An Unforgettable Lady (An Unforgettable Lady #1)(101)

The man cursed and started blinking furiously as the fight resumed. Though he kept on lashing out, the security officers had the upper hand now and were finally able to subdue him.

"We'll take him down to dispatch," her head of security said between heaving breaths. He was straddling Tiny's back while an officer put cuffs on the man. "And then we'll have him arrested."

"That's not necessary. Just get him out of the building." Grace paused. "Will he be okay, though?"

"I’ll be goddamn fine," Tiny said from underneath the pile of men. "As long as you call off your dogs and let me protect you!"

The man on his back looked down in confusion.

"Just make sure he's alright," Grace said, feeling incredibly numb. "I really got him a good one."

"Countess," Tiny protested, lifting his head off the carpet. His eyes were watering and he'd started to retch. "Don't do this. You don't know if they've got the right man or whether they can keep that suspect in custody."

As she looked into his red and swollen eyes, she took a deep breath and addressed the sargent. "Carmine, I'd like to have one of our officers around me at all times tonight."

His thick eyebrows rose. "Sure. But you don't need to be afraid of this guy. He's not getting away from us. Not with what you did to him. And Marks's men are here. We've got enough blue uniforms to make a quilt down there."

She groaned. "Unless they're in plain clothes, tell them to leave. I don't want everyone scared that the terror alert has gone up or something. I do want someone with me at all times, though."

The man nodded and assigned one of the others.

As Grace went down to the party, she was perversely relieved that she was feeling so numb. Under more normal circumstances, she would have been nervous as hell about the outcome of the evening. The kind of people who went to expensive galas like the Foundation's had as much of a herd mentality as any other group of humans and they regarded a decline in prestige like a bad stock tip—as something to be avoided at all costs. The night was going to be a test of the Foundation's strength. Of people's faith in her.

Grace emerged into the atrium and saw that everything was arranged in time for the guests who had already started to arrive. Tables had been erected in an ever widening circle around the marble entrance to the museum and, in the center of each, magnificent bouquets of white and red roses mixed with stalks of deep blue foxglove lent a dramatic air. Uniformed waiters were already passing trays and getting drinks and a string octet had begun to play.

Before she could greet the first arrivals, Kat came up to her and they ran through some last details.

A half hour later, the lobby of the Hall Building was positively packed. The great, glittering masses, it turned out, had rallied around the Foundation. And Grace. She was astonished by the number of people who genuinely seemed to wish her well and were offering their support as she took over her father's role. They also had a lot of good things to say about the Walker painting, the food, the change in venue.

Even the old fogies on the board seemed eager to be in her good graces, now that the evening was proving to be a success. As they came up to her one by one and proclaimed their support, she nodded and smiled. She noted that not one of them protested Lamont's departure.

She was thinking she should have been feeling some kind of triumph, but nothing broke through her fog. In the face of the success she'd wanted and worked so hard for, she had to fall back on her breeding with a vengeance just to get through the night and be who all the people wanted her to be Grace Woodward Hall. The beautiful daughter of Cornelius and Carolina Woodward Hall. The trendsetter and the social star, now the head of the Foundation.

As she looked over the crowd, seeing the beautiful clothes and the jewels, the wide smiles blooming out of well-known faces, she realized she was standing in a roomful of people who all looked like her—and yet she was totally out of place.

Even though the reaction was logical, given everything that had happened recently, the dislocation seemed somehow more permanent than the growing pains that inevitably came with big changes in life. She was starting to view her world differently and what once was familiar was beginning to seem foreign.

Where the new direction would take her however, she had no idea.

At the appointed time, Grace went up onstage and introduced the video montage of her father's life. As she watched, she remembered the places and the times and the circumstances of each photograph. Though she was familiar with all of them, she saw each one differently now, as if the colors had been recalibrated. When the last photograph appeared, she regarded the image of her father, sitting at his desk with a pipe between his teeth, through eyes that were strained from conflicting emotions.



She knew that any resolution about the lies he'd lived would have to come without explanation or apology from him. She had to wonder if the remembrance of the love he'd shown her would be enough to help her find some kind of peace with it all. But she wasn't sure.

As the picture of her father dimmed, she had to swallow a few times before she was able to speak.

When the lights came back on, Grace looked down and saw her mother standing in the front of the crush of people, back ramrod straight, neck elegant as a swan's, black dress hanging perfectly from her dainty shoulders. The expression on her face was one of regal forbearance, although the light in her eyes was something close to warm.