Chapter 1 #2
“The not listening. She’s deciding something right now, and he doesn’t even know it.”
Isaac glanced back at the couple. The woman’s smile hadn’t changed, but her hand had dropped from the man’s arm. “You think?”
“She got dressed up, came to a party, and the person she came with would rather be somewhere else. That’s not a date. That’s a countdown.”
He laughed. She steered them slightly, turning him so they had a better view of the room, and kept going.
“See the two by the champagne tower? They came separately. They’re pretending they don’t know each other.”
Isaac found them. A man in his fifties adjusting his cufflinks. A woman twenty years younger studying the auction catalog with intense focus. “How can you tell?”
“Because they’re trying too hard not to look at each other. Nobody works that hard at ignoring a stranger.”
He watched for a few seconds. The man glanced toward the woman. She didn’t look up, but her posture shifted—straightened, softened. “Okay, I see it.”
“And the guy at the end of the bar, the one on his third scotch? He’s rehearsing a speech.”
“For tonight?”
“For his wife when he gets home. He’s been moving his lips every time he thinks no one’s watching.”
Isaac checked. The man was staring into his glass, jaw working around words that hadn’t found their way out yet. “Maybe he’s just drunk.”
“Drunk guys don’t practice. They just talk. He’s got something specific to say, and he’s terrified of getting it wrong.”
Three couples. Three stories. Every one of them pointed outward. She kept his eyes on the room and off of her, and she did it so smoothly that he almost didn’t catch it.
Damn, maybe Zodiac should hire her. Whatever her job was in event planning, she also had some pretty fucking good people-reading skills.
She caught him looking at her and held his gaze, one eyebrow barely raised.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing.”
“You were about to say something.”
“I was about to say you’re good at this.”
“At what?”
“Seeing people.”
She didn’t take the compliment. Didn’t deflect it either. Just held it for a moment and let it pass. “Everybody’s good at it. Most people just don’t pay attention.”
The second song ended. A pause stretched between them—that natural seam where one of them should step back, say thanks, let go. Isaac felt it open and waited.
Fallon’s hand stayed on his shoulder. Her thumb shifted, settling in rather than pulling away.
“I like this song,” she said.
The third song hadn’t started yet.
“Me too,” Isaac agreed.
The space between them closed by half an inch. Her fingers rested against the back of his neck now, just barely, just the tips. His thumb traced a slow line against the fabric at her waist. Small adjustments that neither of them acknowledged.
Or stopped.
They kept talking. Lower now, more for each other than for conversation’s sake.
She told him the auction items were overpriced and that the crab cakes were the only thing worth eating at the buffet.
He told her the quartet’s cellist was the only one actually enjoying herself.
Fallon said she could tell by the way the woman leaned into the low notes.
Isaac said he could tell because she was the only musician not watching the clock on the back wall.
The pauses got longer. Neither of them rushed to fill them.
Damn, she was striking. The simplicity of her next to the overdone glitter of the ballroom.
The absence of effort. But it wasn’t her looks that kept him on this dance floor through a third song he couldn’t have named at gunpoint.
It was that she was honest. No polish, no pretense, nothing calculated.
Every other person here was selling something—status, connections, the polished fiction that they belonged. Fallon wasn’t selling anything. She wasn’t impressed by any of it, including him. And instead of making him try harder, it made him stop trying altogether.
He didn’t want to be charming with her. He just wanted to keep talking.
But then across the ballroom, a hand went up. Graham Ashford, standing near the south corridor, had finally surfaced. The restrained half-wave of a man who didn’t want to shout across a crowded floor.
Fuck.
Isaac’s own hand stilled against Fallon’s waist. He didn’t want to leave her but couldn’t ignore the real reason he was here.
“I have to go deal with something,” he said. “Thirty minutes, maybe less.”
She pulled back enough to look at him. Reading him the same way she’d read everyone else tonight. “Okay.”
“Meet me at the bar?”
“Maybe.”
He held her gaze. “That’s not a yes.”
“It’s not a no, either.” She stepped out of his frame. The loss of contact registered immediately—a small, specific absence where her hand had been. “Go do your thing, Isaac.”
He watched her for one more beat. Then, regretting every life choice he’d ever made, he turned and walked toward Graham. When he glanced over his shoulder, Fallon had already disappeared into the crowd.
Graham Ashford was a reasonable man. Mid-sixties, trim, with silver hair that looked like it cost a hundred dollars a month to maintain. He shook Isaac’s hand with a grip that meant business and got right to it.
“I have to say, I wasn’t thrilled about being told someone would be here watching my son tonight.”
“I understand that. But we need to see how a client moves through his world before we can protect him in it.”
Graham’s jaw tightened, then released. “Fair enough. I suppose that’s why I’m paying for the best.”
Isaac almost pointed out that Zodiac Tactical hadn’t agreed to take on the case yet. That was the biggest part of the reason he was here tonight.
“Trent isn’t—” Graham paused. Chose his words. “He doesn’t think he needs this. I’m hoping you can change his mind.”
“We’re not in the business of convincing people to accept protection, Mr. Ashford. If Trent doesn’t want to cooperate with a security detail, there’s nothing we can do for him.”
“He doesn’t understand the severity of the threats.”
“Then you’ll have to help him understand. Show him what you showed us. We’ll take the job if he’s willing to work with us, but if he’s going to fight the detail, dodge his team, or treat my people like the help, we walk. No exceptions.”
Graham studied him. Whatever he saw must have landed, because he nodded slowly. “Fair enough. I appreciate the directness.”
“It’s the only way this works.”
“I’ll talk to Trent. Make sure he understands.”
Isaac nodded. “Then I’m sure Zodiac will be a good fit for your needs, although Ian DeRose will have ultimate say.”
“You’d be the one guarding Trent?”
Fuck no. Isaac wouldn’t last one shift with Trent without knocking him on his ass. “He’ll have an around-the-clock team, all top notch. All making sure Trent is safe.”
Graham didn’t like that, but Isaac didn’t care. Zodiac would keep Trent alive. That was all that mattered in the long run.
They shook hands again, and went their separate ways. The whole conversation took less than fifteen minutes.
Isaac made his way to the bar and ordered a bourbon.
He was early. That was fine. He drank slowly, watching the room the way he’d been watching it all night.
Except now he kept looking for Fallon. The dark dress, the thin chain.
A couple of times he thought he caught her near the edges of the dance floor, but it was never her.
She didn’t show up. He waited well past the allotted thirty minutes, but Fallon was gone.
He finished the bourbon and sat with the glass for another minute, turning it slowly on the napkin.
The maybe hadn’t been a maybe. He could see that now. It had been a no delivered with grace, and he’d heard it and chosen to hope, anyway. He wasn’t angry about it. Wasn’t hurt, exactly. It was flatter than that.
Three songs on a dance floor with a woman who didn’t need him to be anything other than present, and the night had felt sharp-edged and alive. Now she was gone, and the ballroom was just a ballroom again, and he was just a guy in a tuxedo at a charity event he couldn’t remember the cause of.
He pushed away from the bar and headed toward the door. His business here was done.
The quartet was playing something new as he walked by. The crowd moved and glittered and performed for each other the same way they had all night, the same way they would at the next one, wherever that ended up being.
Isaac walked out alone.