“You want me to share my sources.”
“I want to understand what you’ve found.” I paused. “Consider it professional courtesy.”
She laughed — sharp and genuine — and it hit the same register it had on the balcony. Worse, actually, because now I knew what came after the laugh, and I was sitting across a café table from her pretending I didn’t.
“Professional courtesy,” she repeated. “Because you’re famous for that with journalists who investigate you.”
“Have there been many?”
Her expression hardened slightly. “A few. They all dropped their stories. Some got reassigned. One left the industry entirely.”
I knew the stories she meant. The shame I didn’t let myself examine too often moved through me, quiet and familiar. “I’m not going to pretend I’ve always handled press attention well.”
“So what do you want from me?”
The question hung between us. The professional answer was simple: information, damage control, the chance to shape a narrative before it escaped my reach.
But the café light caught the dark waves of her hair, and she was looking at me with those sharp hazel eyes that had seen through everything I’d offered her since the moment we’d met, and the professional answer felt like exactly the kind of lie I was tired of telling.
“Lunch,” I said.
She blinked. “What?”
“Have lunch with me. Not here — somewhere we can actually talk without your notebook between us.” I watched confusion move through her expression, followed by suspicion, followed by something that looked almost like the recognition I’d seen flash in her eyes when I’d first sat down. “Consider it a chance to study your subject in his natural habitat.”
“Your natural habitat being somewhere with tablecloths and wine lists.”
“I’ve been told I’m more interesting after the second glass.”
“More honest, you mean.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
She was quiet for a long moment, those eyes doing the calculation I’d come to recognize — risk against reward, ethics against instinct, the professional boundaries she’d built against the current that had been running between us since a service corridor two nights ago.
And underneath all of it, unspoken, what we’d both understood the moment she’d looked up when I walked through the door: this meeting was never going to be only about a story.
“I should say no,” she said finally.
“Probably.”
“This is a terrible idea.”
“Almost certainly.”
She picked up her coffee, draining the last of it while I waited. When she set the cup down, her expression had settled into something I recognized — a decision made, a direction chosen.
“Fine. One lunch. I pick the restaurant.”
“I expected nothing less.”
“And this isn’t a date.”
“Of course not.” I stood, leaving enough on the table to cover both drinks and make Lucia’s afternoon considerably better. “It’s a professional assessment. You’ll study me, I’ll study you, and we’ll both pretend we’re not enjoying ourselves.”
She rose to face me, and even in flat shoes she had the bearing of a woman who had never once been intimidated by anyone. “You seem very confident I’ll enjoy it.”
“I’m confident you’ll find it informative.” I buttoned my jacket. “What you do with that is entirely up to you.”
