We almost…She cut off the thought before it could complete itself.
The meeting concluded forty minutes later with nothing resolved. Another session was scheduled for the following week, and handshakes were exchanged across the table, brief and impersonal.
Astoria left first. She didn’t trust herself to linger.
The parking garage was dim and cool, a relief after the fluorescent brightness of the conference room. Astoria’s heels echoed against concrete as she walked toward her car, the sound too loud in the enclosed space.
She’d almost kissed Miller Scott. In a conference room during a case meeting. With their attorneys steps away.
Her hand shook slightly as she pressed the key fob, and she watched the taillights flash with a detachment that felt clinical. This was shock, probably. Her body was catching up to what her mind hadn’t fully processed.
She slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door, sealing herself into silence. The leather was warm from the afternoon sun that had been streaming through the garage’s upper levels. She put her hands on the steering wheel and didn’t start the car.
If Rachel had taken five more seconds to return, it would’ve happened. Astoria would have kissed her. Shewantedto kissher, still wanted to, even with the professional catastrophe that it would’ve caused.
Get it together,she scolded herself.
She started the car and pulled out of the space, navigating the spiral ramp down to street level. She took a left on Ridgeway Avenue, then a right on Windermere Lane, and finally to her street: Aerie Crest Drive. It was the same route she always took, the one she could drive in her sleep, which was fortunate because she wasn’t really seeing the road.
Miller had been leaning in too. That was the part Astoria couldn’t stop turning over in her mind. It hadn’t been one-sided. Miller’s breath caught, her eyes dropped low to her lips, and her body swayed forward in that last moment before the door opened.
That went beyond professional politeness or any of the other explanations Astoria could’ve constructed. That was desire, the same desire that was currently making Astoria’s chest ache in a way she hadn’t felt in years.
“You’re cold,”Valerie’s voice whispered from somewhere in her memory.“You’re frigid, incapable of real passion. You should be grateful I stayed as long as I did.”
Astoria’s hands tightened on the wheel, her knuckles whitening.
She’d believed Valerie, too, that was the humiliating part. After over a decade, she’d internalized every word. That she was broken and defective, missing whatever piece that allowed other people to feel consumed by desire. That the problem was her—it was always her—and Valerie was simply stating facts.
Except…
Except she didn’t feel cold or frigid right now. She felt like she was burning from the inside out, like something had been set alight in that conference room that refused to be quenched. She’d stood inches from Miller Scott and forgotten how tobreathe. She’d wanted to close the distance so badly her whole body had ached with the yearning.
The wrought-iron gates to her property swung open automatically, and Astoria pulled up the long drive lined with coastal pines. The house materialized behind them, all glass and weathered wood cantilevered over the cliff’s edge, the ocean spread out beyond it in an endless slate gray.
She parked and sat for a moment, staring at the front door.
Maeve would be inside. She always was on Monday afternoons, handling whatever needed handling, present but unobtrusive. Normally Astoria appreciated her house staff’s quiet competence, the way her home ran smoothly without her having to think about it.
Today, she wasn’t sure she could manage a simple greeting without something showing on her face that she didn’t want to be revealed.
She went in anyway. As predicted, Maeve was in the hallway, a stack of folded linens in her arms. She offered a warm smile as Astoria passed. “
Welcome home. Can I get you anything? Tea?”
“No, thank you.” Astoria kept moving. “I’ll be on the deck.”
If Maeve noticed anything off, she didn’t show it. That was one of the reasons Astoria trusted her.
The wooden deck wrapped around the ocean-facing side of the house, and Astoria sank into one of the low chairs without bothering to change out of her work clothes. The sun was still high enough to warm her skin, and the sound of waves breaking against the rocks below was steady, rhythmic, and indifferent to whatever crisis she was having.
She should pour herself a glass of wine. She should review the documents Gerald had sent over that morning. She should do literally anything other than sit here replaying the same five minutes on an endless loop.
This can’t happen.
Astoria knew that. Miller knew it too. They were on opposite sides of a legal case that would drag on for months. Miller worked for her ex-wife. The ethical violations alone would lead to the case being compromised beyond repair, if not careers ending and reputations tarnished.
And yet…
