Page 52 of Tuxedos and Tinsel

“Good. Because I don’t want to have this talk again.” Folding her arms, she stood and maintained steady eye contact until the two women moved away. As she was leaving, she swore she heard the wordShrewsanmuttered under one of their breaths. Lunchtime would be quite the gossip session, she imagined.

Let them complain. She was a rock star.

A giant illuminated tunnel greeted the car as they pulled through the main gate at Kew Gardens a few nights later. As they passed beneath, Lewis heard Susan gasp. “Oh, my! This is amazing.” Leaning forward in her seat, she looked upward. “It looks like something out of that sci-fi TV show where they enter the wormhole.”

“It does at that,” Lewis agreed. Hundreds of overhead lights twinkled all around them like stars. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

She looked across the seat at him, the lights reflecting in her eyes. “What?”

“If the car starts shaking uncontrollably, abandon ship.”

“Not in this dress I’m not.”

If it were another woman, he would have started pretending to hit turbulence and sayingshe’s breaking upin his best Scottish accent. She would have laughed and thought him rakishly charming, even if she were too young to get the reference.

Tonight however, he had a difficult enough time making any lame jokes. He was wound tighter than a drum. For Susan, this was just another event, but for him, it would be the first time he’d attended a black-tie event with the intention of staying and mingling. No signing autographs and blowing off early with a bootlegged bottle of whatever he could grab.

Susan’s diamond earrings sparkled as she angled her head to look upward again. “I think they strung Christmas lights over the entire driveway,” she said. “It looks absolutely magical.”

It certainly did. Lewis had never been to Kew Gardens—nature walks weren’t really his thing—but the Christmas lights were famous. “The flyer that came with the tickets did say we would be treated to a fantastical holiday light show. Guess they weren’t kidding.”

“What charity are we supporting anyway? I never thought to ask. Be embarrassing if I couldn’t remember the names of my boyfriend’s causes.”

Lewis tensed. No one had ever referred to him by that word before. It unsettled him. More nerves, he decided. Susan was only joking.

“You shouldn’t have too much trouble remembering,” he told her. “It’s for the Sports Trust for Children.”

“Isn’t that one of the prince’s charities? You don’t believe in doing things small scale do you?”

“Wish I could tell you this was part of some grand strategy, but the truth is, I’ve been donating to the Sports Trust for years. Usually I give the tickets to this event away though.”

“Why?”

“I’m not much for brie and crackers,” he replied.

“No, I mean why the Sports Trust? In case someone asks,” she said.

“Do people ask those sorts of questions?” Seeing how everyone in the room was a supporter, he would assume they didn’t care.

“Never hurts to be prepared. What if I run into a reporter or some person on the board of directors? They might wonder why you all of a sudden decided to start attending boring cocktail parties. If we’re smart, we’ll have our stories straight. I don’t want to scramble the way I had to with Thomas and Linus.”

“You handled that situation well enough.” Admirably actually. “But I see your point. In this case, you can tell people the truth. Football kept me off the streets. In fact, if it weren’t for sports, God knows where I’d be.” He wouldn’t be attending charity cocktail parties, that’s for sure. More likely he’d be working some dead-end job and trying to stay out of trouble. “Sports gives kids a way to escape and be kids, if only for a few hours. If my money can help a kid out of trouble then that’s a good thing, right?”

“A very good thing,” she replied.

He wasn’t sure why, but her smile made him feel like he’d aced a test. It mattered that she knew he was capable of sincerity.

In keeping with the season, the Victorian greenhouse hosting the event was illuminated with soft pink-and-blue spotlights, giving the building a purple glow. Lewis directed their driver to pull into the valet line to let them out.

“I haven’t been here since my grandfather took us as children,” Susan said as they stepped onto the sidewalk.

“Puts you one up on me,” Lewis replied. “I’ve never been.”

He looked around at the rolling lawns. They looked lush and manicured, despite it being winter. The building itself was an astounding stretch of glass and metal, its doorway guarded by a set of robed statues. “Lot fancier than I expected,” he said.

“I always assumed my memory of this place was distorted by childhood, but maybe not. If I remember correctly, this particular building was filled with all sorts of rare plants.”

They followed the other guests up the granite steps to the entrance where they were welcomed by a pair of giant poinsettia towers and a whoosh of warm, moist air. It was like stepping into a giant tropical forest. Plants of every shape and size surrounded them.