Chapter Nine — Sienna
Ihave excellent reasons not to want him. They aren't working.
Five days since he found the wedding gown sketch. Five days of him not bringing it up again, and me not bringing it up either. Both of us circling the same unfinished conversation like it might resolve itself if we just give it enough room.
What I have this morning is a half-finished ivory linen sleeve and sleep-deprived fingers that have already botched the same gather twice.
I drank half of my espresso before six and the rest has gone cold at my elbow.
Pattern paper covers every flat surface in the studio, the good kind, the kind I used to ration.
A studio I've turned into the most functional workspace I've had in three years.
Which is its own problem.
I'm not supposed to feel at home here. Eighteen months, the label, my name on the deed. That was the deal. I signed it with clear eyes and forty-two dollars in my bank account. I knew what I was walking into.
I hadn't planned on wanting to stay.
The sleeve slips off the dress form. I catch it, repin the shoulder seam, and try again. My fingers are clumsy. That's the sleep deprivation. That is not him.
His shadow falls across the dress form before I hear him move.
I go still. Not dramatically. Just the small, involuntary freeze of a body that knows his approach before her brain does. Which is embarrassing and also not something I can stop.
"You're fighting it," he says. He isn't looking at the sleeve. He's looking at me.
"Good morning to you too."
He steps closer, coffee in hand, and looks at the gather I've been wrestling for the past twenty minutes. Something moves through his expression. Not critique, not the CEO one. The other one. The one that shows up when he forgets to manage it.
"The grain's pulling left," he says.
"I know."
"You've pinned it to compensate but it's fighting you."
"I know, Adrian."
"If you cut on the true bias—"
"I know how to cut on the bias." I set the pin between my teeth and don't look at him. "I've been cutting fabric since before you knew what fabric was."
He's quiet for a moment. Then, very calmly: "You're tired."
"I'm fine."
"You've repinned that shoulder three times."
I take the pin out of my teeth. "Were you watching me?"
"You're in my studio."
"Which I'm using for work. Which is the arrangement." I reach for another pin from the cushion on the workbench. "I don't need an audience."
He doesn't leave. Of course he doesn't leave.
Instead he sets his coffee down, crosses his arms, and keeps watching me. That stillness of his, it's not passive. It's more like a held breath, a man waiting for exactly the right moment to move.
The pin slips.
It's a long pin, the glass-headed kind, and it drops in that slow, inevitable way things do when you already know you're not going to catch it.
He plucks it from the air before it clears the edge of the workbench. His fingers close around it with a reflex that has no business being that fast. For a half-second his hand is right there, inches from mine. Close enough that I feel the warmth of his skin before he sets the pin down between us.
I do not thank him. I also don't move my hand away quite as fast as I should.
"The gather," he says. His voice is even. Like he hasn't noticed. Like his fingers grazing the back of my hand is nothing, an accident, and not the thing I'm going to be thinking about for the next three hours.
"You're tired and you're angry at something," he says, "and you're taking it out on the linen."
"I'm not angry."
"You've been in here since six."
"I work early."
"Sienna." Just my name. The private one. "Let me help."
I should say no. The word is right there, simple, one syllable, and I've been saying it to him in various forms since the contract signing. I'm good at no. No is one of my primary professional skills.
I don't say it.
He moves behind me.
His arms come around both sides. Not touching me, just framing. Bracketing the dress form and me in between, his chest close enough to my back that I can feel the warmth of him through my shirt. His hands find the linen.
He adjusts the shoulder, smoothing the grain with two fingers, resetting the drape with the quiet confidence of someone who's been watching closely enough to understand what it needs.
I don't move. I can't.
His arm brushes mine as he works. Once, then again. Each time is a vivid reminder of how his skin felt against mine five days ago, which is not a useful thing to be thinking about at seven in the morning with a half-finished sleeve.
"There," he says. The gather sits perfectly. Like it was always perfect. Like it was waiting for someone to stop fighting it.
He doesn't step back.
"You do this," he says, quietly, right against my ear, "with every piece. You design them like armor."
"Fashion is armor. That's the whole—"
"Not for clients." His chin is almost at my shoulder. "For yourself. This one. The Rosso gown. The wedding sketch." A pause. "You're trying to sew yourself into a world where I can't touch you."
It lands exactly where he means it to.
I reach for the shears on the bench. Pick them up. Turn them over in my hand. The cold steel and solid weight is a comfort tool I've been using since I was nineteen. When the world was still something I thought I could cut into shapes I controlled.
"Don't psychoanalyze my process," I say.
"I'm not. I'm just looking."
"You're overstepping."
"Probably." He finally steps back. Picks up his coffee and drinks. Looks at the dress form like he's reading a contract clause. "The gather is correct now. You can take credit if you want. I won't mention it."
I look at the sleeve. Perfect. Infuriating.
"Thank you," I say, through my teeth.
"You're welcome," he says, like he's enjoying himself.
"You're insufferable," I say.
"You've mentioned it." He finishes the coffee. "I find it easier to bear now that you've stopped pretending you don't notice."
He leaves me alone after that.
Which should feel like relief. Mostly it feels like something has been removed from the room.
***
Istay in the studio until midnight.
This isn't unusual. I've been keeping studio hours that would concern Izzy, but Izzy isn't here.
The Rosso collection isn't going to build itself.
And the studio at midnight has something I haven't found anywhere else in years.
The skylights going dark. The city's amber light bleeding through in a low wash.
The fabric rolls standing in their cabinets like a chorus waiting for their cue.
I'm in the fabric aisle when I hear him come downstairs.
The aisle isn't really an aisle. It's the long stretch between the shelving units where I've organized the roll of fabric by weight and season. A habit from my old studio that I recreated here without thinking about it.
I'm pulling a length of deep crimson silk, running it between my fingers. Checking the hand. The way good silk gives under your fingertips, the way it moves like water or doesn't. This bolt is perfect. Exactly what the third look needs.
I see him at the end of the isle, "You're still here."
He's not wearing his jacket. Shirt open at the collar, sleeves rolled, the look of a man who's also been working since morning and hasn't stopped.
He has a glass of water and he's looking at me the way he's been looking at me all day.
Like I'm something he stopped trying to figure out because figuring it out would end it.
"So are you," I say.
"I had calls."
"I had a collection."
He walks toward me. Not fast. The unhurried pace of a man who has decided to close a distance and isn't pretending otherwise.
I should step back. The aisle is narrow and he's tall. The crimson silk is draped over my shoulder. Every sensible part of me is saying the same thing: step back, put space between you, don't let this happen again until you know what it means.
I don't step back.
"That color." He stops in front of me. Close. His eyes drop to the silk at my shoulder, then back up. "It's the same as the scarf."
"I know what color it is."
His hand comes up slowly. He touches the silk.
Just the edge of it, his fingers closing loosely around the fabric where it drapes over my shoulder.
His knuckles close enough to my collarbone that I feel the warmth.
"I've been watching you work with it all week and I keep thinking about the first night. "
"Adrian."
"The workbench." His voice has dropped. "The way you looked at me."
"We're not talking about that."
"We've been not talking about it for five days."
"That's been working."
"Has it." Not a question. He already knows. He can read the answer off my face, which hasn't been cooperating with me for approximately forty-eight hours.
"You could at least pretend to believe me."
"I could." He doesn't. "I'd be lying. You'd know it. Then we'd both be lying instead of just one of us."
I make myself look at him directly. "What do you want from me?"
He's quiet for a moment. The silk shifts between his fingers.
"I'm addicted to watching you work," he says. "The way you tructure, line, what a room needs, what a negotiation needs. What a piece of fabric needs." His jaw tightens slightly. "It's the same thing every time. I don't have a word for it."
"I've sat across from Nobel laureates and used-car salesmen with the same practiced interest," he says. "You're the only person who's ever made me forget which one I was talking to."
"That's not a compliment."
"It wasn't supposed to be one. It was supposed to be true."
"Genius," I say. Not showing off. Just telling the truth.
"Yes." No hesitation. "That." His hand moves and the silk moves with it.
His fingers find my jaw, tilt my chin up.
I haven't decided whether to let that happen, but it already is.
"Not just that. The way you stand when you're thinking.
The way you argued Clause 12 like you meant every word when walking out. "
I stop breathing.