CHAPTER THREE - REAL THINGS
1563 Words
Thursday came fast.
The address James sent was not a restaurant.
It was a penthouse.
Fina stood outside the building — forty floors of glass and steel in the most expensive part of the city — and had a brief, private conversation with herself about expectations and professionalism and the fact that she had signed a contract and was therefore committed.
Then she went in.
The elevator opened directly into the apartment.
She had prepared herself. She had grown up with nothing and understood that wealth existed on a scale she had never personally occupied and she was not the kind of person who got rattled by square footage.
She was slightly rattled by the square footage.
Floor to ceiling windows on three sides. The city below like a living map. A kitchen that had clearly never been used for anything as ordinary as peanut butter sandwiches. Furniture that cost what she made in a year arranged with the precision of someone who either had exceptional taste or paid someone exceptional to have it for them.
Ethan was at the kitchen counter with two coffee cups and the expression of a man who had been home for approximately eleven minutes.
"You're on time," he said.
"I'm always on time," she said. She looked around once — cataloguing, noting, the same habit she brought everywhere. "Nice place."
"Sit down," he said. He brought both cups to the dining table where a folder sat — neat, organised, the kind of preparation that said he took this seriously. "Coffee?"
"Please."
She sat. He sat across from her. Opened the folder.
"My grandmother," he said. "Eleanor Robinson. Seventy eight. Sharp, warm, does not miss anything. She has been running this family since my grandfather died twenty years ago and she has not lost a step." He paused. "She will like you."
"How do you know?"
"Because you're direct and she respects that above everything else." He turned a page. "She'll ask how we met. She'll ask what you see in me." A beat. "Answer that one honestly."
Fina looked at him. "Honestly?"
"She'll know if you perform," he said simply. "Don't perform for Eleanor. Just — talk to her."
She nodded slowly. "Okay. Who else?"
"Uncle Richard." His voice stayed even but something underneath it didn't. "Fifty eight. My father's younger brother. He has wanted control of Robinson Enterprises for twenty years and has never once been subtle about it." He looked at her. "He will try to find inconsistencies in our story. He will ask questions that sound like conversation and aren't. He will be charming and you will want to trust him."
"But I shouldn't."
"Not with anything that matters," he said. "No."
"And Aunt Diana?"
Something close to amusement crossed his face. "Diana is loud, dramatic and fundamentally harmless. She cares about appearances. As long as you're well dressed and well spoken she'll adopt you within the first hour."
"That's the easiest brief I've ever received," Fina said.
"Don't tell her that," he said drily.
She smiled before she could stop herself. His eyes tracked it — brief, almost involuntary — then went back to the folder.
"Lucas," he said. And his voice changed. Slightly. The way voices changed around names that meant something genuine. "Richard and Diana's son. Twenty six. He's —" a pause — "the only one I'd call family without qualification."
"You trust him," she said.
"Completely." He closed the folder. "He'll like you immediately. He likes everyone immediately." Something moved across his face. "Don't let him make you laugh too much in front of the others."
Fina raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
"Because when you're laughing you're not watching the room," he said. "And you need to watch the room."
She looked at him. That was — unexpectedly perceptive. She filed it under things she hadn't anticipated about Ethan Robinson.
The list was growing.
"Serena," she said.
He picked up his coffee cup.
"Serena Hayes," he said. "Twenty five. Family friend. Has been attending these gatherings since she was a child." He said it carefully. Too carefully.
"That's the surface version," Fina said.
He looked at her.
"You said it yourself," she said. "People in love know the real things. What's the real thing about Serena?"
A silence.
He set down his cup. Looked at the table for a moment in the way people looked at things when they were deciding how much to give away.
"She has been in love with me for a long time," he said. "I know it. She knows I know it. We have never discussed it." He held Fina's gaze. "She is warm and she is clever and underneath both of those things she is something I haven't fully mapped yet." A pause. "Be careful with her."
"She'll try to undermine me," Fina said.
"Not obviously," he said. "Never obviously."
Fina nodded slowly. "Okay."
They sat quietly for a moment. Outside the city did its glittering thing forty floors below.
"Now you," she said.
He looked up. "What?"
"I know about your family," she said. "I need to know about you. The real things." She held his gaze. "Because Eleanor is going to ask what I see in you and I can't answer that with a folder."
Something shifted in the room.
He was quiet for long enough that she thought he was going to redirect — change the subject, check his watch, do any of the things people did when questions got too close to something real.
He didn't.
"I don't sleep enough," he said. "My mind doesn't stop. I've stopped trying to fix it." He looked at the window. "I built this company because my father left it half finished and I couldn't stand that. Not for his legacy. Just —" a pause — "I can't leave things half finished."
"What else?" she said quietly.
He looked at her. "I'm better at problems than people. I know that. I don't always know what to do about it." A beat. "I chose you because you didn't react to my name. Most people perform for me before I've said a single thing." His voice was very even. "You looked at my card and put it in your pocket like it was a receipt."
Fina was quiet for a moment.
"My turn," she said. "In case you need it."
He said nothing. Which was permission.
"I've been running my family since I was seventeen," she said. "I'm used to being the person who holds things together. I'm not good at asking for help. I'm not good at letting things be someone else's problem." She looked at her hands. "I took this job because I need the money. But I also took it because you looked at me across that bar like you were trying to solve something and nobody has looked at me like I was worth solving in a very long time."
The silence that followed was the particular kind that meant something had been said that couldn't be unsaid.
She hadn't planned to say that last part.
Ethan looked at her steadily. Something in his face — not the controlled version, not the managed version. Something underneath both.
"For the record," he said quietly. "You weren't hard to solve."
"What does that mean?" she asked.
"It means you're exactly who you appear to be." He held her gaze. "That's rarer than you think."
Fina looked at him for a long moment.
Then she picked up her coffee. Looked at the city.
"So," she said, voice steady. "How did we meet?"
He almost smiled. She was beginning to recognise the almost.
"You tell me," he said. "You're more creative than I am."
"Okay." She thought for a moment. "You came into the club three months ago. Not for the atmosphere — for a meeting with someone who didn't show. I brought you a drink you didn't order because you looked like you needed it. You came back the next week." She glanced at him. "And the week after."
He was quiet for a moment. "Why did I keep coming back?"
"Because I was the only person in your life who treated you like a regular person instead of a name," she said simply.
The silence stretched.
"That works," he said.
"I know," she said.
They stayed at that table for another two hours — building the story, filling in the details, learning each other's edges the way you had to when the performance needed to be seamless. He was precise and she was intuitive and somewhere between those two things the version of them that would convince a room full of sharp eyed people began to take shape.
At nine thirty she stood to leave.
"Thursday next week," he said. "There's an event. A charity dinner. We'll need to be seen together before the gathering."
"Public debut," she said.
"Yes."
She nodded. Picked up her bag.
"Ethan." He looked up. First time she'd used his name without thinking about it. "The thing about leaving things half finished." She held his gaze. "I'm the same way."
Something moved across his face. Slow and deep and completely unmanaged.
She left before either of them could do anything about it.
In the elevator going down she pressed her back against the wall and stared at the ceiling.
Sixty days, she reminded herself.
The ceiling didn't help.
- Writer
