Chapter 5 Practice Touches
Harlow
Three days in, and I've established a system.
Six a.m.: up before Elliot, coffee made in his terrifyingly expensive kitchen, Titan's medication hidden in a small piece of cheese the way he likes it. Six-thirty: clinic. I'm back by seven most evenings, sometimes later, and whatever charged, complicated thing exists between us in this penthouse gets tabled until the next morning when we do it again.
It's working. Mostly.
The system does not account for this morning.
"We have an event Thursday," Elliot says over breakfast — or what passes for breakfast in his world, which is black coffee and whatever I've made, because his refrigerator when I arrived contained sparkling water, one block of aged cheddar, and the kind of moral emptiness that comes from a man who eats at restaurants for every meal. I've been quietly correcting this. He hasn't commented, but he finishes everything I put in front of him. "The Alderman's waterfront coalition dinner. Forty people, press outside, probably cameras at the entrance."
"I have it in my calendar." Rosa rearranged two late appointments without knowing why. I felt guilty about that for an entire morning.
"We should prepare."
I look up from my eggs. "Prepare."
"How we present." He sets his coffee down. Looks at me with the particular focused attention he brings to everything, the kind that makes you feel like the only variable in an equation. "We've been photographed arriving here and leaving separately. That reads as new. For Thursday we need to read as comfortable."
"I'm comfortable."
"You flinch when I touch you."
I open my mouth. Close it. "I don't flinch —"
"Your shoulder came up last night when I put my hand on your back for Cole's benefit." He says it without accusation. Factual. "It was slight. Cole probably didn't notice. A photographer with a zoom lens would."
I think about arguing. I think about the forty people and the press outside and the cameras, and I think about what this arrangement is actually for.
"Fine," I say. "What do you suggest?"
He suggests, it turns out, a rehearsal.
We do it in the living room because Elliot is nothing if not organized about things that should not be organized. He's moved the coffee table. There is, I note with a very specific kind of alarm, actual floor space.
"This is elaborate," I say.
"This is practical." He stands in the middle of the room, jacket off, sleeves rolled to the elbow. Broad-shouldered and composed, like a man who has never felt awkward in his body in his life. "Approach me."
"I'm sorry?"
"Walk toward me. The way you would if we'd just arrived somewhere and you were crossing the room to meet me."
I stare at him. "You want me to walk toward you."
"I want to see what we're working with."
I walk toward him.
He watches me do it with an expression that gives nothing away, and I feel approximately eleven years old under the attention, which is absurd because I am a licensed veterinarian and a small business owner and I have negotiated with insurance companies and I should not feel self-conscious walking across a living room.
"Good," he says, when I stop in front of him. "Natural. Now take my arm."
I take his arm. His forearm, the way you would arriving somewhere. Muscle under the rolled sleeve, warm skin, and that same clean scent I've been trying not to catalog.
"When we're standing together at an event," he says, "I'll put my hand here." He moves, and his hand settles at the small of my back. Deliberate. Positioned. "And you lean in, slightly. Not into me, just — toward."
"Toward," I repeat.
"Like you're aware of me."
"I am aware of you."
"Like you want to be."
The room is very quiet for a second.
"I know what you mean," I say pleasantly.
Something moves in his jaw. "Good. Cheek kisses — there will be some, at this level of event. People he knows will greet me and then greet you. The instinct is to pull back."
"My instinct is not to —"
"You pulled back from Alderman Chen's wife at the charity preview last month." He says it evenly. "I saw the photo."
"That was before any of this."
"The cameras don't know that." His voice drops slightly, the way it does when he's being precise about something. "When someone moves to greet you, you move forward. I'll be beside you. My hand stays at your back." He demonstrates, turning us slightly so we're side by side, his palm at the small of my back again. "Like this."
"This is very military," I say.
"It's efficient."
"Elliot. People in relationships don't practice like they're staging a production."
"People in relationships have the benefit of actual familiarity." He looks down at me, and we are closer than I've processed until this exact moment. He's a full head taller than me, and when he angles toward me like this, I have to tilt my chin up to hold his gaze, and I am choosing to find this annoying rather than anything else. "We have four days."
"I'm a fast learner."
"I know. That's why I'm doing this properly instead of winging it and hoping." A pause. "Your hands."
I look at my hands, which are at my sides. "What about them?"
"When we're photographed walking, you either hold mine or you hold my arm. Pockets read as distant."
"I wasn't going to put my hands in my pockets."
"You had them in your pockets every time we walked from the car to the building this week."
I open my mouth, close it again. He's been paying attention to my hands. I don't know how to classify that. "Fine," I say. "Show me."
He takes my hand.
Not the careful, positioned movement of the staged balcony moment. He just takes it — fingers wrapping around mine, thumb settling against the back of my hand, easy and warm and completely matter-of-fact. Like it's already habit.
My brain does something I don't give it permission to do.
"Natural," he says. "Don't look at our hands."
I look up. He's watching me. Dark eyes, steady, and there's something working underneath the composure that I can't quite name. Something that makes the word rehearsal feel slightly dishonest.
"You're very good at this," I say. Carefully.
"At what?"
"Looking like you mean it."
The thing underneath his composure shifts. "Maybe I'm not looking like anything."
I decide not to examine that sentence. "My turn," I say instead.
"What?"
I turn toward him, put my free hand on his chest — flat, deliberate — and look up. "If I'm your fiancée, I'd do this sometimes. Right? Touch you first. So you're not always —" I search for the word "— initiating."
His chest is very solid. I note this and move on.
"Right," he says. His voice is fractionally different. Controlled the way a door is controlled when someone is pressing against it from the other side.
"See?" I smile. "I'm a fast learner."
"You said that."
"I also said I'm immune to billionaires, in case that needs to be part of your calculations." I drop my hand, step back, entirely pleased with myself. "Purely professionally speaking."
He looks at me.
Just looks at me, for a moment that runs a beat longer than it should.
"Is that so," he says.
"Completely." I keep the smile easy, bright, the full-wattage version I use when a difficult client needs to feel at ease. "You're very handsome and extremely wealthy and utterly not my type. It's actually convenient — makes the professionalism easier."
Something happens to his composure. The door strains.
"Not your type," he repeats.
"Too controlled." I wave a hand. "I like people who are a little chaotic. Messy. Dogs-on-the-couch type of people. You probably iron your weekend clothes."
"I have someone who —" He stops.
I grin. "You have someone who does it for you. Which is arguably worse."
"It's time-efficient."
"It's adorable." I turn toward the kitchen, because I am winning this and I know when to exit a stage. "I think we've practiced enough. I'll be very convincing on Thursday."
What happens next is Titan.
Specifically: Titan decides he has been napping long enough and wants to join us, and he rises from his bed with the slow, deliberate authority of a dog who has never once in his life moved quickly, and lumbers toward us with his splinted leg and his rope toy hanging from his mouth, and plants himself directly between my legs and Elliot's.
The leash — which I'd clipped to his collar before the rehearsal started, intending to take him out after — immediately becomes a problem. It's long, it's tangled around my left ankle, and when Titan turns to show Elliot the rope toy, it wraps around Elliot's wrist.
We both reach down at the same time.
Our foreheads almost connect. Elliot catches himself, hand landing on my shoulder. I grab the leash. Titan takes the opportunity to sit down, which makes the whole thing worse, and now we're both crouched over a delighted mastiff with a lead tangled around both of us and our faces approximately eight inches apart.
Elliot looks at the leash. Looks at Titan. Looks at me.
The composure breaks.
It happens in stages — a line appearing at the corner of his mouth, a breath that's not quite controlled, and then he laughs. A real one. Low and genuine, with actual warmth in it, and it changes his entire face in a way that does something to my chest I'm not prepared for.
I'm already laughing, because this is objectively funny and I lack Elliot's talent for maintaining dignity while crouching over an enormous dog.
We're laughing at the same thing at the same moment and our faces are eight inches apart.
Titan wags his tail, very satisfied.
"Immune to billionaires," Elliot says, untangling his wrist from the leash with careful movements, still close, the laughter still warm in his voice.
"Completely," I confirm.
He looks at me. One beat, two. And for just a second, he's not managing anything at all.
Then my phone buzzes in my back pocket.
I straighten up. Fish it out. My clinic manager, Deb.
Someone called the city this morning. They're asking questions about your license. I don't know who. I think you should call me.
The laughter drains out of me.
I read it twice, certain I've misread it.
I haven't.
"Harlow." Elliot's voice is different now. He's already reading my face. "What is it?"
I show him the phone.
The warmth that was in his expression a moment ago goes somewhere colder, and quieter, and considerably more dangerous.