CHAPTER 17. Waiting For His Name
812 Words
Elena realized she was waiting for his name before noon. Irritation flared—not at the feeling itself, which she recognized as inevitable, but at how quietly it had crept in. No dramatic moment, just a subtle shift: a part of her attention angled toward her phone, refusing to admit why.
She was in the middle of a venue walk-through. The client—a softly frantic woman planning a winter engagement party with the intensity of a military operation—was arguing that ivory candles felt “emotionally dishonest” compared to cream. Elena nodded, made notes, kept calm. Meanwhile, some detached part of her mind tracked the phone in her handbag. Waiting. Ridiculous.
“Do you think we should move the floral arch three feet left?” the client asked.
“Yes,” Elena said, scanning lines of sight and foot traffic. “And lower it slightly. Right now it looks like it distrusts the guests.”
The client blinked, then laughed, buying herself seven minutes’ relief from candle anxiety.
Back in the corridor alone, Elena allowed herself one check. There was a message. From Nikolai: Have you survived the morning?
Relief hit, and irritation again—seeing his name should not have made her smile. She typed while walking: Barely. Someone asked me to distinguish between emotional dishonesty and candlelight.
And you managed not to commit a crime.
Her lips twitched.
That implies personal uncertainty.
It depends on how much sleep I’ve had.
Useful to know, he replied. I’ll avoid discussing candles before noon.
It lingered—not intimate, just thoughtful. Memory. Adjustment. Consideration that would be ordinary from anyone else but meant far too much from him. He was paying attention. So was she. That was the problem.
Across the city, Nikolai sat in the back of a car between meetings, reading Elena’s line twice. It depends on how much sleep I’ve had. He pictured her face: dry, controlled, half-amused.
“You’re doing it again,” Yuri said from the front.
“Doing what?”
“Reading one sentence like it contains state secrets.”
“It might.”
Yuri groaned. “Embarrassing for both of us.”
Nikolai ignored him. Then I’ll consider your sleep schedule a matter of public safety.
That feels like an abuse of power.
Possibly, he thought. But a responsible one. He set the phone down, forcing himself to read the briefing beside him. Eleven minutes passed. Then he picked the phone up again.
This was not ideal. He did not text casually. Life was structured: business, obligations, desire, memory nowhere. Elena was disturbing that architecture—not dramatically, but incrementally, like rain through stone.
By early afternoon, Elena was in a Kensington townhouse, adjusting silk ribbon installations. Work was simple: spaces could be fixed. People were harder. Her phone buzzed halfway down the ladder.
“Can you grab that?” she asked her assistant.
“It’s Nikolai,” the assistant said, grinning despite herself.
Elena steadied herself. I’ve just spent forty minutes listening to a man explain numbers he clearly doesn’t understand. I suspect your candles were more dangerous.
That depends. Could his numbers ruin an evening and two marriages?
One evening, yes. The marriages may depend on the wine.
She laughed, smiling despite herself. Bad—not because it was intimate, but because it was easy. Years of maintaining emotional distance faltered against someone who appeared quietly at the edge of her boundaries.
Fifteen minutes later, Marissa called.
“I’m working.”
“So am I. How far in are we?”
Elena pinched her nose. “I hate that you phrase things like that.”
“That is not an answer.”
“There’s nothing to answer.”
“Liar. You’ve got the voice.”
“The voice?”
“The one where you sound calm but dangerously alive.”
Silence. “Oh, wow. It is bad.”
“It’s something,” Elena said. “We’re just talking.”
“And does ‘just talking’ usually make you check your phone like it personally offended you?”
She stayed quiet. Marissa sighed, satisfied. “Thought so.”
Late afternoon, Elena left the last site with aching feet, logistics noted, a low-grade exhaustion that usually felt satisfying. Today, it felt incomplete.
Halfway into a cab, her phone buzzed. Have you survived the rest of the day, or should I prepare a criminal defense strategy?
Mostly survived. Though one centerpiece nearly became a weapon.
Against the candles? Against a man with opinions about ribbon?
I’m on your side already.
Simple. Light. Yet it settled deep in her chest. Elena looked out at the city sliding past in wet dusk. She was in trouble—not because she had fallen, not because she trusted him, but because she now looked for his name on her screen. And she knew there was no pretending otherwise.
- Writer
