he wouldn’t have,” I managed, at last.

“I raised two extraordinarily secretive children. Caspian, in particular, holds the people he values most very close indeed.”

Oh God. My heart gave a desperate a lurch. I wanted to believe her. To take the reassurance she was offering me. Take it, grab it. Squeeze it like a small child with a teddy bear. “R-really?”

“Yes. And I can see why he likes you.” Her eyes had more green in them than Ellery’s did but the shape was similar. I couldn’t, however, imagine Ellery looking at anyone with such gentleness.

“I was worried you’d be mad at me for messing up your charity auction.”

She tilted her head quizzically. “How so?”

“Well, I accidentally made Caspian buy all the art.”

“Oh, I did wonder about that. It was a rather fine collection, but I was somewhat startled by his enthusiasm for it. Did you like the pieces?”

Great. Now I’d made her think he’d bought an exhibition for me as some kind of passionate love gesture. “I didn’t get much chance to look around. We hadn’t seen each other for a while, but I didn’t want to get in the way of a good cause.”

“So he assuaged your concerns?”

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