CHAPTER FOUR
DOMINIC
He sat in the conference room after she left and didn’t move for four minutes.
He knew it was four minutes because he watched the clock on the far wall and let the time pass without doing anything with it.
She’d called him by his process. She’d said that’s not how you run commissions and she’d been exactly, completely right, and she’d said it the way she always said the things she was certain of: without heat, without accusation, just the fact, placed precisely where it needed to be.
He’d missed that.
He’d been missing it for eighteen months in the specific way you miss a particular quality of light — not dramatic absence, just the low-grade awareness that something you’d grown accustomed to is no longer there.
He gathered his notes.
He went back to his office.
Thomas was there.
His father — seventy-two, still sharp, still the most direct person in any room he entered — had apparently stopped by and been let in by Cara, his EA, and was now sitting in the chair beside the window reading Maxwell Cross’s foundation press release from three months ago, which had been left on a side table.
“The March girl,” Thomas said, without looking up.
“Isla,” Dominic said.
“I know her name.” Thomas set down the press release. “She took the commission.”
“She did.”
“Good.” Thomas looked at him. “How was it?”
“Professional.”
“Of course it was professional. How was it for you.”
Dominic sat at his desk.
“Hard,” he said.
Thomas nodded.
“She called me Mr. Ashworth,” Dominic said.
Thomas was quiet for a moment. “She was always going to do that.”
“I know.”
“You knew before you requested the firm,” Thomas said. “That she was going to make it cost you something to be in the same room. You knew that and you did it anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Thomas asked. Not challenging. Genuinely asking.
Dominic looked at the desk.
“Because she’s the best person for this project,” he said.
Thomas looked at him.
“And because—” Dominic stopped. He found the thing underneath.
“Because I needed to stop moving in opposite directions from wherever she is. I’ve been—” He pressed his fist briefly against the desk.
“I’ve been giving the situation time and distance the way you give a problem time and distance when you don’t know how to address it.
And I’ve been lying to myself that the time is productive. ”
Thomas was quiet.
“She’s here now,” Thomas said. “Six floors down, probably.”
“She’s gone,” Dominic said. “She left the building.”
“She’s here in the sense that matters. She’s in New York. She’s working in your building for twelve months.” Thomas paused. “What are you going to do with that?”
“Be patient,” Dominic said.
“How patient?”
Dominic looked out the window.
He thought about her face in the conference room.
The portfolio in her lap, the way she’d opened it with the specific efficiency of someone who had decided to do this thing and was going to do it completely.
The way she hadn’t softened any of it — hadn’t given him warmth he hadn’t earned and hadn’t been cold in a way that was its own performance.
She’d been entirely herself.
That was the thing. She’d walked into his conference room eighteen months after he’d ended their marriage and she’d been entirely, uncompromisingly herself. No performance of moving on. No armor. Just Isla, doing her work.
He’d left that.
He thought about that sometimes in the mornings, the specific thought that arrived with the gray early light: I left that.
“However long it takes,” he said.
Thomas looked at him steadily.
“You understand that patience isn’t passive,” Thomas said. “In this context. You can’t just be quiet and present and hope she works it out.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to have to say things.”
“I know.” Dominic exhaled. “I’m working up to that.”
“Work faster,” Thomas said. Not unkindly.
He stood. He picked up his coat.
“She’s building something extraordinary in that penthouse,” Thomas said. “Even from the proposal I can see it.” He looked at his son. “Don’t make her do it while managing your unfinished business at the same time. She deserves to do the work without that weight.”
“I’m trying not to—”
“You’re not trying hard enough,” Thomas said simply. “If she can feel it — and she can, she always could — then it’s in the room with her.”
He left.
Dominic sat in the quiet of his office.
He thought: work faster.
He pulled up a blank email.
He wrote: Isla. I know this isn’t the appropriate channel and I know we have a professional context to protect.
But I’d like to talk to you outside of it when you’re ready.
Not about the project. About what I owe you.
There’s no agenda and no timeline. I’m just telling you it’s something I intend to do.
He read it three times.
He sent it.
He sat with the cursor blinking in the empty reply field.
Her response came forty minutes later: I know. I’m not ready yet.
He read it twice.
Yet.
He sat with that word.
It was the most honest thing she’d given him and it was also the most hopeful.
He was going to be careful with it.