Page 93 of Unlocked

"Gil and Anderson," she said instead. "If Gil is the lawyer putting things together in the same way Anderson is the banker, then there is definitely at least one other person involved. The paperwork with their names on it isn’t the original paperwork, which means someone else did at least the initial set-up.”

Archer took a sip of wine. “Agreed. Anderson and Bennet don’t have the pull to get Davis involved. He wouldn’t listen to them. They aren’t powerful enough.”

Tatum picked up her fork and played with her food.

Archer was quiet for a moment. "What will your father do?" he asked. "When you don't take the Anderson case."

She let out a short laugh that had no humor in it. "Disown me, probably. Kick me out of the firm. Both, if he's feeling thorough." She picked up her wine. "It doesn't matter."

"It doesn't?"

"I have my own money. I've always had my own money, that was the whole point of working this hard for this long." She looked at him. "And honestly, Archer, I'm pretty much done with the law after this. Whatever this case turns into, whatever the outcome is, I'm done. I want to do something else. Be somewhere else."

"Where?" he asked. And there was something in the question that wasn't entirely casual.

"Florence, maybe," she said. "Or Ireland. Somewhere that has nothing to do with shell companies and Ponzi schemes and people like Anderson." She paused. "Somewhere my mother can't get to me easily."

The corner of his lips ticked up, and she caught a spark of something in his eyes.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing," he said. "Just that you've clearly thought about this."

"I've thought about it a lot lately." She set down her glass and looked at him directly. "Does that surprise you?"

"No," he said. "It doesn't."

They looked at each other across the table, and something shifted in the air between them. The tension had been building all evening, she realized, or maybe it had been building since the moment he walked in with the tray and looked at her face and knew immediately that she'd found something. The particular quality of attention he gave her. The way he'd poured her wine without asking. The way he was sitting now, close enough that she was aware of the warmth of his body, close enough that the careful professional distance he usually maintained had quietly collapsed without either of them acknowledging it.

She thought about the forehead kiss in the hallway. The brevity of it and what it had cost her to not grab on to him and pull him close. She thought about waking up alone. She thought about the text that morning, flat and efficient, giving her nothing. God that had stung, precisely because the night before had been anything but flat or efficient.

"Archer," she said.

"Don't," he said quietly.

"Don't what?"

"Don't say whatever you're about to say." He met her eyes. "Because I already know. And I don't have a good answer for it."

"What do you think I'm about to say?"

He was quiet for a moment. "That last night was a mistake. That we should be sensible. That there are a hundred reasons why this is a bad idea."

Was he fighting this ‘mistake’, as he’d called it, as much as she was? "Is that what you think?"

"It's what I know." He sighed heavily and gripped his nape. "And it doesn't seem to be making any difference."

Something seismic shifted in her chest. Something warm and frightening and entirely inconvenient.

"It's making a difference to me," she said. "I'm just not sure it's making the right difference."

He looked at her for a long moment. In the intimate lighting in the apartment, he looked less guarded than usual, the careful composure slightly worn at the edges in the way it only got late at night when he'd been carrying a great deal for a very long time.

"Tatum," he said, and just her name in his voice, the particular way he said it, did something to her that she was tired of pretending it didn't.

"I know," she said. "I know all the reasons."

"Do you?"