DAMIEN'S POV
The reception had been going for an hour when he saw him.
He was mid conversation with one of his board members....something about the foundation's international expansion that he was only half listening to because Aria was across the garden with her mother and Lucy and he kept losing the thread of everything else....when he saw a figure coming through the garden gate.
Slightly rumpled.
Jacket not quite right.
The specific dishevelled quality of a man who had come directly from an airport.
Damien stopped talking.
The board member said something he didn't hear.
Julian Pierce walked through the gate of the west garden with his tie loosened and his carry-on bag still over his shoulder and looked around the reception with the expression of a man who had run through two airports and missed three connections and was deeply relieved to have made it at all.
He found Damien across the space.
He raised both hands in the universal gesture of I know, I know, I'm sorry.
