She’d assumed that was normal. That the breathless, all-consuming passion in movies was exaggeration, fiction, something teenagers felt before they learned that real relationships were built on compatibility, shared values, and comfortable silence. She'd built a whole framework around the assumption that she was practical, grounded, not the type to lose her head over anyone.
But today, in an elevator, a woman’s hand had brushed hers, and Miller’s entire body had responded like it had been waiting her whole life for exactly that touch.
She pulled a throw pillow into her lap and pressed her face into it, muffling a sound that was a half groan, half something closer to panic.
It didn’t mean anything. Itcouldn’tmean anything. Astoria was a billionaire CEO going through a messy, public divorce. She was a woman, and Miller was?—
Miller was what?
The question hung there in the silence of her apartment, demanding an answer she wasn’t ready to give.
She thought about Sienna, her best friend in high school. She thought about the sleepovers where Miller had felt nervous in a way she couldn’t explain, the way her stomach had flipped when Sienna had laughed at her jokes, and how devastating it hadfelt when Sienna started dating Jason Reeves junior year and suddenly had less time for Miller.
She thought about Professor Naomi Fowler in law school, the way Miller had hung on to her every word and found excuses to visit office hours. At the time, she’d told herself it was just admiration for a brilliant legal mind.
She thought about all the women she’d noticed over the years—in coffee shops, at the gym, across crowded rooms—and how she’d always filed those observations away under “aesthetic appreciation,” as if noticing that someone was beautiful was the same as noticing a lovely painting.
The pillow wasn’t helping. Miller tossed it aside and stood up, pacing to the window and back.
She wasn’t ready for this, whateverthiswas, the question forming at the edges of her mind, the one she’d apparently been avoiding for years, maybe even her whole life.
Miller looked outside. The sun was setting and turning the sky shades of deep orange and pink, but Miller didn’t really see it.
She could still feel Astoria’s hand against hers. Hours later, the memory was as vivid as the moment itself—the warmth, the way everything else had fallen away, the look in Astoria’s eyes when their gazes met.
Something fundamental had shifted today, and Miller had no idea what to do about it.
10
Chapter 10: Astoria
The conference room at Patricia Hart’s office was aggressively neutral: beige walls, beige carpet, a long table of pale wood that probably cost more than it should have given how determinedly forgettable it was. It was the kind of space designed to drain conflict of its heat, to render everything that happened within it procedural and bloodless.
Astoria appreciated the intent, if not the aesthetics.
She sat at one end of the table with Gerald, a stack of disputed financial documents arranged in front of her. Across from them, Rachel Hartwell was reviewing her own copies, reading glasses perched on her nose and pen moving in small annotations. And beside Rachel?—
Astoria didn’t let herself look too long.
Miller Scott was taking notes, her dark hair pulled back in a low ponytail that exposed the line of her jaw. She wore a navy blazer today, simple and well-cut, and her pen glided across the legal pad in that same fluid rhythm Astoria had noticed before.
Four days ago, their hands had touched in an elevator, and Miller had fled like Astoria had burned her.
Don’t think about that.
“The transactions on page forty-seven," Rachel was saying, tapping her pen against the relevant document, "we'll need supporting documentation for the offshore transfers."
“Those aren’t offshore transfers.” Gerald’s voice carried the patient irritation of someone who'd explained this before. "They're intercompany allocations between Shepry Global's domestic subsidiaries. The documentation is in Exhibit C."
“Exhibit C shows the allocations but not the underlying authorization."
“Because the authorization is in Exhibit D, which we provided last week."
Astoria let the argument wash over her, contributing when Gerald glanced her way for confirmation, but most of her attention was occupied with the effort of not looking at the other side of the table.
It wasn’t working.
Miller hadn’t looked at her once since the meeting started. Not a glance, not a flicker of acknowledgment beyond the initial professional nod when they'd all taken their seats. She was studying the documents with an intensity that seemed excessive for routine discovery disputes, her shoulders held at an angle that suggested deliberate focus.
