Chapter 2 - A Seat on His Right
Dominic did not answer immediately.
Outside the study windows, rain moved across the lawn in silver sheets.
Finally, he said, “Someone cut the hinge.”
“Yes.”
“Someone who had access to my room.”
“Then you need better security.”
“I have excellent security.”
Evelyn glanced toward the guarded hallway.
“Your glasses disagree.”
His mouth shifted, but the amusement did not last.
He picked up the damaged hinge.
“An injury damaged my left eye six years ago. The vision never recovered.”
“And you decided your staff should guess?”
“Bennett knows. My physician knows. My brother knows.”
“Does the person arranging your protection know?”
“Mercer knows I have limitations.”
“That sounds like a sentence carefully designed to avoid saying anything.”
Dominic leaned back.
“People in my position don’t advertise weakness.”
Evelyn folded her hands around her repair kit.
“My father used to knock over his coffee because he refused to move the cup. He said changing the table would mean admitting something.”
“What happened?”
“I moved the cup.”
That earned a real smile.
Then he asked about her father.
She gave him the public version.
Thomas Parker had died in a fire at a small apartment building where he volunteered delivering groceries. Faulty wiring, according to the report. Three tenants had survived because he went back inside.
He had not come out.
Dominic looked down at the hinge.
“I’m sorry.”
“People usually are.”
She did not say it cruelly.
Grief had simply worn a groove through that conversation.
Before she left, Evelyn insisted he schedule a specialist appointment through his physician.
“I repair eyewear,” she said. “I don’t replace medical care.”
“I already have a doctor.”
“Then stop using me as an excuse to avoid him.”
Bennett coughed into his fist near the door.
It sounded suspiciously like laughter.
Over the next week, Dominic found reasons to need ordinary things.
A backup pair.
An adjustment.
A discussion about lenses that could have lasted five minutes but somehow included coffee and forty minutes of conversation.
Evelyn charged for her work.
Dominic paid.
Neither mentioned that the glasses fit perfectly after the second visit.
He learned that she hated lilies because funeral arrangements had filled her kitchen for weeks after her father died.
She learned he could cook exactly three meals and regarded breakfast as a business interruption.
He asked why she had never expanded the shop.
“Money,” she said.
“That can be solved.”
“So can loneliness, apparently. You just keep breaking glasses.”
For once, he had no answer.
On Monday afternoon, he came to Parker Optical himself.
The bakery owner next door nearly dropped a tray.
Evelyn looked up from adjusting a little boy’s frames.
“You’ll have to wait.”
Dominic sat in the plastic chair beside a rack of reading glasses.
The boy stared at him.
“Are you somebody famous?”
“No.”
“You look like a movie bad guy.”
His mother turned scarlet.
Dominic considered the question.
“Then I should probably work on that.”
Evelyn laughed before she could stop herself.
Later, after the customers left, Dominic stood near the photograph of her father behind the counter.
“He fixed my first pair,” he said.
“You wore glasses as a kid?”
“Seventeen. I couldn’t afford them.”
Evelyn looked at him.
“Dad had a terrible business model.”
“He told me to pay when I could.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
Something in the answer suggested more.
Before she could ask, a man entered without knocking.
He wore a pale gray suit and the easy smile of someone accustomed to being forgiven.
“Dominic. There you are.”
Dominic’s expression cooled.
“Victor.”
His younger brother.
Victor glanced around the shop, then at Evelyn.
“So this is the woman who’s been making you unavailable.”
“She’s working,” Dominic said.
“And I’m interrupting. My specialty.”
Victor smiled at Evelyn.
But his eyes moved to the repaired glasses.
Only for a second.
Enough.
That evening, Dominic called.
“There’s a benefit Thursday. Housing grants, neighborhood clinics. My foundation is hosting.”
“Then invite a donor.”
“I’d like to invite you.”
“To work?”
“No.”
Evelyn stood in her kitchen with a spoon suspended over a bowl of soup.
“Dominic.”
“I know what people say about me.”
“Some of it appears to be well documented.”
“Yes.”
She appreciated that he did not deny it.
“I’m not interested in becoming a decoration,” she said.
“I was hoping for company.”
After a long silence, she agreed to one dinner.
Her friend Rosa lent her an emerald dress and refused to let her apologize for her body.
“You have hips, Evie. The dress has fabric. They’ll work it out.”
At the estate before the benefit, Evelyn met Adrian Mercer, Dominic’s security chief.
He examined her invitation, although Bennett had just introduced her.
Then he guided her toward Dominic.
“Mr. Hale prefers guests on his left,” Mercer said pleasantly.
Evelyn stopped.
Across the room, Dominic turned toward her voice.
Slowly.
May you like
With his whole body.
And for the first time, she wondered whether someone was arranging his world so he would never see the danger coming.
