6. SIX
SIX
Alex
Emily left my floor at eleven twenty-three on Monday morning.
She'd been gone for seven minutes. I knew she was downstairs with Lola reviewing the revised display list for the founders' dinner. I knew she'd come back as soon as the meeting ended. None of that made the archive feel less wrong without her in it.
Her coffee sat beside the catalog terminal, half finished and going cold.
A navy scarf hung over the back of her chair.
She'd left one of her shoes beneath the desk after complaining that the heel pinched, and the shoe was sitting there at a crooked angle with the buckle undone, and I had to actively resist the urge to carry it into my library like some kind of unwell person.
The elevator opened at eleven thirty-two. Danny stepped out, and I looked behind him.
He noticed. "Good morning to you too."
"What do you want?"
Danny walked farther onto the floor, hands in his pockets. "You invited me."
"I sent you an email."
"Alex, that's the closest thing to an invitation I've gotten from you in six months. I nearly framed it."
"I need approval for the Hawthorne acquisition."
"You already have it."
"I need it in writing."
"You have that too." He watched me process this. "You didn't actually need the meeting. You wanted to know if Emily was still downstairs."
"No."
"She is. Teller's cornered her about the display labels. He's got opinions."
"She doesn't need help with labels."
"I didn't say he was helping."
I picked up the document on my desk and held it out.
Danny didn't take it. His attention moved instead to Emily's scarf, her coffee, the pair of reading glasses she'd left beside my laptop.
He took it all in with the quiet efficiency of a man who'd built an empire on noticing things other people tried to hide.
"She's settled in."
"They're hers."
"Yeah, Alex. I got there on my own."
I held out the document again. He took it this time, though he kept surveying the floor with that look — the one that meant he was about to say something I didn't want to hear.
"She's good," he said.
"The archive report's the first one I've read that doesn't make the collection sound like an expensive storage problem."
"She knows what she's doing."
"She also told Gerald Price that displaying the Valenti manuscript next to an open fireplace would be professional negligence." He looked like he was enjoying this. "Right to his face."
"She was right."
"I know she was. I was there."
Something in that caught him. "You went to a board meeting?"
"I occasionally leave this floor."
"Not that meeting." Danny's smile faded into something sharper. "Emily went downstairs and presented the alternative list this morning. On her own."
My attention went straight to the elevator. "She didn't tell me."
"It was scheduled yesterday."
"She should have told me."
Danny laughed — one short exhale. "Why?"
"Because Gerald was there."
"She handled Gerald."
"I know she can handle him."
"Then what's the problem?"
The problem was that she'd walked into a room full of twelve trustees who controlled her contract while I sat upstairs reading a report I wasn't absorbing. Gerald had already tried to undermine her once. He'd do it again if he thought she was alone. She wasn't alone. She just didn't know that yet.
"She should've told me," I said again, and I could hear how it sounded — possessive, rigid, exactly the kind of thing Emily would dismantle with one raised eyebrow — but I couldn't make it smaller than it was.
Danny studied me for a long moment. Then he shifted gears entirely.
"You're coming to dinner Friday."
"No."
"Emily's presenting the restored register."
"She doesn't need me there."
"That's not what I said."
I looked at him. Danny's face had lost the amusement, and what remained underneath it was closer to concern — or as close to concern as Danny Sterling ever got without charging someone for the privilege.
"She's leaving for Boston the next morning, isn't she?"
"Friday afternoon."
"And you hate that."
"Yes."
The honesty surprised him. It surprised me less.
I'd spent the weekend with Emily — she'd slept in my bed twice, read on the sofa while I worked, reorganized the shelf beside the kitchen because she said I'd arranged it like a man who distrusted enjoyment.
On Sunday morning she left to get clothes from her apartment. She came back three hours later.
I watched the elevator display the entire time.
"I offered her a permanent position," I said.
Danny's eyes narrowed. "Did she ask for one?"
"No."
"So that went well."
"She hasn't refused."
"She hasn't accepted either."
I hated how quickly he understood.
Danny finally looked at the document in his hand. "Come to dinner. Stand at the back. Scare Gerald into shutting up. Whatever makes you feel useful."
"I don't need to feel useful."
"No. You need to watch her do something that matters to her without making it about whether she stays."
I held his gaze. He handed me the signed document.
"You're welcome."
The elevator opened before I could tell him to leave, and Emily stepped out with Lola beside her, talking quickly about humidity limits and lighting schedules.
Her hair had been twisted into a loose knot that was already coming apart at the nape of her neck, and I stopped listening to Danny entirely.
Emily found me immediately. Her face warmed — not dramatically, just a slight lift at the corner of her mouth that would've been invisible to anyone who hadn't spent the past three weeks memorizing her. She'd just been in a room full of people, and she walked back onto this floor looking for me.
Danny said something I didn't hear. Emily crossed the archive.
"How was the meeting?" I asked.
Her eyebrows went up. "Which one?"
"The board."
She looked at Danny.
He raised both hands. "I believe in honesty."
"You believe in meddling."
"That too."
Emily turned back to me. "It was fine. Gerald pushed back on the facsimile until Teller asked him whether he planned to personally cover the restoration costs if the original got damaged. That shut him up."
I made a mental note to thank Teller.
"You should've told me."
"Why?"
"Gerald was there."
"Yeah, Alex. He's on the board. That's sort of how boards work."
"You know what I mean."
She did. Her face softened, but she wasn't going to make it easy. "I didn't need backup for a meeting."
I couldn't say what I actually meant — that I wanted to know where she was at every point of the day, that I'd started measuring time by the sound of the elevator returning her to me, that seven minutes without her had made the entire floor feel like the furniture was in the wrong place.
What I said was, "I would've gone with you."
Emily's gaze held mine. "You hate board meetings."
"Yes."
"You refused to attend one about your own acquisition last month."
"But you would've gone. To mine."
Lola made a small sound behind her — the kind of sound people make when they're trying very hard not to react to something.
Danny took Lola gently by the arm. "We should go."
"We really should," Lola agreed.
Neither of them bothered hiding their smiles as the elevator closed behind them. Emily waited until they were gone.
"You're becoming workplace gossip."
"I don't care."
She picked up her coffee, took a sip, and grimaced. I took the cup out of her hand.
"That's cold."
"Yeah, that's what happens when you leave coffee sitting for forty minutes."
"Thirty-eight."
She leaned against the counter and watched me pour fresh coffee with a look on her face I couldn't entirely read. "You counted."
"You didn't tell me you were leaving."
"I didn't realize I needed to file a departure report."
"You don't."
"But you'd like one."
"Yes."
Her laugh was quiet and warm. "At least you're honest about it."
I handed her the cup — made right, the way she liked it — and Emily wrapped both hands around it like it was the first kind thing that had happened to her all morning, even though I'd made her coffee before this one and kissed her forehead before she left.
"I'm presenting the register on Friday," she said.
"Danny mentioned."
"Did he ask if you'd come?"
"He told me I was coming. I said no."
"What changed your mind?"
Because she'd be standing in front of a room full of people doing something she was brilliant at, and other men would notice.
Because she'd wear something chosen for the evening, and I wanted to see it before anyone else.
Because she was leaving for Boston the next day, and every hour before then had started to feel borrowed.
"You said it matters to you."
Her face gentled. "It does."
"Then I'll be there."
"You don't have to."
A smile appeared over the rim of her cup. "Friday, then."
Emily wore green.
Not a dark, practical green — this was soft and deep, fitted at her waist and falling just below her knees. Her hair was down, curling against her shoulders in a way I'd never seen because she always pinned it back for the archive.
I had seen her naked. The dress was still a problem.
She was standing beside the display case when she saw me, and her smile reached me before she did — this warm, immediate thing that crossed the entire room.
She excused herself from Teller and came toward me, the green dress moving against her legs, and I'd spent the whole drive downstairs reminding myself that touching her in front of the board would draw attention.
That argument lasted until she stopped in front of me.
"You came."
"I said I would."
"I'm still glad." She reached up and touched my tie, smoothing the knot she'd already fixed upstairs like it was an excuse to put her hands on me. I let her have it.
I put my hand on her waist. People were watching. I could feel the interest from across the room — the quiet curiosity of people who'd never seen Alex Black voluntarily stand this close to another human being. I found I didn't care as much as I used to.
Emily looked up at me. "You're supposed to wish me luck."
"You don't need luck."
"That's sweet."
I kissed her instead.