He went quiet — but I felt the almost-laugh. The way the air shifted between us when he swallowed it down. I was getting better at reading him. The not-quite-smile. The almost-laugh. The way he went still when I caught him off guard.
Tully moved into view. Wife on his right, nodding at something a donor was saying. The aide drifted closer — subtle — until she was at his left elbow. The senator's hand dropped to his side, and his pinky brushed the aide's wrist. Quick. Easy to miss if you weren't looking.
I was always looking.
I fired off a dozen shots. Him touching the blonde's arm. The wife's oblivious smile. The aide leaning in just a fraction too close while his wife looked the other way. Then the golden shot: the senator turning to say something to the aide, his mouth close to her ear, her eyes half-closed, his wife visiblein the background talking to someone else entirely — unaware, trusting, betrayed.
"Got it," I breathed.
"Then let's move before someone wonders why two people are crouching in the flowers."
We slipped out from behind the roses and into the misted pathways that wound through the conservatory's back gardens. The light was dim here — candles in iron sconces, the glass ceiling showing dark sky above. Orchids hung like pale ghosts from the trellises. Mist curled around our ankles, and the air was warm and dense and smelled like a thousand gardens in bloom.
I was walking fast — adrenaline still buzzing, the high of a clean shot making me giddy — and I didn't see the uneven tile until my heel caught the edge.
I stumbled hard. Pitched forward.
Dominic caught me.
Not the polite, steadying-arm kind of catch. The full-body kind. His hands went to my waist, fingers gripping through the silk, and my own momentum carried me into him until my palms landed flat on his chest. He stepped back to absorb the impact and hit the glass wall, taking me with him. My body pressed against his — hips, stomach, chest — and his hands tightened reflexively, holding me there.
We both went still.
His heart hammered under my palms. Not steady. Not controlled. Fast, hard, and getting faster.
Fog bloomed on the glass behind his head from the heat of his body. Orchids swayed above us in the mist. The sound of the gala was distant, muffled — music and laughter from another world.
"You okay?" His voice had gone rough. Lower than usual.
"Yeah." My voice wasn't much better.
My palms were still flat on his chest. His fingers were still gripping my waist. Neither of us was making any move to change that.
I should step back. Make a joke. Break the tension with sarcasm, the way I always did. Go back to being Charlie who didn't need anyone, who didn't want anyone, who kept people at arm's length because that's where they couldn't hurt her.
But I didn't step back.
I looked up at him.
In the dim candlelight, his gray eyes had gone dark. His jaw was tight — not the annoyed kind of tight, thefighting somethingkind of tight. His fingers flexed on my waist, and I felt every one of them through the thin silk.
"This is a bad idea," he said.
"Probably the worst."
"You're my client."
"I'm aware."
"I have rules about this."
"How many?"
"Seven."
"That's a lot of rules."
"I've never had trouble remembering them before."
