The ARRANGEMENT

CHAPTER 2 (EPISODE 2): THE GALA

"You called me Nate." He looked pleased about it in a way that made her want to take it back immediately.

"Don't read into it."

"I read into everything, Alexandra. It's how I survive family events." He turned her, slow, in time with the music, and the crowd blurred at the edges of her vision until it was just him, his eyes, the particular gravity of a man who was used to getting exactly what he wanted and had apparently decided, at some point in the last hour, that he wanted this. "Tell me something true."

"Excuse me?"

"One true thing. Since we're going to be lying to everyone else for six weeks, I'd like one thing between us that isn't."

Alex's pulse was doing something entirely unprofessional. She should have deflected. She should have made a joke, changed the subject, reminded him, and herself, exactly why they were here.

Instead, she said, "I didn't expect to like your grandfather."

Nate went quiet for a moment, and then, softer than she'd heard him say anything all night: "Neither did I expect you to."

The song ended. Neither of them stepped back right away.

"Your turn," she said, because if she didn't say something she was going to do something considerably less wise. "One true thing."

He looked at her for a long moment, like he was deciding how much to give her.

"I don't actually want this IPO to fail," he said finally. "Everyone thinks I'm doing this for the money. I'm doing it because it's the only thing I've built that isn't a headline." A pause. "That's the first time I've said that out loud."

Alex didn't have a clever line for that. For the first time all evening, she didn't want one.

"Well," she said instead, quiet, "it won't fail. Not on my watch."

Somewhere behind them, a camera flash went off, a photographer from Manhattan Society, capturing exactly the shot they needed: Nathaniel Sinclair, golden and unreachable, looking at a woman like she was the only person in the room.

The trouble was, in that particular moment, he hadn't been performing at all.

Neither had she.

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End of Chapter Two.