Chapter 73

AMELIA The music has stopped and the band is packing up to go home. Most of the guests have left, and Tucker and Emily are long gone. The dance floor is strewn with multicolored streamers, discarded name tags, and a solitary red stiletto. A Cinderella mystery that may never be solved. The weary staff is clearing up, but my friend and I have grabbed a bottle of champagne and moved outside. I don’t want the night to end, and he seems to feel the same. Charlie and I are sitting at a small patio table in one of the hotel’s luxuriously landscaped gardens, and he’s placed his tuxedo jacket around my shoulders in a chivalrous attempt to keep me warm in the cool night air. We talk and laugh and flirt beneath the dark blanket of sky and the shining lights of New York City. He’s funny and charming and has listened to me ramble on about my mom and my cheating husband. He must be bored by it all—I know I am—but he shows no sign of being fed up. In return, he tells me about his childhood, about gro