“I’m running out of patience, Anthony. I have the papers ready upstairs,” Gabriel said.

Olivia interrupted without an apparent thought for the tension that crackled through the room. “Come to the Bandana Ball with us, Gabriel Kane.” She turned to Anthony. “Convince him to join us. Two Kane guys, two Cuthcart girls.”

“Olivia,” Portia snapped. “Stop.”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Anthony said. “We’ll go together. Dance up a storm.” He glanced at the clock. “Gotta go if I’m going to have time to pretty up! I’ll sign tomorrow, Gabriel.”

Olivia grabbed Portia’s hands and leaned close. “And don’t you dare wear something boring.”

* * *

“I can’t believe I got talked into this,” Gabriel stated.

Portia sat at a table underneath the vaulted ceiling of the Mandarin’s ballroom on Columbus Circle, looking out over Central Park, hardly believing she was there either. But Olivia had pointed out that by not going, she was letting her ex-husband take away something else from her that she loved.

Country-western music filled the hall, the strings and crooning at odds with the elegance of the modern hotel. Bales of hay and old-fashioned wagon wheels decorated a room full of men dressed in tux jackets, bow ties, jeans, and cowboy boots. The women wore diamonds the size of Texas, denim skirts of varying lengths, and stiletto heels straight off the runways of Paris.

Texas women might like their hair styled and their diamonds big, but you wouldn’t find a single self-respecting Texas female in a pair of cowboy boots.

Gabriel looked as if someone had picked him up and landed him on the moon.

“Having a touch of culture shock?” she asked.

He gave her a wry look.

He wore a black suit and a silver-gray tie. Hot, yes. Texas Bandana Ball? No.

She glanced out at the dance floor. Anthony and Olivia were already there, laughing, having fun. Gabriel hadn’t moved since they had arrived.

“Hey, I know,” she said, her tone needling, “why don’t we do something no one would expect us to do and, say, dance.”

“I don’t dance.”

“That’s how the whole unexpected thing works—doing something you wouldn’t normally do.”

“I’ve already exceeded my quota of the unexpected for the night.”

“How’s that?”

“I’m here.”

She laughed at that. “Fine, don’t dance. But could you go sit someplace else then?”

“What?”

“Someone else might ask me to dance,” she explained, “but not if you’re sitting here with me. And as long as I’m here, I plan to dance.”

“I’m not leaving you at this table alone.”

She wrinkled her nose. “It’s hardly a dangerous street corner in the Bronx. And I’m hardly alone. We’re surrounded with hundreds of people. Oh! There’s a guy I know. I bet he’ll dance with me.”

She jumped up, but she hadn’t gotten a step away when a woman came toward the man and led him onto the dance floor. When she glanced back, Gabriel looked exasperated but amused, too.

“If you’d worn running shoes, you could have gotten there faster.”

She shot him a sharp look.

The music coming from the speakers stopped, and a band appeared onstage. At the sight of the country-western band Asleep at the Wheel, the crowd erupted in wild applause; minutes later, the dance floor filled to overflowing.

“What are they doing?” Gabriel asked, his face a mask of disbelief.

Portia laughed. “It’s the Cotton-Eyed Joe.”

Lines of dancers formed spokes, looking like a wheel turning as they danced side by side, shouting out the words. Namely, “Bullshit!”

No surprise, Anthony was at the center, Olivia next to him, her head tossed back in the sort of abandon that drew men in.

Portia watched, wishing she were out there, wishing she possessed her sister’s ease, if not her abandoned behavior. Portia had been in Manhattan for only a few months, but already Texas felt distant. The women with their diamonds flashing in the glittering lights, heels high, fabulous attire, be it short skirts or long. The men with their wide, friendly smiles. But as much as she missed the only place she had ever called home, more and more she was finding that she felt as though she belonged here in New York. She wasn’t even exactly sure why.

She was startled out of her thoughts when two women stopped abruptly on the opposite side of her table.

“Portia? Is that you?”

Portia blinked, then felt her heart squeeze to a halt in her chest. “Hi, Meryl. Hi, Betsy.”

The two women gasped and hurried around to her. “Oh, my Lord! I never in a million years thought I’d see you again, much less here! How are you, honey?”

“Yes, how are you?” Betsy added with her own gasp.

Meryl Swindon and Betsy Baker had been a part of Portia’s world since elementary school. And, like Portia, they had married into the better part of Willow Creek. But unlike Portia, they had moved easily in the new world of heirloom pearls and Francis 1st silver. The only event Portia had truly loved was once a year when she and her husband had traveled to New York to attend the Bandana Ball. Here, in New York, these proper Texans let down their hair. They were more at ease, feeling a camaraderie in a foreign place that they didn’t share at similar events in their hometown.

“I’m doing great!” she replied with that thick cheerfulness she had nearly forgotten about in the few months she had been in Manhattan. “You both look fabulous!”

She felt more than saw Gabriel’s raised brow at her exaggerated cheer.

“You do, too!” Meryl and Betsy said.

“You look,… different,” Meryl added.

“Truly fabulous,” Betsy said. “I swear, after Robert divorced you, I thought the next time I saw you, you’d be a wreck. I mean, who wouldn’t be after Robert made it so public that you weren’t the woman for him.”

By then, Gabriel had stood, every inch the gentleman. Portia felt a sizzle of tension coming from him, filling her with a disconcerting rush of embarrassment. Meryl and Betsy looked at Gabriel, and seemed to assess him with a Texas woman’s eye.

“You’re obviously doing better than we possibly could have imagined,” Betsy continued on, then introduced herself.

The women wouldn’t ever have known that he wasn’t perfectly happy to make small talk with them. But Portia could feel tension run through him, a tension she didn’t understand as he turned to look at her, studying her while Meryl and Betsy went on about something else.

Finally, they walked away and Portia looked up at Gabriel. “Come on,” she all but begged, not wanting him to ask a single question. “This is a party. Dance with me!”

The song ended, the next starting up, and Anthony returned to the table. “I can’t believe you two are just sitting here.”

Olivia came up beside him. “Once upon a time, Portia used to be a great dancer. That is, until she married that ass—”

“Olivia!”

“Don’t you give me that look, Portia,” Olivia said, undaunted. Instead, she came over to Portia, sitting down next to her and forcing her to turn, her always languid eyes fierce. She took Portia’s hands and gave her a little shake. “I saw Meryl and Betsy come over to you. I know how they are, no doubt going on about Robert. But let me tell you, you are better than all the Meryls and Betsys put together. And you certainly deserved better than that philandering prick. If I could, I’d castrate him myself.”

Portia felt the sting of embarrassment at Olivia’s words, the brutal honesty that she was never uncomfortable with. But mostly she was embarrassed that Gabriel heard the truth about her marriage.

A man Olivia had promised a dance to came up. Olivia didn’t look at him. “Are you okay?” she asked Portia.

“I’m fine. Really. Go dance.”

Olivia appeared conflicted.

Portia would have stood, wanting to get away from Gabriel’s questioning gaze, but Anthony caught her arm while she was still sitting down. “Come dance with me.”

He ran his hand down to her fingers, trying to pull her away from the table. She sensed more than felt the tension that flared through Gabriel. She saw the two men look at each other, Gabriel like a dangerous jaguar, Anthony like a spoiled Abyssinian cat.

“Thank you, Anthony, but I can’t dance with you,” she said.

She wanted to dance, but not with Gabriel’s brother.

Just then another man walked up to them.

“Gabriel. Anthony,” the newcomer said by way of hello.

He was tall and good looking, with blond hair and blue eyes. The quintessential all-American boy.

“William,” the brothers said in unison. The man extended his hand to Portia. “William Langford,” he said.

“Hello, I’m Portia Cuthcart.”

“Portia. A fan of Shakespeare?”

“That would have been my mother. First Cordelia, then Olivia, and finally me, Portia.”

William laughed easily. He had charm, but not the bad-boy variety. His was more the elegant man about town. “Would you like to dance?” he asked.

“Forget it, Langford,” Anthony said with a proprietary smile. “She’s dancing with me.”

“Actually, she’s dancing with me.”

Gabriel stepped closer.

Anthony cocked his head, eyes narrowed. Portia could only look at Gabriel, take in the harsh angles of his face.

But as he took Portia’s elbow, to help her from her seat, she jerked to a stop.

Anthony laughed. “Second thoughts about dancing with my big brother?”

Portia gave Anthony a look, one learned at the knee of her grandmother, a woman who didn’t put up with anything.