He turned toward me.
“Natalie, I’m trying not to be blindsided in front of a room full of people.”
I thought of the bronze doors.
Try not to embarrass me tonight.
These people are way above your level.
“You were blindsided because you never listened,” I said.
His mouth tightened.
“That’s unfair.”
I opened the folder again.
Inside were summaries, dates, correspondence, and the formal offer James had wanted me to review.
Fourteen months of work reduced to clean pages and signatures.
I did not need to wave them in Christopher’s face.
Their existence was enough.
James turned to the group.
“Why don’t we give Natalie and Christopher a minute?”
People dispersed with the practiced discretion of wealthy adults who absolutely intended to discuss everything later.
Within seconds, we were standing near the tall library windows with only James several yards away.
Christopher lowered his voice.
“You let me walk in here looking like an idiot.”
I almost laughed.
“You told me not to embarrass you before we even entered.”
“That has nothing to do with this.”
“It has everything to do with this.”
“I was trying to help you.”
“No.
You were managing me.”
He looked toward James and then back at me.
“You could have warned me.”
“About what? That they knew my name?”
His silence answered for him.
“You wanted me to warn you that I mattered in this room,” I said.
“That isn’t what I said.”
“It’s what you mean.”
Christopher ran a hand over his jaw.
For the first time that evening, his perfect social posture disappeared.
“I have spent years trying to get in front of Whitmore.”
“I know.”
“And you’ve had direct access to him for more than a year.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t think your husband should have known that?”
There it was again.
Access.
Not my work.
Not my judgment.
Not the fact that James trusted me.
Christopher was angry because he had discovered I possessed a door he wanted opened.
“If I had told you his name fourteen months ago,” I asked, “what would you have done?”
He hesitated.
I already knew.
He would have asked for an introduction.
Then another.
He would have wanted me to mention his firm, his ideas, his plans.
And eventually my relationship with James would have become another resource Christopher believed belonged to our marriage because it benefited him.
“You should want to help me,” he said.
“I did want to help you.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
