BEHIND HIS WALLS

Chapter 3

The story came to her in pieces, the way most true things at a law firm seemed to—never delivered whole, always in fragments passed between people who assumed you'd fill in the rest yourself.

The first piece came from Grant, the junior associate who'd wilted under Sean's silence in the meeting, over vending-machine coffee on her third day.

"You're lucky, actually," he said, apropos of nothing, while the machine groaned through its cycle. "Working under Ashford. Everyone wants a spot on his teams. He's just—" he made a vague gesture, the universal sign for complicated "—he wasn't always like this. Or so I've heard. I only started two years ago."

Like what?"

"Closed off. Duke would know better—he's been here since before."

Grant lowered his voice slightly, though there was no one else in the small kitchen to hear.

"You know he founded the firm, right? Ashford and Cole. Cole was—"

He stopped himself, the way people do when they realize they've wandered somewhere they shouldn't.

"Cole was what?"

"Ask Priscilla," Grant said, and took his coffee, and left.

The second piece came from Priscilla herself, three days later, in the elevator, when it was just the two of them and the numbers climbed slowly enough to allow for conversation.

You've heard the name Cole," Priscilla said.

It wasn't quite a question.

"A little. Grant mentioned it and then ran away."

Priscilla laughed, short and without much humor in it.

"That sounds right."

She hesitated, glancing at the numbers overhead as though checking how much time she had.

"Elizabeth Cole. She and Sean built this place together, right out of law school—different firm at first, then they broke off and started their own. Ashford and Cole. They were—" she paused, choosing the word carefully "—together. For years. Engaged."

What happened?"

"She left. Right before the wedding. Not just left him—left him for someone on their own team, someone Sean had mentored, practically hand-picked."

Priscilla's mouth pressed into a thin line.

"She kept her name on the letterhead for about six months afterward, if you can believe that. Then she took a partnership at a firm across town and never looked back. He bought out her share of the practice. Kept the name the same, though."

"Some people think that's strange. I think—" she shrugged "—I think it's just easier than admitting how much it cost him to change it."

The elevator doors opened onto their floor, but Priscilla didn't move for a second, and neither did Mara.

That was three years ago," Priscilla added, quieter now. "He hasn't dated anyone since, as far as anyone knows. Doesn't talk about it. Doesn't have to—everyone here already knows, and he knows we know, and nobody says anything, and that's just how it is."

She finally stepped out, holding the door for Mara.

"Anyway. That's the story. Don't repeat where you heard it."

Mara thought about it that night, longer than she meant to, sitting on the floor of her half-unpacked apartment surrounded by boxes she still hadn't found the energy to open.

She thought about the name on the letterhead—Ashford and Cole—a daily, unavoidable reminder stitched into the very walls he walked through every morning.

She thought about the flat, careful way he'd looked at her in that first meeting, giving nothing away, as though giving nothing away were a skill he'd had to relearn from scratch.

She thought, too, about the way he'd said good to her—four flat syllables that Duke had told her meant more than they should have—and wondered, uncomfortably, why she was still thinking about it three days later.

Don't take it personally, Priscilla had said, on her very first day.

Mara suspected that wasn't really the problem.

The problem was that she was starting to suspect there was a person under all that armor worth being curious about—and curiosity, she already knew from experience, had a way of turning into something harder to walk back.

She got up, made herself tea, and did not open her laptop to look up Elizabeth Cole, though she thought about it for a long time before deciding against it.

Some things, she told herself, were not hers to go looking for.

Not yet, anyway.