6. Ashton
Ashton
I’m out of my chair before I decide to stand, and that’s the first sign the night’s gotten away from me.
Across the room, Sophia has crossed to the doorway where Imogen has Luke by the hand two steps short of a clean getaway, and she’s slid into their path with the smile she keeps loaded around the clock.
My boy’s shoulders ride up toward his ears.
Imogen settles a half step in front of him without appearing to move at all.
The second sign the night’s away from me is what’s coming up through my chest as I cross the floor.
I’ve spent three days wanting to fuck her and keeping my distance from her.
This is not that. This has decided in some place below thought that no one gets to needle her while I’m in the room and that no one threatens her where I can hear it.
She’s Luke’s tutor, my employee, and the daughter of the man who built me.
The part of me crossing this floor only cares that Sophia is standing too close to her, and that I’m going to put a stop to it.
“You’re hoarding the help, Sophia.” Low, pleasant, pitched for three people and the carpet. In a room wired like this one you fight under your breath or you don’t fight. “Let her work.”
“I’m being friendly.” The smile holds. “I’m a friendly person. Everyone says so.”
“Only the ones who’ve never met you.”
“There he is.” Her face warms, because scorn from me is the last present she still enjoys unwrapping. “I’d started to wonder if the divorce took your sense of humor in the settlement.”
“You got the apartment in France. I got to stop pretending to like it there. We both came out ahead.”
Next to me Imogen tries to turn a laugh into a cough but does a poor job of it.
I feel the sound move down my back before I understand why, but then I notice how close she is.
Close enough that the warmth of her arm hovers near mine, close enough that when her breath catches on the swallowed laugh every instinct I’ve got wants to turn and look at her, but I don’t, because Sophia notices everything and I’ve handed her enough tonight by getting up too fast.
“Take Luke to the restroom,” I tell Imogen, eyes still on my ex-wife, because turning my head is the one move I can’t make in this room. “Give us a minute.”
She reads me quicker than anyone in my life ever has, and she goes, my son tucked under one hand, her chin lifted like she’s walking a small foreign minister out of a building that’s on fire.
Luke checks over his shoulder for me once.
I give him the nod that says I’ve got it, and he takes me at my word, which is the only account I keep that I refuse to overdraw.
“You always did have a weakness for strays.” She turns the glass by its stem, gaze drifting down the hall after Imogen, then back to me.
“Take one in, feed it, tell yourself it’s about the boy.
The trouble is how it looks from the outside, and we both know looks are the only thing that survives a courtroom. ”
My jaw wants to set, but I keep it loose. “You’re describing a man being civil to an employee.”
“I’m describing a man who shot up out of his seat at his own dinner because his ex-wife wandered too near the nanny.” She angles her head. “Try watching yourself from across a table sometime. It’s quite a performance, and you’re not as quiet as you think.”
She’s good. She has always been ruthless and she has always been good, and the cruelest joke of divorcing a woman this sharp is how much I miss the fight when it’s gone. I keep my hands loose at my sides, because letting her watch them curl is a tell I won’t give away for free.
“Say what you came for, Sophia. Then get out of my dinner.”
“You’ve spent a year convincing this city you’re a safe pair of hands.
The rebuilt man, the devoted father, all of it done in public where it counts.
” She drains the champagne and sets the empty flute down on the linen without a sound.
“Your IPO is three weeks out. Investors don’t put money behind a man who looks like his private life is on fire.
One ugly story at the right moment, and all that careful work comes down. ”
“There’s no story.”
“There’s always a story. There’s the true one and the one I tell, and a family court has only ever once cared to hear which is which.” She offers it the way she offers everything, a dish I’d be ill-mannered to wave away. “You taught me most of this, you know. I was simply a fast study.”
“Then let me teach you one more thing.” I keep my voice down where the room can’t reach it, which is how she knows I mean it.
“Come at me, and I’ll wear it. I’m used to weather.
But you point any of this at Luke, you use my son as a card in a game you started, and you’ll find out exactly how much of me you only ever saw the polite version of. ”
“Threats. From you.” She presses a hand to her chest like I’ve moved her. “I’d almost forgotten you had it in you. The man I divorced apologized for the thermostat.”
“The man you divorced had something to lose by fighting you. I don’t anymore.”
“Don’t you?” She lets it sit a second, her eyes moving toward the hallway where Imogen took Luke. It’s not long, but it’s enough. “You stood up awfully fast for a man with nothing to lose.”
I don’t answer that, but she doesn’t need me to.
“Everyone has something to lose, Ashton. The trick is finding out what.” She smooths a nonexistent crease from her sleeve and steps back, done with me, already turning toward the doors and the night beyond them.
“Sophia.”
She stops, not turning around.
“He’s six years old. Whatever you’ve decided about me, leave him out of it.”
She’s quiet for a moment. When she speaks, her voice has lost the performance edge, just for a second, the one beat where I catch a glimpse of the woman I married before she armored herself into this one. “I know how old he is, Ashton.”
Then the smile comes back up, and that woman’s gone.
“If your tutor stays,” she says, “I’ll make sure the court hears about it.”