10. Knox
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Knox
“Your middle name is Nathaniel?”
Adriana says it as though I’ve confessed to the most shocking thing in the world. Her pen paused over her notepad, and there’s a laugh hiding at the edge of her mouth that I’ve spent the better part of the morning trying to draw all the way out.
“It’s a fine name.”
“It’s a wholesome name. Nathaniel is a man who coaches a children’s football team and returns his library books early.” She looks up at me, openly delighted, and the laugh wins. “You don’t look like a Nathaniel.”
“Nathaniel is a perfectly good name for a perfectly good man. Which I am.”
I set the plate down beside her, orange segments I’ve peeled and pulled apart without entirely deciding to, because she’s been writing for an hour and hasn’t eaten.
Someone in this room has to be sensible about it.
“You are not a good man, Knox.”
“I’m an excellent man. I peel fruit.”
“You peel fruit to pass time.”
“I peel fruit because you forgot lunch exists, and a fainting fake girlfriend reflects poorly on me.” I drop back into the chair across from her, though I notice, distantly, that I’ve taken the one beside her instead. “Eat. You can interrogate me and chew at the same time. I believe in you.”
She eats, though she also keeps writing, the pen moving in that fast tidy hand of hers, and she does the thing she’s been doing all morning where she takes a segment of orange without looking at it, as though her body has decided to trust me to keep the plate stocked while the rest of her runs the briefing.
I refill it naturally, popping some in my mouth every now and then.
Today, she’s running me through some twenty-questions game of her own design, the kind of exhaustive that should bore me and doesn’t, because watching Adriana Rosewood work is its own quiet entertainment.
I’ve discovered that she is also funny, properly funny. But only when she forgets to guard it. The polish slips and the wit underneath is the best thing in the room.
Adriana is bent over the page now, a strand of hair loose from the knot she pinned hours ago, the rest holding on by willpower.
From here I can study the dark fan of her lashes lowered to the page.
The small serious line between her brows, the slope of her nose, the mouth she presses flat when she’s concentrating and forgets to keep guarded.
She glances up to think, and her eyes catch the light.
I’ve always known she was beautiful. But there’s a quieter kind of it here, in the unguarded simplicity of her, far more captivating, and I can’t quite stop looking, and I don’t entirely want to…
“Knox.” A pause. “Knox?”
When that gets nothing, she tries, “Nathaniel?” and waves a hand in front of my face, chuckling, the loose strand swinging with it. “Hello?”
The room comes back all at once, and with it the deeply unwelcome awareness that I’ve been staring at the woman the way a teenager would, for an unknown but nonzero length of time.
“I said, what’s your favorite color?” She’s still half-laughing, no idea where I just went, thank God. “You drifted. Long morning?”
Shit. Get it together, Beaufort. Clearing my throat, I look at the orange plate, the window, anywhere with fewer collarbones.
“Red,” I say.
She writes it down. “Predictable. Bold, a little dramatic, wants to be looked at. Suits you.”
“And yours is violet.”
Her pen stops. She glances up. “I haven’t told you that.”
“You didn’t have to.” I nod at the arsenal beside her notepad, the pens, the tabs, the sticky flags, every one of them some shade of it. “You color-code your entire life in it. A woman doesn’t reach for the same color forty times a day by accident.”
Her mouth opens, then closes. It’s a rare thing, catching Adriana Rosewood without her next line ready, and I find I like having done it.
“I wasn’t aware you were paying that much attention,” she says, recovering, but not fast enough.
“What can I say? I pay attention to all sorts of things.” I hold her gaze a beat too long. “It’s one of my better qualities.”
Color climbs her throat before she can stop it, and she looks back down at her notebook a touch too quickly, suddenly very busy with a page that doesn’t need her.
The unflappable one, flustered.
Cute, I think, before I can prevent the thought.
“Write that down,” I add, to break the thing humming between us. “Beaufort, pays attention. Page three.”
“There is no page three for you,” she says, but she’s fighting the smile again, and she writes a note anyway, and I’d give a great deal to know what it says.
That’s when the door goes, and Idris lets himself in, because Idris has never knocked once in eight years of employment.
“Sir. Miss Rosewood.” He gives Adriana a polite nod, all business, and addresses himself to me. “You asked me to keep eyes on Langford and the Delaney woman. They’ll both be attending an auction tonight. It’s a public charity event which they’ve been favoring this past week.”
“The pity tour rolls on, then.” I lean back. “Good job, Idris. This is why I keep you. You could find a needle in another man’s haystack.”
“It’s a gift,” Idris agrees, unbothered. “Though I’d remind you the gift comes with a salary, which you’ve promised to raise twice now.”
Adriana makes a sound into her coffee that she pretends is a cough.
“And on that note.” I roll my eyes and wave him toward the door. “You’ve delivered your report and your grievance. Out.”
“Sir.” He inclines his head, unhurried, and gathers himself to go. “I’ll send the guest list and the lot catalog to your phone.”
He sees himself out, which he’s better at than knocking.
Adriana sets her coffee down and watches the door close behind him with open approval.
“I like that he isn’t the least bit afraid of you. Your own assistant talks to you as though you’re a slightly difficult houseplant.”
“That’s eight years of hard-won disrespect, I’ll have you know.” I sigh dramatically. “He used to call me ‘sir’ and mean it. Now he itemizes my failings alphabetically.”
“And you keep him?”
“I’d be lost without him. Don’t tell him that, he’s already insufferable.” I lean toward her across the table, dropping my voice. “Between us, the houseplant thing stings because it’s a little bit true.”
She laughs and it warms my chest too.
“Hm.” She taps her violet pen against her lip, studying me. “I think I like him.”
“More than me?” I tilt my head and smirk, laying it on thick. “I’m crushed. I peeled you fruit, Rosewood.”
She gathers her pages into a neat stack, taps the edges square against the table, and rises, smoothing her skirt with unhurried grace.
“Jury’s out, Beaufort.” She slides the violet pen into her bag with everything else, every item in its place. “Earn it tonight, and we’ll see.”
“That’s it?” I spread my hands as she collects her bag. “No goodbye kiss for your devoted boyfriend? We’re supposed to be selling this, Rosewood. Practice makes perfect.”
She levels me with a look that could wither crops, then rolls her eyes and heads for the door.
“See you tonight, Nathaniel.”
That earns a laugh out of me, low and surprised. She’s gone before she can see how much I enjoyed it, the door clicking shut behind her.
Without her, my office is quieter and a fair bit less interesting. I stay where I am for a moment, finger dragging slowly across my lower lip, still grinning at the empty room.
The woman is never boring. Every time I think I’ve got the measure of her she hands me something new to be amused by.
Guess I’d have more to look forward to tonight.
***
The venue sits behind a sweep of marble steps on the good side of the river, the ballroom strung with light and the foyer filled with people performing how little the evening costs them.
We’re stopped just outside the ballroom doors, the noise of the party leaking through them, and I can tell she’s nervous before she’d ever admit to it.
To anyone else she’s untouchable, carved out of poise. But I’ve spent a morning learning her tells, and I can see the woman underneath gathering herself to walk into a room full of people who spent a week tearing her apart.
“Hey.” I step in close, lower my voice so it’s only for her. “Look at me.”
She does.
“They already lost. They just don’t know it yet.” I reach up and tuck the loose strand back, the one that’s always escaping, the gesture easier than it has any right to be. “You walk in there on my arm and you’ve already won the whole night. All you have to do is let them watch.”
Some of the tension goes out of her shoulders. “You’re surprisingly good at this.”
“I know. I’m good at everything. It’s a burden I carry with tremendous grace.”
That pulls a laugh out of her and she rolls her eyes even as the last of the nerves shake loose from her frame.
“Thank you, I think,” she says, steadier now.
I give her a smile. “No worries. You look beautiful, by the way. They’re going to choke on it.”
A flush, which I’m learning I like on her, touches her cheeks. “You play the devoted boyfriend frighteningly well, you know.”
I lean down, close to her ear, dropping my voice to that register meant only for her.
“The compliment isn’t part of the act.” My mouth is near enough that I feel her go still. “I’m an honest man. I really mean that you look beautiful tonight, Adriana.”
She laughs, soft and a little uneven.
Then I do what I do best, which is turn a real thing into a bit before it can cost me anything. I straighten, square my shoulders, and offer her my arm.
“We have a night to ruin.” I incline my head, all mock ceremony. “Shall we, milady?”
She plays along for once and fits her hand into the crook of my elbow as though she’s done it a hundred times. The smile she gives me is pure performance and confidence.
“Why, I thank you, kind sir.”
We walk in.
And the room does its little stutter when we enter. Heads turn, conversations dip, the particular hush of a crowd recalculating in real time.