Page 48 of His Wall

"You pushed?"

"I pushed."

"And she said?"

"I'll meet you there, Julian."

He nodded slowly. He did not say anything for a second. He drank.

"You're learning."

"I'm learning what?"

"You're learning that with that one, you take what she gives you. You don't grab for more."

"Yeah."

"It's good for you, Jules."

"Is it?"

"It is."

He clapped my shoulder on his way past. He went to greet the senator I hadn’t noticed walk in.

I lifted my whiskey. I drank. I looked back at the door.

She walked in.

She was three steps inside the door with her hand on the small clutch at her hip and the chandelier light coming down on her. The room around her buzzed the way they do when a beautiful woman walks into them and people are pretending not to notice.

I noticed.

The dress was black and sleeveless. Fitted at the waist, falling to just below the knee. The neckline was not low. The line of her shoulders was bare. Her hair was down — heavy and dark against her shoulders. Her gray eyes had a faint dark line at the lash that the office Claire never wore. Her mouth was not bare.

I had seen her hair down twice. The first time she had been flushed and sweating and trying to outrun something. This was the second time. This time she knew exactly what she looked like.

She knew I was there. She had not looked at me yet. She was waiting for me to walk to her.

I walked.

I crossed the carpet between us with the whiskey still in my hand and my chest doing the thing it did when she came around the corner of my desk. By the time I reached her my mouth had decided what it was going to say and I let it.

"You clean up well, Mr. Cross."

"You're stunning."

She blinked.

The almost-smile came up at the corner of her mouth, then more of it, and her gray eyes met mine. I saw that she had not been expecting me to say it so plainly.

"Thank you, Julian."

The name in the dress with her hair down. I filed it somewhere I was not getting it back out of.

The whiskey went to my left hand. I put my right hand at the small of her back. The fabric of the dress was the cool weight of good silk over the warmth of her, and I left my hand exactly where I had put it. My thumb pressed once against her spine.

She did not pull away.