“Anywhere with you,” Stan said, his smile soft and loving. “But honestly, I think Kinga’s idea of Lombardi pizza and New York cheesecake is a far better idea than the bite-size concoctions Geraint serves.”
“Monster,” Ava told him.
Griff’s fingers briefly hooked with Kinga’s as he walked past her. “We’ll catch up later,” he told her.
Kinga nodded and crossed her arms over her jacket, wondering what the hell had just happened.
They weren’t just missing something about Griff O’Hare. Kinga suspected they all might be missingeverything.
That afternoon, Kinga attended a hastily convened meeting between the top management of Ryder International in Callum’s private boardroom. They touched on quarterly returns and Ryder’s expansion into China and Japan, but most of the attention—Callum’s especially—was on the upcoming ball and the other celebrations to mark their hundred years in business.
Kinga was particularly excited about Tinsley’s new project: a specialty cocktail competition. Ryder International bars, in the US and overseas, employed specialty mixologists to serve both mundane and unusual cocktails to their guests. The mixologists could enter either as a team or on their own, but they needed to create four new cocktails inspired by four different events over the last one hundred years. There would be regional, national and international winners.
At Tinsley and Kinga’s request, Callum increased their centenary celebration budget by another twenty million, which was both surprising and helpful. Possibly because Griff’s fee to sing at the ball was astronomical. Nobody else had a problem with Griff or was even remotely worried about him or his antics spoiling their launch event.
Even her anxiety about his performance was rapidly receding...
Now, thinking back on her intense, fast-paced day, Kinga sat on her sofa in her apartment and told herself, yet again, that it didn’t matter whether her perception of Griff was changing. The world considered him a vain, self-absorbed bad boy and that was the image she had to work with.
And despite having more confidence in Griff, there was no getting away from the fact that he had failed to show up for performances a few times before.
What if he did that again?
She wanted to believe him when he said he wouldn’t let her down but how could she? The best predictor of future behavior was past behavior, so...
She had to protect her event. She could not allow herself to become complacent.
And that meant having a backup plan.
If she had made a backup plan to get Jas home, her friend would still be alive.
Pushing away those dark thoughts, Kinga ran through a list of artists and entertainers she used regularly. As soon as she got Griff’s set list, she’d hire a vocalist to be his understudy, ready to step in if anything went wrong.
And she wasn’t just overplanning when it came to Griff; she had contingency plans foreverything. She was splitting the catering between three different companies—so that if one had an issue, the others could step in. She’d hired more bartenders than necessary to ensure great service, knowing that if a few didn’t show up to work, the guests’ enjoyment wouldn’t be compromised. She had a second florist on standby and, on a personal level, she had three ball gowns in case she spilled wine or food on herself.
This ball was being touted as one of the entertainment events of the decade—she would not allow anything or anyone to spoil it.
Kinga heard the beep of a message landing on her phone and quickly picked it up, relieved that it wasn’t a voice mail from Mick again. He’d briefly and insincerely apologized for ambushing her in the parking garage and asked her, again, to intervene on his behalf with Senator Seth Garwood. He’d also, interestingly, asked whether she planned on disclosing his lack of control to the press—she presumed he meant revealing how he’d punched her. He reminded her that if she did, it would be a “he said, she said” situation.
No, she was keeping quiet about that. She didn’t need any interest from the media that wasn’t directly related to the ball. Besides, she’d never told anyone about Mick’s lack of control. Tinsley and her parents would be hurt and furious if they found out.
No, no good would come of saying anything. But Mick didn’t need to know that.
Other news of the day was that Callum still hadn’t received the results of their family’s DNA tests, and he was not happy. Her blue-blooded grandfather was obsessed with the Ryder-White family tree and their reputation as one of the state’s first families. Kinga knew he was itching to discover other links to some of the area’s, and America’s, founding families.
Her father and mother, it had to be noted, were also surprisingly invested in the outcome. Why did they suddenly seem to care about DNA tests and who was related to whom?
God, she didn’t know if she could cope if they started banging on about blood and the importance of the family tree. Callum’s obsession with legacy was more than enough. Neither she nor Tins cared whether Mr. X arrived during the second or third settlement of the area, or whose daughter married whose son. It was bloody ages ago, and her grandfather’s obsession with the Ryder-White line, when they had so much to achieve, was just silly, in her opinion.
She was busier than most of her family, and both Mick Pritchard and Griff O’Hare were giving her indigestion for wildly different reasons.
Kinga scowled. Griff O’Hare was an enigma and she wasn’t fond of puzzles. She liked her men straightforward and, well, let’s be frank, a little pliable. Beta men were a fire suit, a measure of protection, because she knew she’d never fall in love with a man she could boss around.
She didn’t like change or risk or danger, and Griff O’Hare, damn him, was all three wrapped up in one luscious package.
He was a man whose kisses set her soul on fire and who made her feel out of control.
After what happened with Jas, control was paramount. Kinga would never risk loving and losing someone again.