The white-haired man gives her a warm smile in return. “Evening, Miss Summer. Try not to cause too much trouble tonight, will you?”

I snicker under my breath.

“Thomas has worked here for more than twenty years,” she explains as we enter another hallway that holds another elevator bank.

“Really?”

She nods. “I was a baby when he got hired, so he pretty much watched me grow up.”

“Ah. So he’s had a front-row seat to all your troublemaking.”

“Oh yeah. My Greenwich friends and I used to sneak into the city and come to the hotel, and I thought I was bribing him to keep quiet by slipping him hundreds.” She makes an outraged face. “And then I found out he was double-crossing me.”

I snort. “Ratted you out to the parents, huh?”

“Every single time. But they never said a word. I didn’t realize they knew about it until years later, after I left for college. My parents are really cool,” she admits. “If I wanted to cut a day of school to go shopping with my friends, they didn’t mind as long as I was safe and didn’t make it a habit.”

The elevator shows up, and we walk inside. Summer presses the button for the “Heather Ballroom.” There are four other ballrooms on the list, all named after flowers. The Lily, the Rose, the Heather, and the Dahlia. Fancy.

The doors ding open, and we’re met by a crescendo of noise—a symphony of glass clinking, high heels clacking on hardwood, the hum of conversation, laughter.

Summer links her arm through mine as we approach the massive arched doorway of the ballroom. Beyond it, I see elegantly dressed people milling around in an elegantly decorated room. The stage is set up for a live band, but they’re not playing at the moment. Round tables with pristine tablecloths and ornate centerpieces are scattered on either side of the shiny dance floor. I don’t see anyone eating actual meals, but the waiters thread their way through the crowd carrying trays of hors d’oeuvres.

This totally isn’t my scene. A sea of gowns and tuxedos swells before me, fingers and earlobes and wrists sparkling and gleaming like the front window of a lighting store. And I thought Summer’s diamond hairclip was flashy. I gape as I spot a middle-aged woman wearing ruby earrings that are so enormous, her earlobes are actually stretching due to their heft.

“Is that him?” Summer whispers in my ear.

“Yup.” I’m not surprised that she’s picked Kamal out of the crowd. Despite his small stature, he’s got a big personality.

He holds court across the room near the largest of the three bars in the ballroom. Wild hand gestures and animated facial expressions accompany whatever long-winded anecdote he’s regaling his audience with.

We stand there watching as his half-dozen admirers all burst into laughter. “Must be a great story,” she remarks. “Or it’s boring as fuck, and they’re just sucking up to him because he’s a gazilliotrillionaire.”

I laugh. My girl has a way with words. Especially ones she makes up. “Could go either way.”

“Well, let’s say hello. He’s the reason you’re here, right?”

“Right.”

Anxiety tickles my stomach as we approach the bar. The second he notices me, Kamal breaks off midsentence, his expression lighting up. He slaps the arm of the old dude beside him and says, “Gonna have to excuse me, brother. My guest has arrived.” He disengages from the group and strides toward me. “You made it!”

“Thanks again for inviting—”

He’s still talking, as he always does. “Was worried about you, man! Everyone else got here before the doors were even open, saw them lurking in the lobby like a bunch of creeps, but hey, better early than late, huh?” There’s a bite to his last statement.

“You can blame me for our tardiness,” Summer says sheepishly. “I held us up.”

Kamal does a double take, as if he’s suddenly realized I’m not alone. He scrutinizes Summer from head to toe, and there’s nothing subtle about the way he does it. His eyes linger on her cleavage. They linger even longer on the diamonds in her hair.

“And who might you be?” he finally asks.

“I’m Summer.” She extends one delicate hand. “Colin’s girlfriend.”

Kamal’s eyebrows soar. He takes her hand, but rather than shake it, he brings it to his lips and kisses her knuckles. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Her smile looks forced. “Likewise.”

He releases her hand and turns to address me. “You never mentioned you had a girlfriend.”

I shrug awkwardly. “Well. Yeah. It didn’t exactly come up in the interview.”

“No reason why it should have,” Summer says lightly. “Job interviews are about the candidate’s résumé, not their personal life. Right?”

“Right,” Kamal echoes. Once again, his tone has a bite to it. And his expression is darkening by the second.

I can’t figure out the source of his displeasure, but the longer he looks at Summer, the more his demeanor changes. I swear I see the corner of his mouth curl in a slight sneer. I guess the source is Summer? But I couldn’t tell you why.

“Is it just me, or is this really uncomfortable?” Summer hisses in my ear an hour later. She’d dragged me onto the dance floor and looped her arms around my neck, leaving me no choice but to rest my hands on her hips and pretend I know how to dance.

I understand her motivation, though—it was the only way to unglue ourselves from Kamal’s side. He hasn’t let us out of his sight since we arrived. That’s not to say he hasn’t been mingling. He has, only he’s been dragging me and Summer along with him to every conversation. The other job hopefuls trail behind us like baby ducklings, and I feel bad for them because he isn’t paying them a lick of attention. He seems utterly fascinated by Summer, yet at the same time I sense animosity rippling beneath the surface.

“It’s not just you. He’s acting strange.”

“No, he’s acting like a dick.” She bites her lip. “I feel like he’s judging us. I can’t really explain it…” She trails off.

I know precisely what she means. I’ve felt it too.

The song ends before I’m ready, and panic jolts through me when the bluesy lead singer announces they’re taking a ten-minute break. Summer laces her fingers through mine as we walk to the edge of the dance floor.

“Don’t hate me,” she says, “but…I really have to pee.”

I grip her hand. “Nope. You can’t abandon me here with these people.”

She giggles. “You say the word ‘people’ like it’s a disease.”

“People are a disease,” I grumble.

“You can survive without me for five minutes.” She kisses my cheek and then rubs her index finger over it, I suspect to wipe off the lipstick stain she left. “I’ll be right back. Promise.”

I watch in defeat as she saunters off. At the bar, I order a Sam Adams and a very efficient bartender in a white shirt and black tie hands me a bottle. “Thanks,” I tell her.

I’ve barely taken a sip before Kamal appears. I’m surprised he didn’t leech on to me the moment Summer and I stepped off the dance floor.