Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
SHINY STERLING
HUDSON
“I have three work dinners in the next six weeks,” I say. “Andrew's wedding, you don't know him, and,” I check the date on the calendar again, “a silent auction in June.”
She looks up, eyes wide and cheeks hollow.
This was part of it, she knew it, but maybe she thought there was more time before I’d call her up for duty.
So far it has all been submissions of paperwork.
The application for purchase of apartment 8A happened four weeks after we said I do.
I even included her name on the application, which will improve optics for Immigration.
But she has a way about her in the morning, no matter how routine this has become, that I find distracting.
I think because she listens with her entire self, like whatever you’re saying has her full attention whether you've earned it or not. In a room full of lawyers, it’ll be the most dangerous thing she walks in with.
“The silent auction is part of the foundation attached to the client we’re meeting for dinner. Don’t let it fool you. It’s not altruism.”
“When is it ever,” she says as she sips from her mug. Our mornings have become a routine of discussing the logistics of shared life. She’s picking at her nail polish, subtle but nervously.
“They’re not interrogations,” I say, trying to assuage some of the nerves she seems to have. “The partners know I’m married now, their wives will be there. It’s the kind of thing—”
“That someone’s wife attends.” She completes the sentence and nods quickly, resigned to her fate, like she knew the bill was coming but still flinches at the total.
“Right, okay, yeah, of course I’ll be there.
” I can see the wheels turning behind her eyes, thinking through what exactly it will mean.
“Tonight.”
"This tonight?" The shock nearly knocks her off the stool.
“What other tonight could I mean?” I don’t think she hears the laugh in my voice as I take another sip of coffee.
“I don’t know, tomorrow’s tonight? Next week’s tonight?” She’s absolutely rambling some kind of frantic nonsense. “You should have led with that.”
“I’m leading with it now.”
Tonight’s dinner has been on the calendar for weeks, and having Louisa in attendance is more important than ever.
Because to men like Hugh Sterling, who you marry is about as much of an accessory as anything else.
And his sons are no better. All but one I hear, who walked away from this in favor of a quieter life.
Which, from everything I've seen of this family, strikes me as the most intelligent decision any of them has made.
Lucas was closer to their account when it happened, and from what he says, the family nearly split from the whole ordeal.
Probably why this merger has them all at each other's throats, PTSD from the last time a deal like this nearly took down their empire.
“It’s a big client, my boss and some colleagues will be there, but so will Lucas and Paola. You’ll know them.”
She stares up at me. “What am I supposed to wear?”
“Whatever you'd normally wear.”
Her arms are crossed across her terrycloth robe with an expression that fiercely communicates that ‘whatever you'd normally wear’ is not remotely helpful guidance for a dinner with the senior partner of a corporate law firm and a client whose family is currently the subject of a merger negotiation, and often Page Six.
“I’m known for a lot of things, Louisa. Women’s fashion isn’t one of them,” I say through a smirk. She doesn’t miss the intent, but is too focused to respond directly.
“I’ll call Paola.” Of course she will. Louisa wasted no time making Paola her friend, because Louisa wastes no time making anyone her friend. “Because there isn’t something I would normally…that’s the point,” she quips.
I’ve met her friends, her colleagues, and I know what she means.
The people I surround myself with professionally have a different kind of polish, the kind that comes from decades of measuring success in shiny, reflective ways.
But Louisa's success is a different metal entirely. It accumulates the way the darkening on a silver tea set does, not a flaw, or something to be corrected. The evidence of the life of the thing. She isn’t waiting to be polished into something.
She already is something, her desperation to stay here proves that.
I mean, why else would someone go so far as to marry an effective stranger, especially one you loathe.
“Some people,” she says, in a tone of profound reasonableness, which is clearly an act, “give someone more than eight-hours notice for an event that requires a person to find a dress and build an entire personality for an evening.”
“You have a personality.” A massive one. She’s a color wheel of emotion full of the most nuanced tones I didn’t even know existed.
“I’ll need a different one.”
“No, you won’t.” She’s not anything like the rest of them, and for that reason more than anything, I don’t want her to be anyone but herself. “I’ll pick you up here, at six.”
She comes out at six on the dot, which is a surprise that I didn’t account for, because I factored in the Louisa time buffer of twenty minutes.
I'm sitting in the living room, a room that has gained more colorful decor in the last months, and as I notice every throw pillow or knickknack she brought into this space, each one seems to fit in a way that indicates the space was being held for it. As her bedroom door opens, she is draped in something the color of deep plum and dripping with a beauty that I’ve never seen her have. It catches me off guard.
Her hair is up, tightly pulled back and pinned. I heard her getting ready, the same video playing over and over. It’s smooth and contained and unlike her in every way that matters. I can tell it doesn't fit, as she keeps checking it in the mirror. She looks like she prepared for an inspection.
“Do I look okay?” she asks me, looking for an approval that feels deeper than this one outfit. I take steps to stand near her.
“Turn around,” I say.
“I can change, I have another option…”
I place my hands on both her shoulders and turn her to face the mirror that hangs in the hallway. She resists for a second, squirmish, but stills as I exhale. I see she does the same. Nodding to herself, gently, a subtle count of four all while her eyes are locked on me.
I find where she’s tucked and hidden the pins in the folds and twists of her hair.
I am aware of her in a way I was not prepared to be, the warmth of her neck, the small escaped pieces of hair at the nape that the pins never captured.
There’s no less than a dozen of them, I keep pulling them out until I find the one that has been doing load-bearing work for the whole structure.
I take them out one by one and set them on the hallway table, and when the last one goes, I work my fingers into her hair at the base and shake it loose the way the wind might, gentle and thorough.
The way she always seems just a little windblown, like she came in from somewhere more interesting than wherever she’s really been.
My hands are not delicate in the way the situation requires. I work through the length of it once, redistributing, settling it back into the more natural state of her, one that I recognize. And one it’s growing harder for me to ignore.
She steps back into me, the shape of her body soft against mine.
She goes very still. Thinking, like I am, that this surreal closeness is the comfort we have to avoid in each other.
Because too much is at risk. My body twitches and the front of my pants feels fuller as the scent that radiates from the nape of her neck climbs upward and becomes the only air I can breathe.
The hallway is quiet and suddenly has a different weight and texture than it did only two minutes ago.
My hands are still knotted in her hair, which I remove with an unhurried motion.
My thumb drags down the column of her neck.
I am not going to make this into something, I am going to put my hands back in my pockets and say something, anything, because the silence of our stares as she stands in here in that dress is going to make me more ill-prepared for tonight than any tentacle porn.
“Better,” I say.
She turns around, eyes large, and the plum of the dress pulls a similar color from the depth of her irises that I’d only ever previously considered brown.
Her face is painted with an expression trying to multitask, the resentment that normally freckles her nose is tucked behind the reflections of curiosity, looking at me in a way she never has before.
For a long moment, or perhaps a moment too long.
Something snaps her attention, and her eyes narrow with an amount of doubt she’s let slip more than once.
“Was it that bad?” She exhales the question with a resignation that makes me sad for her.
It’s not coming from this, but my guess is the hundreds before where she’s felt like she wasn’t enough for the people in her life, the unrelenting disappointment she felt from her parents.
She looked stunning, perfect. It was jarring when she first stepped out of the bedroom. But she looked like a perfect stranger.
“You weren't yourself.” I tuck a loose tuft of hair behind her ear, leaving the rest to fall around her face in the way it does naturally, with pieces that wave and brush her shoulders.
“Kind of the point.”
“Not for me, it isn’t,” I reply, hoping she can hear in my voice just how honest I’m being.
We are sharing space much more than we have been, and the tension between us is palpable in a way it’s never been tinted before.
Now without the drapes of anger to hide it, I am in significant fucking trouble.
She asks me questions on the drive to the restaurant, the kind that always fill her mind when she’s about to meet people. Pure, kind curiosity. Also nerves.