Chapter 4

Reid's dinner parties were never actually dinner parties.

Isla figured that out within the first ten minutes.

The food was real — properly cooked, properly served, the kind of meal that required actual effort — but the people were too carefully chosen for it to be casual.

Everyone in the room knew someone who knew someone and the conversations moved the way conversations moved when nobody was really relaxing.

She almost hadn't come.

Caden had invited her three days ago by saying Reid's doing a dinner thing Friday. You should come.

You know Reid and you know me.

Zachary will be there but don't let that put you off — he's fine once you get used to him.

But the real reason she had come was because she was tired of going home to her Brooklyn apartment and eating pasta alone and calling it a social life.

She was standing near the window with a glass of water looking out at the city when Caden appeared at her elbow.

"You're doing the window thing," he said.

"What window thing?"

"The standing near the window thing." He looked at her sideways. "You're not shy."

"I know."

"So why the window?"

She considered. "I like having somewhere to look when conversations end."

Caden stared at her. "That's either very wise or very sad."

"Probably both."

He laughed — the real one, not the charming one and she'd learned in the two weeks she'd known him that those were different things.

The charming laugh was easy and immediate and arrived exactly when it was supposed to.

The real one surprised him slightly. Like it came from somewhere he didn't always have access to.

"Come on," he said. "There's someone you should meet."

Theo Winslow was standing by the bookshelf on the far side of the room talking to Reid when Caden brought her over.

He turned when he heard them coming and his face did something immediate and uncomplicated — just genuine pleasure at the prospect of meeting someone new. No performance in it. No social calculation.

"Isla." Reid said it simply. "Theo Winslow. He does architecture. Theo — Isla Simmons. She's the one doing the installation at Cole Global."

"The east wall on fourteen," Theo said immediately.

She blinked. "You've seen it?"

"I had a walkthrough in the building last week. I walked past it three times." He said it like a confession. "I kept going back. The asymmetry—"

"Was intentional."

"I know." He said it like that was exactly what he'd expected her to say. "That's what I thought. Nobody designs that by accident." He tilted his head slightly. "How did you solve the column problem on fourteen? There's a load bearing column at the—"

"Midpoint. Yes." She turned toward him properly. "I used it. Made it a feature instead of fighting it."

He stared at her for a moment.

"Reid," he said, without looking away from her. "Why haven't I met her before?"

"You're meeting her now," Reid said, and disappeared.

They talked for twenty minutes straight without either of them noticing.

About the Cole Global building — the bones of it, the way the light moved through it differently on each floor, the decisions that had clearly been made for aesthetics over function and the ones that had somehow managed both.

About design and space and the particular problem of creating something for people who didn't know yet what they needed from it.

He had opinions. Strong ones. But he held them loosely — made his case and then genuinely listened when she pushed back and updated his thinking in real time without ego.

She hadn't met many people who did that. Most people listened to respond.

Theo listened to understand.

"The Calloway Centre," she said. "On Fifth. That's yours?"

"For my sins."

"I stood outside it for ten minutes last week."

Something lit in his face. "And?"

"The glass is winning."

He laughed — surprised and delighted. "That's exactly—" He pointed at her. "That's the argument I had with my structural engineer for six months. He wanted the stone to anchor it. I kept saying the glass needed to breathe."

"The glass needed to win," she said.

"Yes." He looked at her like she'd said something important. "Exactly that."

She smiled. Took a sip of her water. Felt — for the first time since she'd arrived genuinely glad she'd come.

He was easy. Warm without trying.

The kind of person who made you feel interesting rather than performing interest at you.

She'd forgotten that existed.

Connor, her ex boyfriend had been performing for so long that she'd forgotten there was another way to be.

Don't, she told herself. Not tonight.

"Another drink?" Theo nodded at her empty glass.

"Water. Please."

He took her glass without making it a thing and crossed to the drinks table and came back two minutes later with water for her and wine for himself.

She watched him come back across the room.

And then — without planning to, without wanting to — her eyes moved.

Across the room. Past the cluster of people near the fireplace, past the dining table down to the far corner where Zachary Cole stood with a glass of something dark and his hand in his pocket and his eyes—

On her.

She looked away immediately back to Theo, who had arrived back at her side and was saying something about a project in Singapore and she nodded and said something back and was present — she was present, she was listening — but something in her chest had done a thing she didn't have a word for yet.

She didn't look across the room again.

Zachary had known she would be here.

Caden had mentioned it — casually, in passing, with the deliberate casualness of a man who was watching to see what happened to Zachary's face when he said it.

Zachary deliberately made sure his face showed no single emotion.

He'd nodded and changed the subject and arrived at Reid's apartment at eight with a bottle of wine he didn't intend to drink much of and told himself this was fine.

This was fine.

He stood near the far window with his drink and talked to the people who came to talk to him — a colleague of Reid's, someone's business contact, a brief exchange with Sloane who looked at him once and then looked across the room to where Isla was standing with Caden and then looked back at Zachary with an expression that said everything and said none of it out loud.

Zachary looked away first.

He was not watching her.

He was aware of her.

Knowing when she moved and when she laughed — that laugh, the real unguarded one that she didn't give to the room, only to specific people.

Knowing when Caden introduced her to Theo and the two of them turned toward each other and the body language shifted within thirty seconds into something easy and absorbed and completely self-contained.

He looked at that for a moment.

Then he looked at his drink.

Someone said something to him. He responded. He didn't know what he said.

Across the room Isla pushed back on something Theo said and Theo's whole face changed — lit up, recalibrated, genuinely engaged — and he leaned slightly toward her the way people leaned toward things they found fascinating.

Zachary's grip on his glass tightened.

He noticed. Loosened it deliberately.

This was the plan, he reminded himself. She lives her life. She meets people. She is warm and sharp and she makes people lean toward her and that is exactly why you chose her and none of this is a problem.

Theo said something. Isla laughed again.

Zachary looked at the window.

At the city below. At his own faint reflection in the glass. At the man looking back at him who had eighteen months and a plan and was currently failing at both with significant efficiency.

Reid appeared at his shoulder.

"She's good," Reid said quietly.

"She's an excellent designer."

"That's not what I meant."

Zachary said nothing.

"Theo likes her." Reid's voice was careful. Even. "You can see it already."

"Good."

"Is it."

Not a question.

Zachary looked at Reid sideways. Reid looked back at him with the particular expression he reserved for conversations where he had already said everything he intended to say and was waiting for the other person to catch up.

Zachary looked back at the room.

Isla had her head tilted at something Theo was describing — animated now with her hands moving slightly.

Theo was watching her hands like they were saying something important.

"Reid." His voice was quiet. "Don't."

"I'm not doing anything."

"You're about to."

Reid picked up his drink. "I'm just standing here."

Zachary looked at Isla.

She chose that exact moment to glance across the room.

Their eyes met.

One second. Maybe less.

She looked away first. Back to Theo, back to the conversation, back to the easy warm world that existed over there where things weren't complicated.

Zachary looked at his drink.

His jaw was tight.

He unclenched it.

Not enough to keep her, he thought. Just enough to make her stay.

The words felt different than they had three days ago in his office.

He wasn't sure when that had happened.

Theo walked home that night through the cool New York evening with his jacket open and his hands in his pockets and the particular feeling of someone who had not expected the night to go the way it went.

He thought about a woman who made spaces talk by listening to them first.

He thought about the way she held her water glass with both hands.

He thought about the moment she'd glanced across the room at something — someone — and the expression that crossed her face in that one unguarded second before she looked back at him.

He'd seen it.

He didn't know what it meant yet.

But he was going to find out.

Across the city in his apartment Zachary sat in the dark with his phone in his hand and the report on the screen.

Isla Simmons. Previous relationship. Connor Dealt. Duration: two years. Ended fourteen months ago.