9. Rafe #2
At work, Quinn smiled like someone who understood the practical value of warmth. The smile she wore now had no office polish on it, no professional guard, no careful adjustment for audience. It was simply hers, and for a moment the narrow stairwell seemed less dim because she was standing in it.
Max descended first, wearing the plum tie and looking absurdly dignified. He also looked, somehow, aware of the effect.
Quinn followed with one hand on the railing, Max’s lead around her wrist, and the other hand gathering the skirt of her dress to keep it from catching beneath her heels. “Before you say anything, yes, Max knows he looks handsome, and no, he won’t be humble about it.”
“I hadn’t planned to comment on his humility.”
“That’s because you’ve never lived with him. It’s a daily struggle.”
She reached the last step, glanced from Max to me, and in that fraction of distraction, her heel slipped against the worn edge of the stair.
I moved before I thought.
My hand caught her at the waist. Her fingers closed around my forearm, quick and firm, and the momentum brought her close enough that the scent of her perfume, clean and faintly floral, overshadowed the old-building smell of dust and radiator heat.
The dress was smooth beneath my palm, and her heat radiated through it.
Her smile had vanished, replaced by a startled look that made her seem less practiced, less quick to cover herself with humor. Her hand stayed on my arm. Mine stayed at her waist. The stairwell around us was too narrow, the silence too complete, Max too tactfully still at our feet.
Then Quinn let out a small laugh, breathless and embarrassed. “Well. That was almost the shortest legal career in history.”
I should’ve released her immediately.
I didn’t.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
“No. Just humbled by footwear, which I did warn Octavia was possible.”
Only then did I let my hand fall away, though the shape of her waist seemed to have imprinted against my palm. She smoothed the front of her dress with more care than necessary and looked anywhere but directly at me.
Max gave a quiet huff.
“Well. Good evening,” I said, because every other possible sentence had temporarily abandoned me.
I took a few steps back because proximity to her was making me stupid.
Quinn stood at the bottom of the stairs and glanced down at Max. “Did you hear that? You got a good evening. That’s rich-person speak for wow, Max, you look incredible.”
Max’s ears shifted.
“I was addressing both of you,” I said.
Her gaze came back to mine, quick and searching. “Very diplomatic.”
“It is one of my lesser-known skills.”
“Lesser known because you hide it under all the glaring?”
“I do not glare.”
“You absolutely do.”
I should’ve given a dry answer to reset the balance between us. Instead, I watched the dress move around her as she walked toward me.
There was nothing indecent about it. The cut was elegant, the neckline modest, the skirt fluid without clinging.
Still, every step made it clear that Quinn possessed an ease inside herself that her office clothes had only hinted at.
She wasn’t polished in the way the women at these events often were, all expensive understatement and inherited certainty.
Quinn’s polish had an edge. Ingenuity. She’d met the requirements without disappearing into them.
She was stunning.
That, I thought, would be difficult for people to dismiss.
“You look…” I swallowed hard.
Her eyebrows rose.
I had no idea why language had become abruptly insufficient.
Compliments were not complicated. They were social tools, easily deployed when necessary.
Beautiful was accurate but too intimate.
Lovely was too light. Appropriate was true and insulting.
Striking was closer, but it sounded like something said about a portrait rather than a person standing in front of me with one hand on a retired military dog’s leash and anxiety carefully disguised as banter.
“You chose well,” I said at last.
For half a second, disappointment crossed her face so quickly I might have missed it if I hadn’t been watching too closely.
Then her smile recovered. “Wow. Put that on my tombstone.”
I exhaled through my nose. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
“No, it’s good. Devastating to nobody’s ego.”
“You look striking,” I said.
The words came out more intensely than I intended.
Her smile faltered again, but I caught the twinkle in her eyes. The street noise seemed to recede by a few degrees. Max stood between us, watchful, plum tie centered perfectly against his chest.
“Oh,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
The exchange should’ve ended there, neatly and safely, but Quinn kept looking at me, and I found I could not look away.
I didn’t know what she saw in my face.
I knew only what I was trying not to show: that the sight of her had affected me, and that seeing her here, in a building with worn steps that had unsettled me for reasons I didn’t yet want to examine, made the evening feel less like a legal strategy and more like a threshold.
And that was unacceptable.
She was attached to my legal team because of a boon she’d negotiated with admirable nerve. Tonight served a purpose. We were attending the gala to secure access to a museum director who had ignored direct channels and surrounded herself with philanthropic noise.
Quinn had earned her place because she was resourceful, not because I enjoyed the way she looked at me when I surprised her.
Max sneezed.
Quinn looked down at him, then back at me, color still high in her cheeks. “He says thank you, too.”
“He sneezed.”
“It’s a form of communication.”
“Ah.”
We walked out of her atrocious building, and my driver came around to open the rear door.
Quinn glanced at the car, and I watched her take in the sleek black body, the soft interior lighting, the polished details that had been invisible to me until I saw them through her eyes.
She recovered quickly, but not before I caught the quick shift of calculation.
The tiny mental adjustment of someone reminding herself not to be impressed by the wrong things.
“I had the driver bring a different car than I normally would,” I said.
Her eyes snapped back to me. “What?”
“This one has more room in the back. I thought Max might prefer to lie down.”
“You changed cars for my dog?”
“He is seventy pounds, elderly, and wearing formal attire. Making him fold himself into a sedan seemed discourteous.”
“I just didn’t expect you to prepare for him like a visiting ambassador.”
“He’s part of the strategy,” I said, then looked down at Max. “And he’s wearing formal attire. It only seemed right.”
Max stepped forward.
Quinn’s smile returned, softer this time. “Careful, Virelli. People might start thinking you’re thoughtful.”
“They would be wrong.”
“Would they?”
“Yes.” I gestured toward the open door. “I’m merely thorough.”
“Of course,” she said. “Heaven forbid we mislabel you.”
As she climbed into the car, gathering the skirt with an instinctive care that made me want to tell her again that she looked striking, I turned slightly toward the street and drew in a calming breath.
Get yourself together, Virelli, you easily distracted bastard.
I got in after Quinn and closed the door behind me.
Max had already settled on the floor across from her, his plum tie perfectly centered, body angled so he could keep both Quinn and the door in view.
The larger car had been the right choice.
He had enough room to stretch out, and Quinn had noticed.
She’d thanked me once already, lightly, almost teasing, but there had been something softer beneath it that I’d no intention of examining.
The driver pulled away from the curb.
For a few seconds, no one spoke.
The silence should not have bothered me. Silence was one of the few social conditions I preferred. It left fewer opportunities for people to say foolish things and expect me to pretend they hadn’t. But this silence felt less like quiet and more like an object placed carefully between us.
I adjusted the cuffs of my sleeves.
There. A normal thing to do with my hands.
I’d never been awkward in my life. Not in boardrooms, not in pack gatherings, not in social events where everyone had learned the same language of money and never admitted it was a language at all.
But with Quinn Bradley beside me, with the scent of her perfume in the air and the memory of my hand at her waist still inconveniently present, I found myself reaching for something to do.
The car had a small cabinet in the side console. I opened it, removed a tumbler, then the whiskey.
Quinn’s gaze dropped to the bottle. “Is that whiskey?”
“Yes.”
“In the car?”
“In the car cooler.”
She turned her head slowly toward me. “You understand that saying car cooler doesn’t make it any less ridiculous, right?”
“It’s not ridiculous.”
“Rafe, there’s secret vehicle whiskey within arm’s reach.”
“It’s not secret. You’re looking directly at it.”
“That’s not the point.”
I poured a small amount, mostly because I’d begun and stopping now would make the action appear stranger than continuing. “Would you like one?”
“Before a professional event where I’m supposed to help charm a museum director?”
“It’s optional.”
“You don’t want to see what the interaction would be like if you served me pre-conversation alcohol.”
“It’s a small pour.”
“That’s exactly what people say before they butcher a karaoke performance.”
I paused with the bottle angled. “So, no?”
“No, thank you.”
I returned the bottle to its compartment. “There’s water as well.”
“Water would be great. That’s the beverage of someone who will remember which fork she’s supposed to use.”
I handed her a bottle, and our fingers brushed. A brief touch, barely enough to matter.
It mattered.
Why did it fucking matter?
Quinn jerked away, which gave me the deeply unreasonable satisfaction of not being the only one affected.