Chapter 17 #2
Talia laughed softly. “There’s water, and I’ve had some.”
“Good.”
I had a rum old fashioned in my own hand already, mostly because it gave me something to do while I watched her work the rooftop and tried not to act like the plum dress was a public offense.
We stood near one of the planters for a minute talking.
Not about anything especially deep. Just enough to let me hear her voice up close and watch the way she shifted in and out of professional mode without ever sounding fake.
Talia never became somebody else for a room.
She just turned certain parts of herself up or down depending on who was standing in front of her.
I respected the hell out of that.
She had just leaned in to say something about one of the client-side creatives when I saw him coming from the bar.
Nigga was smiling too wide before he even reached us.
I knew the type immediately. The kind of man who decided a woman’s politeness had hidden meaning because it was easier than admitting she was just good at her job and not interested in him.
Talia saw him too.
I felt the change in her before I even looked down. Her face stayed pleasant, but the ease went out of it a little. Tight around the mouth. Not enough for anybody else to call it.
Enough for me.
He stepped up, drink in hand, the city behind him and too much confidence in front of him.
“Talia,” he said, and already I didn’t like how familiar he was making it sound. “I been trying to catch you all night.”
She gave him the professional smile. “Andre.”
There he was.
Andre’s eyes flicked to me and back to her, still trying to figure out the room while standing in it.
I slid my arm around her waist and pulled her in against my side. Not hard. Not for show. Just enough to answer the question before he asked it.
“Micah,” I said, leaning close enough to let him hear the ownership in the introduction if he had ears. “What’s good.”
“Talia, this your—”
“Micah,” she said smoothly, one hand light against my chest. “This is Andre Gaines. Client side.”
I nodded once.
Andre tried another smile, but it sat wrong on him now. “I was just telling Talia I’ve been trying to steal a few minutes.”
No, you weren’t.
You were trying to test the perimeter.
I looked at him and took a slow sip of my drink before I answered.
“I’m not here for the event,” I said. “I’m here for her.”
The air between us went still for exactly one beat, even with the rooftop carrying on around us.
Andre heard it.
Talia did too.
Her body softened just a fraction closer into mine, and that nearly distracted me from the man in front of us.
Andre cleared his throat. “Aight.”
I kept looking at him.
Talia kept looking at him.
He finally nodded, uncomfortable now in the way men got when the script they had written in their head turned out not to match the room at all.
“I got you, my man,” he said. “Good choice.”
Then he walked off, heading toward a group near the railing like he had somewhere to be all of a sudden.
I watched him go long enough to make sure he kept going.
When I looked back down, Talia was already watching me.
“Not sure why he wanted to act a fool,” she said.
She smiled, but her eyes stayed on mine like she was still reading me.
I shook my head and leaned in closer, my mouth near her ear because some things belonged to us even when we were standing in public with half the city lit up behind us.
“Talia, you fine as fuck, smarter than half this rooftop, and your ass in this plum dress is all anybody can see. Baby, he had every reason to act a fool.” I let my hand slide lower at her waist, just enough to make the next line land. “But I set him straight. He’ll be aight.”
Her eyes searched mine after that.
Not in a doubtful way.
In that slow, searching way a woman looked at a man when she was pleased by what she saw and maybe a little moved by it too.
I swallowed once, sudden and hard, because there it was.
No more pretending we were circling.
No more calling this a vibe or a little situation or some grown-people arrangement that hadn’t quite taken shape yet.
We were a thing.
Real enough that another man stepping wrong toward her made something ancient and possessive in me rise up without permission. Real enough that she looked calmer after I said what I said. Real enough that some part of me kept asking what I had done to deserve her.
She touched my wrist lightly. “You’re trouble.”
“I’ve been hearing that.”
“From me.”
I smiled. “Still counts.”
The rest of the mixer moved the way rooftop events did once the drinks settled in and the view started doing half the work.
Conversations drifted from the bar to the railings, from lounge seating to high-tops, from business into something looser.
Work happened around us. She moved in and out where needed, checking on the caterer, speaking to Burton’s people, making sure a photographer got the right shots without making it look like she was managing the whole sky.
I kept to the edges without hovering.
Mariah gave me one look near the bar that said she knew exactly what had happened with Andre and approved of how it ended. Zaria’s little nod at Talia later made me think she knew too.
By the time it wrapped, the rooftop had cooled.
The candles on the cocktail tables flickered harder in the breeze, and Talia looked tired in that pretty, worn-down way women did after being on for too many hours in heels.
I took her wrap from the back of a chair before she had to reach for it and settled it over her shoulders myself.
She looked up at me, soft around the eyes now.
“You always do the little things,” she said.
“That’s because the little things be the real things.”
That got me a look I carried all the way to the elevator.
Downstairs, the city had thinned some. Traffic easier. Air softer. I opened her door, waited until she got settled, then went around to my side and started the truck.
The drive to her place didn’t need much talking.
We had done enough of that all evening. She sat with one hand resting on her thigh, head turned slightly toward the window, and every now and then the streetlights caught her face and showed me a woman who looked happy in a way that had become deeply important to me without my consent.
Halfway there, she looked over.
“You staying?”
I smiled and glanced in the rearview.
“My bag already packed.”
That got a laugh out of her, low and delighted.
“You planned that?”
“I planned options.”
“That’s slick.”
“That’s grown.”
She shook her head, still smiling, and reached across the console to put her hand on my thigh.
That touch sat warm on me the rest of the drive.
At her house, I grabbed my bag before I came around to get her. She looked at it, then at me, and something about that quiet little exchange felt more intimate than a lot of the sex we had in the past week.
Not because the sex wasn’t good.
Because this meant tomorrow.
Morning.
Real life.
Going to work from her place like it belonged in the rhythm of us.
Inside, she kicked off her heels by the door, and I set my bag down beside the console like it had every right to be there.
Then she turned to me.
We kissed in the quiet of her foyer, slow at first, no hurry on it. Just the feel of her mouth, the scent of her skin, the softness of her body under my hands, all of it settling me and winding me up at the same time.
When we pulled apart, she smiled against my mouth.
“You looked good up there tonight,” I told her.
She laughed softly. “Up there?”
“On that rooftop. In your lane. In that dress. All of it.”
Her eyes held mine.
“You came for me.”
“Yeah.”
“I know.”
There was so much in the way she said that I didn’t even try to answer it with words.
I picked up my bag with one hand, caught hers with the other, and let her lead me upstairs.
And walking behind Talia Vaughn toward her bedroom with my overnight bag in my hand and work clothes ready for tomorrow, I had the clearest thought I’d had all week.
Whatever this was, it had already become part of my real life.
And I wasn’t trying to lose it.