He had been watching her hold it together and it was, without question, the most remarkable thing he had ever seen.
He had expected — he didn't know what he had expected. Something to c***k. Some immediate collapse of the architecture, some fissure in the performance the moment she walked through the door and found him standing there instead of a stranger. He was a man people found difficult to surprise and he had been prepared for her to be surprised. He had not been prepared for her to smile.
Anna Ray's smile. He knew it now — had studied the photographs with the same attention he gave to everything that mattered — and he knew it was not her smile, knew it was constructed rather than felt, knew it was the thing she wore when she needed to not be seen. And still it had hit him somewhere
