Chapter8
1309 Words
The invitation arrived on a Thursday in a cream envelope with Roman's name embossed on the front and a handwritten note inside that said “bring your wife” in Patricia Langley's precise cursive.
Roman slid it across the breakfast table without comment.
I read it. Charity gala. Saturday. Black tie.
"Patricia Langley," I said.
"Board member's wife. You'll like her."
"You say that like you know what I like."
He looked at me over his coffee. "You like people who don't waste your time. Patricia hasn't wasted anyone's time in forty years."
I set the card down. "What's the room going to be like?"
"Old money. New alliances. Everyone performs with an ease they don't entirely feel." He paused. "Victoria will be there."
I kept my expression even. "Your ex."
"Yes."
"Is that a warning or information?"
"Both." His eyes stayed on mine. "She's not a problem. I just don't believe in surprises where you're concerned."
Something about that settled in my chest in a way I didn't reach for. He'd said it simply, no weight attached, as protecting me from discomfort was just one thing he did now without deciding to.
"I'll need a dress," I said.
"Dora has a contact. It's handled."
"You arranged that before you gave me the invitation."
"Yes."
I looked at him. "That's either very considerate or very controlling."
"Both," he said, and the corner of his mouth moved.
I looked away before I smiled back.
The dress was deep green and perfectly fitted, and I stood in front of the mirror Saturday evening thinking about how someone who'd never been asked for my measurements had gotten them exactly right. I didn't ask how. Some things about Roman Ashford were better accepted than examined.
He was waiting in the entrance hall when I came downstairs.
He saw me and went very still.
Not a performance of it. The real kind — the kind that happens before a person has time to decide what their face should do. His eyes moved over me once and then came back to mine and stayed there and something in his expression was unguarded in a way that made my pulse do something I didn't give it permission to do.
"You look….." He stopped.
"Accurate measurements," I said, because I needed to say something ordinary.
"Claire."
"Roman."
He held out his hand. I took it and felt the warmth of his grip all the way up my arm.
We didn't discuss it.
The car ride was quiet. Not uncomfortably so. We'd stopped needing to fill silence the way we had in the beginning, which was its own kind of problem I was choosing not to look at directly.
"What does she want from you?" I asked. "Patricia."
He glanced at me. "What do you mean?"
"People like that don't seek out the new wife at a gala out of curiosity. She wants something."
"She wants to know if you're good for me," he said without inflection. "She's been making that assessment about the people in my life for fifteen years."
"And what does good for you look like, according to Patricia Langley?"
He was quiet for a moment. "Someone who pushes back." His eyes stayed forward. "She's watched me close off every room I've been in since I was thirty. She considers it a waste."
I looked at him. He didn't look at me.
"Do I push back?" I said.
"Constantly." The word was quiet. Something in it that wasn't a complaint.
I faced forward again and watched the city move past the window and didn't say anything else.
Patricia Langley found me in the first twenty minutes, which told me she'd been watching for me, which meant Roman had been right about her.
She was sixty-four with sharp eyes and a champagne glass she held like a prop she didn't need.
"So you're the one," she said.
"Apparently."
"Roman looks different." She studied me without apology. "Less like a man running a calculation and more like a man running out of reasons to."
I didn't know what to do with that, so I let it sit.
"You're not going to ask what I mean," she said.
"I know what you mean. I'm just not going to be surprised about it."
She smiled. Real, unhurried. "Good. I'm exhausted by performances." She touched my arm once, light and deliberate. "Stay near me when Derek Holloway introduces himself. He will. And you'll want a witness you trust."
"Why Holloway specifically?"
She looked at me over the rim of her glass. "Because he spent six months trying to get Roman to the altar with a woman who would have been easier to manage. Then you appeared." A pause. "He hasn't decided yet what you are."
"And you have?"
"I have." She said simply. "That's why I'm talking to you."
I filed that and moved with her through the room.
Roman found me an hour in, appearing at my left shoulder with the quiet precision of someone who'd been tracking where I was.
"Holloway's here," he said quietly.
"Patricia warned me."
He glanced at me sideways. "You and Patricia."
"She has good instincts, and she's tired of being underestimated. We have things in common."
Something moved through his expression. Warmth, I thought. The specific kind that looked like pride without the performance.
"What did she say to you?" he asked.
"That you look different."
He was quiet for a beat. "Do I."
"She seems to think so." I kept my voice even. "I didn't weigh in."
"But you have an opinion."
I looked up at him. He was watching me with that particular steadiness that meant he already knew the answer and was giving me the choice of whether to say it.
"Yes," I said. "I do."
He held my gaze. Didn't push. Didn't look away either.
We were standing close. The room required it — crowded, loud, the kind of event where proximity was practical. But his hand had found the small of my back and it wasn't practical. It was just his hand, resting there with a steadiness that said,"I know where you are, and I want you there," and I was trying very hard not to lean into it.
I leaned slightly into it.
He didn't say anything. His hand pressed a fraction warmer.
Derek Holloway was tall and broad-shouldered and smiled like a man who'd practiced it.
"Ashford." He shook Roman's hand and turned to me with the particular attention of someone deciding how useful you are. "And this must be Claire."
"It must be," I said.
His smile flickered. Just slightly. "Roman kept you very quiet. We were starting to think he'd invented you."
"That would have required more imagination than a contract marriage," I said pleasantly.
Roman's hand on my back went still.
Holloway's eyes sharpened. "Honest woman."
"Consistently." I held his gaze. "It was lovely to meet you."
I turned back to Roman with a smoothness I didn't entirely feel.
When Holloway moved on, Roman bent slightly toward my ear. "You just told him you know what marriage is."
"He already knew. He was waiting for me to flinch about it." I kept my voice low. "I don't flinch."
A pause. Then his mouth was close to my temple and his voice was quieter. "No. You don't."
He said it like it meant something specific. Like he'd been watching me not flinch for weeks and the accumulated weight of it had become something he had to say out loud.
I felt it in my throat.
We stood like that for a moment. His hand on my back. My shoulder is almost a
Gainst his chest. The room was loud around us and this small pocket of stillness between us that neither of us moved to break.
"Roman," I said quietly.
"I know," he said.
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