How to Tame a Silver Fox novel · Chapter 20 of 32

Chapter 20: The Offer

The glass was still falling when the room began to empty.

Sixty women gathered their handbags with the speed of people leaving a fire.

Sabrina's mother took her daughter by the elbow and walked her out through the French doors without a word.

Sabrina went white-lipped, with her pink skirt gathered in her fist.

The young man with the camera unscrewed it from the tripod and tried to leave unnoticed.

"Give me that card," my father said.

"It uploads on its own, sir," the young man said. "It's already with the planner."

My father looked as if he might hit him, and then he looked at the floor.

The investor's wife in pearls stopped beside me on her way to the door.

She smelled of lilies.

"I am so sorry about the dinner, dear," she said quietly. "I should have said something."

"You're saying it now."

"Not loudly enough." She touched my arm and went out into the light.

Then it was my father and me and the broken glass.

My mother's painting lay face down on the rug, and a corner of the canvas had split away from the stretcher.

I knelt and turned it over.

The lawn at dusk, blue and gold, was whole except for a gash in the upper left that went through the sky.

My father said, "In the study."

"No."

"Willa. In the study. Now."

I picked up the painting, glass and all, and carried it in front of me like a shield.

He closed the study door and went to the bar and poured nothing, and put the decanter down again.

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