Chapter 298

[ 1,221 words ]

Martha’s POV

Delia had sent the information the previous evening.

Jude Wolfe, CEO of Wolfe Motorsport. British. Mid-thirties. Currently in residence at the Whitmore Manhattan Presidential Suite on the fourteenth floor.

I had read the message twice and then set my phone down and thought about it for a long time.

Sending the invitation to Katia was not an option. I knew that before Delia had even suggested it. Katia had been very clear the last time we were in the same room—she had stood at my dinner table and said things that a daughter was not supposed to say to a mother in front of witnesses, and then she had looked at me before she left and said something I had not forgotten.

You lost the right to invite me to anything the day you threw me out.

She had not said it loudly. That was the thing about Katia; she never raised her voice when she was being most serious. She had said it quietly, and she had meant it, and I had known in that moment that sending her an invitation to a family dinner would produce one result, and that result was a very clean refusal.

But her husband was a different matter.

Jude Wolfe did not know me. Jude Wolfe had not been thrown out of anything by me. Jude Wolfe was a British businessman in a foreign city who had just announced himself to the world as the husband of a woman whose family had not yet extended a welcome. From his perspective, a visit from his mother-in-law was not an ambush. It was courtesy.

I dressed carefully.

The Whitmore Manhattan was not a hotel where one arrived underdressed.

The concierge at the Whitmore was exactly what one expected of a concierge at the Whitmore—impeccable, unhurried, and the courtesy of someone trained to make every guest feel they were the most important person in the building.

He led me to the private elevator.

The doors opened into a marble-floored entrance hall that smelled of fresh flowers and something expensive I could not name. I looked at the suite around me as I was shown in, the floor-to-ceiling glass, the Central Park view, the dark velvet furnishings, the kind of space that announced money without trying to.

Delia had said he had money.

She had been understating it.

A member of his staff showed me through to the sitting room and asked me to wait. I sat on the edge of a velvet sofa and looked at the city through the glass and thought about what I was going to say.

Then the door opened.

Jude Wolfe walked in.

I had seen photographs, the broadcast, and the press coverage from the Brooklyn Grand Prix—but the photographs had not prepared me for the reality of him. He was tall and broad-shouldered, immaculate in a dark suit despite the hour. His jaw was still carrying the faint, healing evidence of whatever had happened to him the week before, but he carried it with the composed ease of a man who did not allow physical damage to affect his bearing.

He looked at me and smiled.

“Mother-in-law,” he said.

The warmth in it, genuine and easy, the greeting of a man who was genuinely pleased to see the person who had walked into the room, made something in my chest loosen immediately.

“My in-law,” I said, smiling back.

“Please,” he said, gesturing to the sofa. “Sit. Can I get you something? Tea? The Whitmore has a very good Earl Grey p>

“Tea would be lovely,” I said.

He spoke quietly to his assistant, who disappeared. Then Jude sat in the chair across from me and looked at me with the attentive, focused ease of a man who was entirely comfortable in his own space.

“Call me Jude,” he said. “Or, son. That fits better, I think p>

I looked at him.

“I like son more,” I said.

He smiled again. It reached his eyes.

We talked for a few minutes — easy, surface conversation, the kind that happened between two people who were circling toward the real purpose of the visit and were both aware of it and comfortable taking their time. He asked about the family. He asked how long we had been in New York. He was gracious and attentive and entirely present in a way that I found immediately disarming.

Then he stood up.

He walked to the mahogany side table near the window and picked up a long, flat box. Dark navy. No visible branding on the outside, just the quality of it—the weight of the leather, the precision of the hinge.

He walked back and placed it in front of me on the low table.

“I had to give my mother something,” he said, “for raising my wife. The woman who gave me a son p>

I looked at the box.

I looked up at him.

He nodded.

I opened it.

The necklace inside was the most beautiful thing I had seen in a very long time. A strand of South Sea pearls, each one perfectly matched, the lustre of them catching the afternoon light from the Central Park window and sending it back in a way that made my breath stop for a moment. The clasp was white gold. The pearls were the color of cream and moonlight.

“A Mikimoto South Sea Pearl Necklace,” I breathed.

I had not meant to say it out loud. The words simply came out of me because the sight of it had bypassed my composure entirely and gone straight to the part of me that was, despite everything, still capable of being stopped in its tracks by something truly beautiful.

“Only the best for the woman who brought my wife into the world,” Jude said.

I looked up at him.

My hands were not entirely steady as I looked back at the pearls. I had owned beautiful things in my life—the Kensington name had always meant access to beautiful things, but there was something about receiving a gift that you had not expected, from someone you had only just met, that undid the careful composure faster than almost anything else.

“Let me help you put it on,” Jude said.

“Please,” I said.

He lifted the necklace from the box with the careful hands of someone who understood what he was handling. I turned slightly in my seat, and he fastened it at the back of my neck, the pearls settling cool and smooth against my collarbone.

I touched them with my fingertips.

“Thank you,” I said. The words felt inadequate. I said them again anyway. “Thank you, son p>

He sat back down across from me, looking entirely pleased.

I straightened myself. I reminded myself why I had come.

“I would like to invite you to a family dinner,” I said. “This coming weekend. The Kensington house. Nothing formal, just the family, getting to know you properly p>

“I would be honored,” Jude said.

“And bring Katia,” I said. “Of course p>

“Of course,” he said.

I stood.

He stood with me, walked me to the door, and said goodbye with the warmth of a man who had meant every word of the last hour.

I stepped into the private elevator. The doors closed.

I touched the pearls at my throat and left.

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