3. Declan
Declan
“Absolutely not.” Talia doesn't raise her voice when she says it. She doesn't need to.
Across the table, James Porter from Ashcroft wisely lowers his coffee instead of taking a sip.
Rebecca Lawson merely adjusts her glasses and makes another note in the margin of her folder.
At the head of the table, Graham remains the picture of executive calm, though I've worked with him long enough to recognize the amusement hiding behind his CEO face.
Marcus, meanwhile, looks personally offended by the existence of disagreement, which, to be fair, is his natural state.
I lean back in my chair and twirl my pen between my fingers.
“Good morning to you too.”
Talia doesn't smile.
“The answer is still no.”
“Interesting strategy.”
“It worked yesterday.”
“That was yesterday. Today I came prepared.”
Her eyes lift from the contract.
“So did I.”
God help me.
Yesterday, seeing Talia again had knocked the air out of me. Today, I'm ready. I've reviewed every risk model twice, anticipated her objections, and arrived with enough revised language to satisfy three attorneys and a hostage negotiator.
I'm prepared. Unfortunately, so is she.
“Six weeks,” I say.
“Eight.”
“Seven.”
“Eight.”
“That doesn't feel very collaborative.”
“It feels accurate.”
A quiet laugh escapes James before he catches himself.
I point toward him. “Careful. Encouragement only makes her stronger.”
“I'm staying out of it,” he says quickly.
“Coward.”
“Professional,” Talia corrects.
“Same thing in a different suit.”
That earns me the smallest twitch at the corner of her mouth.
It isn't a smile, not even close, but it's enough, which is ridiculous.
I am a thirty-six-year-old man, not a golden retriever celebrating scraps of affection.
Yet apparently, my brain has decided that any evidence Talia remembers how to enjoy herself is worthy of a small parade.
Unfortunate. Very unfortunate. Because she looks beautiful today.
Not in a dramatic way. Talia doesn't enter rooms demanding attention.
She simply assumes competence and lets the rest of the world catch up.
Her navy blazer is impeccably tailored. Her dark hair falls neatly over one shoulder.
Small pearl earrings catch the sunlight coming through the windows, and every now and then she pushes a loose strand behind her ear in a gesture my body remembers with deeply offensive accuracy.
Seven years should have dulled something. Instead, every memory remains in pristine condition. Apparently, my subconscious believes in excellent recordkeeping.
Marcus clears his throat.
“The timeline,” he says with the patience of a man herding children. “Perhaps we should return to the timeline.”
“Fine,” I say.
Talia flips to another page.
“The problem isn't the six-week review. It's what happens afterward.”
Graham leans forward slightly.
“Walk us through it.”
And she does, which is a problem. If Talia were difficult for the sake of being difficult, I could handle that. If she enjoyed hearing herself speak, Marcus would have dismantled her ten minutes ago, and everyone could go home.
Instead, she proceeds to explain exactly why the current integration schedule creates unnecessary exposure for both companies.
She moves through vendor transitions, employee retention, and compliance reviews with the kind of quiet confidence that comes from actually understanding the material rather than simply presenting it.
And somewhere around the five-minute mark, I realize two deeply irritating things. First, she's right, and second, I like listening to her. Neither discovery improves my mood.
“She has a point,” Adrian says.
“Traitor,” I mutter.
Adrian lifts his coffee. “At my age, I've earned the privilege.”
“By siding against me?”
“By siding with facts.”
Beside me, Marcus nods once. “She isn't wrong.”
I look heavenward. “Et tu, Brute?”
“You don't know enough Latin to make that reference correctly,” Marcus says.
“That's hurtful.”
“Accuracy often is.”
Even Graham smiles at that.
Across the table, Talia's expression softens for half a second before she catches herself, and there it is again.
Not the memories I've spent seven years refusing to examine too closely, or even the hotel room, the tangled sheets, and all the ways one night somehow managed to survive the passage of time.
It’s the warmth. The woman who laughs despite herself, the softness that appears and disappears before most people notice it. The brief flashes of something gentler beneath all that intelligence and control.
That’s what I remember most. Apparently, I remember all of it.
“Fine,” I say with a sigh dramatic enough to earn a look from Marcus. “Suppose I admit, hypothetically, that you may possess one or two valid points.”
“How generous.”
“I know. I should receive some sort of award.”
“I'll notify Stockholm.”
“Thank you.”
Her eyes meet mine, and just like yesterday, the room changes by half a degree.
Nothing obvious, nothing anyone else would notice.
Papers still shuffle around the table, and traffic continues moving below the windows, indifferent to the fact that Talia is looking at me like we're discussing something far more dangerous than compliance schedules.
James continues pretending he isn't fascinated by whatever strange game the two of us are apparently playing. But something’s there between us anyway. Recognition, history, or a thousand unanswered questions beneath a discussion about compliance schedules.
And God help me, I think she's enjoying this. Not enough to make things easy, because Talia doesn’t appear to believe in easy, but enough to make things interesting. Which is unfortunate, considering interesting women have always been something of a weakness.
The smile leaves my face slowly enough that I doubt anyone else notices right away.
Talia does.
For all her careful distance, she still catches the small things. The shift beneath the charm. The moment the joke stops being a joke. The exact second my attention narrows from easy amusement into something quieter and far less forgiving.
“Predictable professionally,” she says, and the confidence in her voice is not quite as absolute as it was a moment ago.
I turn my pen once between my fingers before setting it down beside the contract. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
Her fingers tighten slightly around the edge of her folder. “It’s what I meant.”
I let silence stretch for a moment.
Not because I’m angry. Anger is too loud, and I have never found much use for it across a negotiation table.
This is something else entirely. Something sharper.
Something I do not particularly care to examine in a room full of legal teams, executives, and enough unresolved history to turn the air thin.
Across the table, Graham finally looks up from his tablet.
Beside him, Marcus’s attention shifts between Talia and me with the resigned patience of a man who has recently learned, in very public fashion, that feelings do not respect meeting agendas.
Adrian, meanwhile, appears fascinated by his coffee, which is poor performance from a man who notices everything and usually has the decency to pretend he doesn’t.
Talia clears her throat and looks back at the contract. “We should probably return to section eight.”
“We probably should.”
Graham exhales, quiet but decisive. “Let’s take five.”
The room accepts the suggestion with almost embarrassing speed.
James stands first, his relief so obvious I consider advising him to never play poker.
Rebecca follows with considerably more dignity, though she pauses long enough to give Talia a brief look I can’t interpret but instinctively distrust. Marcus rises next, gathers his tablet, and stops beside my chair.
“Try not to set anything on fire,” he says under his breath.
“I’ll do my best.”
“That has never reassured anyone.”
“Your faith in me is touching.”
“My faith in you is conditional.”
“Marriage has made you cynical.”
“Marriage has made me observant.” His gaze flicks once toward Talia before returning to me. “You stopped smiling.”
Wonderful. Apparently, matrimony has not dulled his ability to be deeply irritating.
“Go away, Marcus.”
His mouth twitches, which is as close as he comes to laughing at work unless Sloane is involved. “Gladly.”
Graham claps a hand briefly against my shoulder on his way past. “Behave.”
“That’s a vague instruction.”
“It’s the only one I trust you to misunderstand creatively.”
Then he leaves, and Adrian follows last without a word, which somehow says more than if he had stayed behind to lecture me.
The door closes, and the conference room becomes much too quiet.
Talia remains seated, her folder closed beneath one hand, her posture composed in that careful way people adopt when they are trying not to reveal they wish they were somewhere else.
The city glints beyond the windows, bright and indifferent, all motion and glass and distance.
Below us, traffic moves through the streets as if nothing important has happened, which is usually how the world behaves during inconvenient personal revelations.
I lean back in my chair. “You know, predictable feels unnecessarily personal.”
Her eyes lift to mine. “It wasn’t meant that way.”
“No?”
“No.” Her expression softens slightly, though she seems to regret it as soon as it happens. “I was talking about your negotiation style.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
I should ask like what, but even I’m not committed enough to the lie. Instead, I reach for my pen and turn it once between my fingers. “Maybe because predictability is what people call a pattern when they stop looking closely.”
Talia’s mouth parts, then closes again. For once, she does not answer immediately, and I enjoy that far more than I should.
“I shouldn’t have said it that way,” she says.