This is a little vignette in the UNSETIC Files universe set in the Christmas season. It was originally written as a gift for one of my writing partners. Enjoy!
Charity Gala
“Who is that?”
Wes Chandler glanced down toward the far end of the room, toward the red-haired figure dressed in wine-colored taffeta being greeted by the gala’s hosts. He lifted his glass to take a sip of champagne, smiling faintly. “Well, well,” he murmured. “Look at that, Pretty Lady.” He glanced toward his friend and grinned. “You don’t recognize her?”
Robert Ainsley frowned. “Apparently not, Wes, otherwise I wouldn’t be asking who she is.”
Wes grinned a little wider. “That’s Brigid.”
Robert fell silent, staring. His voice softened, grew a little distant. “Are you sure that’s her?”
“I knew she was invited, but I didn’t think she was going to come. She was complaining about not having an escort the other night.” Wes snagged a fresh glass of champagne from a passing server and watched as Brigid chatted with the lord and lady of the house, Wil Scarborough and Tasha Mancini. “Glad she turned up, though.”
“Why’s that?”
Wes smiled crookedly. “Well, you wouldn’t want tonight to be boring, would you?”
• • • •
“Commander, I’m glad that you were able to make it,” Tasha said as she shook her hand. Brigid managed to smile and unconsciously adjusted her hair. The Dickens-era dress code had been a challenge, especially for her hair, but between her daughter and her friend AJ, she wasn’t a complete disaster.
“I’m glad to be here,” Brigid said, surprising herself. She’d lamented coming, looked for all kinds of ways to get out of the affair. Now that she was here, though, it felt like less a chore and more a pleasure. Maybe her friends were right—she didn’t get out enough. “Though the theme was a bit…challenging.”
“You’ve done better than a lot of our guests,” Tasha’s husband, Wil, said with a smile. The retired FBI agent shook her hand next, looking like he’d just stepped from the pages of A Christmas Carol.
“But not better than the two of you, obviously.” Brigid smoothed the taffeta of her skirt with a gloved hand and shook her head. “You look amazing. The house looks amazing. Thank you for inviting me.”
“There was no way we’d let you escape invitation,” Tasha said. “Not with the way Ryce talks about you.”
She laughed. “So I have Detective Marshall to thank for this. That’s good to know.” That shouldn’t surprise me at all. I knew they were friends. “Will she be here tonight?”
Tasha glanced sidelong to Wil, who shrugged slightly. “She said that she would try, but she said something about the kids and a babysitter, so I don’t know if we’ll be seeing her tonight or not.”
The joys of parenthood. Brigid glanced back over her shoulder, then back to her hosts and smiled ruefully. “You have other guests I’m keeping you from. Thank you for inviting me.”
“It’s absolutely our pleasure,” Tasha assured her. “Enjoy yourself. One of us will catch up with you later about the thing at the club.”
“Sure. I’ll definitely try,” Brigid said, then slipped away from the pair and into the marble-tiled space beyond. Her gaze scythed across the population of guests, seeking a familiar face—any familiar face. Jim had told her that he and Bryn had intended to be here, and she knew that there had to be others that she’d know at the charity gala.
The stately home on Long Island was decked out tonight in Victorian splendor, evoking the feeling of an English manor wearing its holiday splendor from more than a century past. There was a part of Brigid that suspected that there had been a touch of magic at work that evening, but without conferring with Bryn or another colleague, she couldn’t be certain. There were dozens of people milling around, wandering the massive ballroom with a view of the water behind the house and the glittering lights of the city beyond. There were more people here than Brigid had honestly expected, despite the fact that she knew that their hosts were well-respected philanthropists. She began to quietly despair ever finding a familiar face. Still new to New York, she didn’t often move in these sorts of circles.
I should have sent Tim and Kate. They wouldn’t have been so out of place here.
A flicker of movement caught her eye and she tracked it, a soft sigh of relief escaping her as she spotted Wes Chandler standing in the shadows of a balcony with a glass of champagne in hand, chatting with the slender man next to him. The relief evaporated a split second later, her heart giving a stutter-step as she recognized Wes’s companion.
He didn’t tell me about that.
In a heartbeat, she wished that she had any of the gifts her friends had—that she could vanish from sight, that she could make people forget that they’d seen her, but it was too late for any of it anyway. Wes had already spotted her. Her heart rose into her throat as she cleared the last few dozen steps to reach them, joining them in the shelter of the shadows.
“You were looking a little lost there, Pretty Lady,” Wes said as she joined them. “I haven’t seen Jim yet.”
A quiet laugh wrested its way free of her throat. “Was it that obvious?”
“Well, I could tell you were looking for someone, and he’s really the only one that fits the demographic since you said the other night that Tim wasn’t coming.”
“I forgot that I told you that,” Brigid said, even though she hadn’t forgotten at all. They were words to cover up building nerves—words she could say to Wes so she could avoid saying anything to Robert, so she could avoid even looking at him. She didn’t know why she’d assumed that he wasn’t around anymore, that she wouldn’t see him again. Wes had talked about him a few times at the club, so she’d been fully aware that he was still there. “He and Kate had other plans.”
“Their loss, I suppose,” Wes said, taking a sip of his champagne and glancing out toward the ballroom floor. “It’s quite the crowd tonight, all things considered. I hope they raise as much as they’re hoping to. What was the charity tonight?”
Robert heaved a quiet sigh and Brigid’s gaze flicked in his direction, though only for an instant. His aggrieved expression eloquently stated that Wes knew damned well what the charity was tonight and shame on him if he’d forgotten. “The youth shelter down the street from St. Malachy’s,” Robert said. “The one that Orestes volunteers at.”
“Right. I already wrote a check, didn’t I?”
“Wire transfer.”
Wes nodded, turning back to Brigid with a smile. “You remember Robert, don’t you?”
Her mouth dried out too much for her to speak. Brigid just nodded. She could feel Robert’s gaze settle on her for a moment, but when her gaze flicked toward his he looked away, studying something outside the windows.
She cleared her throat, looking back at Wes again. “I do. I didn’t realize you still worked closely together.”
“The arrangement has evolved a bit since Chicago,” Wes admitted. “But yes, we do.”
“That’s good,” she said lamely, then glanced away. “I should go find some champagne.”
Wes waved a hand. “I’ll do it. I could use some more myself. I’ll be back.”
He’d slipped around her skirts before she could stop him, leaving her alone with Robert, standing in those shadows below the balcony. Brigid risked a glance at the taller man, the one who was carefully avoiding her gaze as deftly as she’d been trying to avoid his.
Was it actually possible that this was just as awkward for him as it was for her?
Brigid glanced away and exhaled a silent sigh. His voice made her jump, breaking the silence that had stretched between them for what felt like an eternity.
“No longer in Chicago, then.”
“No,” Brigid said carefully. “No, Jim needed me here as bureau chief.”
“Recent move?”
She shook her head, the pearl teardrops on her earrings bouncing with the motion. “No. It’s been a while. More than a year.”
“Oh.” Was that regret in his voice? “It seems like the move suits you. You look…”
Brigid glanced toward him as his voice trailed away. He was staring and it made her throat grow tight. How long had it been since anyone looked at her quite like that?
Forever. Too long.
“You look good,” she whispered, reaching a hand toward his temple and the gray that had just started to show there. “Even if Wes has been causing this.”
He instinctively raised an arm with the intention of stopping her touch, stopping short when he saw the gloves she wore to complete the evening’s attire. “You’re wearing gloves,” he said softly.
Brigid nodded, her hand dropping back to her side. “My daughter’s idea.”
Robert gave a firm nod of his own. “They must be—they must be getting close to high school. Your children.”
“In the fall,” she said. She stared at him, watched the play of light and shadow against his cheekbones, watched the things she could see lurking in his eyes even as he looked away, avoiding her gaze again just like she’d avoided his. She swallowed hard. “Robert.”
He startled slightly, looking at her again. Was it her imagination, or did she see a surge of something in his gaze, something that was there one second and gone the next, something she couldn’t quite name but knew she’d felt before.
“I regret what it did to you,” she said slowly, “but I don’t for one second regret kissing you that night.”
His lips parted as if he might speak, his gaze softening as he stared at her. For the space of a few heartbeats, it was like they were standing on that rooftop again the night they’d parted in Chicago, the night he and the young Hunters that were his charge left the city in her hands. She recalled the pain that had washed over her that night as she’d realized what her touch had done after she’d kissed him, recalled the rasp of his voice telling her to go, just go, when he’d finally been able to speak again.
She’d tried to convince herself that it was better forgotten—that he was better forgotten.
“I don’t regret any of it,” he whispered. His gloved fingers touched her face. The knots in her belly started to loosen even as her throat constricted with emotions she didn’t dare name.
Robert looked away a few seconds later, toward ballroom, toward the cleared space where a small string ensemble was set up, the strands of their tune barely reaching the pair where they stood. There were dancers on the floor there, working their way through the steps of a quadrille. The Hunter watched them for a few moments before he looked back to her.
“Would you like to dance?”
Unable to speak around the tightness in her throat, she nodded. Robert smiled and took her hand, drawing her out of the shadows and toward the dance floor. She thought she caught a fleeting glimpse of Jim McCullough and Bryn Knight standing with Wes.
She could have sworn she saw the General of New York smile.
Then they were on the floor and Robert had let go of her hand to bow to her. She dropped into a curtsey, feeling intensely awkward, like she was some sort of curiosity in someone’s menagerie.
“I haven’t done this in a long time,” she said as she straightened and Robert took her hand, settling the other on her waist. “I’ll try not to step on you.”
“Just follow my lead,” he murmured. She put her other hand on his shoulder as the ensemble began a waltz. “We’ll be fine.”
Then they were dancing and her heart began to beat a little faster, fluttering like a caged bird. She watched his face, the faint smile that curved his lips, the eyes that moved constantly as they crossed the floor, deftly avoiding contact with the other couples that crowded the space set aside for dance.
This isn’t happening.
But it was. She closed her eyes. All she could hear was the music. Her nostrils were full of his cologne.
No one else existed—not Wes, not Bryn and Jim, not the other couples on the floor, not the ghost of Roswell Darbin-Kincaid that always lurked at the edge of her thoughts—except for when she was with him. It was just them, the music, and the dance.
She hated that the moment would end. She dreaded the end of the song.
Robert’s fingers tightened around hers and she exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, opening her eyes to look up and meet his gaze.
“Stop thinking,” he whispered. “Just dance, Brigid. Dance with me.”
A smile curved her lips and she nodded. “Okay.”
He smiled back, squeezing her fingers again.
His gaze never left hers for the rest of the song, nor for the two that followed.
Maybe, just maybe, she thought, some moments would never end.
