What a wild, wonderful turn her life had taken!
Joey finished up listing all Mikhail’s many honors, from places around the world. Bird smiled to herself. She looked forward to asking Mikhail for details about all those places. Then the lights dimmed, and the screen behind the podium lit up with a picture of Mikhail’s book.
A video began, close-ups of beautiful silk tassels with gorgeous objects attached. Bird’s interest sharpened as Mikhail’s recorded voice began talking about the history of the jade toggles that Chinese men had worn on their robes in ancient days. These were full of symbols—
“Bertie?”
Her nerves shot with sharp pain, then chilled to ice. She had not heard that voice in twenty-seven years, that incredulous, patronizing tone. But she instantly recognized it. An insight flashed through her mind. That was why she had begun hating hearing her name: it was his voice. Bartholomew had refused to call her Bird, convinced that it wasn’t a suitable nickname for the wife of a man in his position. The last time she’d heard that bitter Bertie was in divorce court.
“Bartholomew,” she whispered, all the old fear and uncertainty crowding her heart like smothering ghosts. “Wh-what are you doing here?”
“I teach here,” he said in that slow, fake-patient sarcastic tone he’d used whenever he thought she’d said something stupid. Which was often. “The question is, what are you doing here?”
Old habit nearly brought the hated I’m sorry to her lips, words that had prefaced every single utterance she made in those last terrible days before he served papers on her.
She had no reason to apologize.
She forced herself to take a breath. “I was invited.”
“You?” he said in that incredulous tone that had flayed her nerves to the bone.
Up on the podium, Mikhail seemed to turn her way. But he could not possibly see her in the dim room. This was something she had to deal with alone.
“By?” Bartholomew prompted. “Or is your plus one invisible?”
“I came with Mikhail Long,” she said.
“What?” Bartholomew stared.
Everything about him was unchanged, from his sarcasm to his appearance. He was still tall and fit in his Armani suit, his dark hair expertly cut. She was hyperconscious of the fact that she, who had never been good-looking, showed every one of those twenty-seven years.
But they had been good years.
She drew a slow breath, squaring her shoulders. They were about to become better years.
For she had fixed dinner for a dragon.
“How the hell did you get mixed up with him?” Then he hissed, “Was it that sad sack Joey Hu? Couldn’t find any better-looking arm-candy, and brought one of his head cases for a pity party approach?”
“I just met Joey Hu ten minutes ago,” she said, feeling her dignity crumbling beneath his vicious sarcasm.
Just then she noticed Mikhail’s husky voice in the video, warm and sure as he pronounced the Chinese name of a mythological creature. If she asked him, he’d tell her all about it...
Bird remembered then that she did not have to go home with Bartholomew. She never again had to endure a furious lecture listing everything she had said wrong, every awkward move she’d made at those hideous parties, and then a cold night in the bed as he slept with his back to her.
Just because he wants to belittle me, I don’t have let him make me little, she reminded herself.
She straightened her shoulders. “If you have nothing worthwhile to say, Bartholomew, please let me finish listening to the video.”
Bartholomew snapped an incredulous look her way.
Then she became aware of a strong presence at her shoulder. Mikhail murmured, “May I fetch you another drink, Bird?”
“I don’t need a drink,” she said. “But I do need fresh air.”
Mikhail took her arm.
On the video presentation, a photo of a white jade fox, laughing with a fan of tails curling overhead, came up. By the light it cast, Bird seemed to truly see Bartholomew for the very first time. Lines of sourness ran across his forehead, and the grooves beside his mouth accentuated his habitual dissatisfaction. Twenty-seven years did show in his face, and from the look of him, getting her loser, incompetent self out of his life had not been his ticket to happiness and the success he craved.