He processed that. “That’s a lonely way to live.”
“It’s a safe way to live.”
“Those aren’t the same thing.”
“They’re close enough.”
His thumb moved against her hip. A slow, absent pressure that sent heat down the outside of her thigh. She didn’t step back. She should have stepped back.
“I’m not going to be in Boston much longer,” she said. The lie came out smooth, rehearsed. “My contract wraps up in a few days. I’ll be moving on.”
“Where?”
“Wherever the next job is. That’s how freelance works.”
She waited for him to let it land. To nod, say something polite, give her the graceful exit she was building toward.
“Have dinner with me,” he said.
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“I heard you. You’re leaving soon. That’s not tonight. Tonight you’re here, and I’m here, and we’re dancing to whatever this music is, and I’d rather have dinner with you than stand by another pillar at another event hoping you walk in. If we can’t work it in before you leave, I can come to wherever you’re going. I travel for work, too.”
His hand was still on her hip. She was still close enough to feel the warmth coming off his chest. The song was doing something with strings now—synthetic, layered, building toward something.
“Isaac.”
“Fallon.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you read rooms better than anyone I’ve ever met. I know you drink wine you don’t actually like because it gives you something to hold. I know you had a complete tactical plan for destroying that guy’s suede shoes and you let me rescue you anyway. And I know that right now your hand is on my chest and you haven’t moved it.”
She hadn’t. Her fingers had spread against the front of his shirt, and she could feel his heartbeat picking up under her palm. Not steady anymore. Not quite.
Her knee ached. Prescott’s transmitter was recording without her. She had work to do, and this man was making it very hard to remember why any of that mattered more than the heat of his hand through the thin fabric of her dress and the way he looked at her like she was the only sharp thing in a room full of soft edges.
“One dinner,” he said. “If you hate it, I’ll never bother you again. You can go back to disappearing, and I’ll go back to pillar duty.”
“And if I don’t hate it?”
His mouth curved. Not a grin. Something quieter, something that started in his eyes and reached his mouth half a beat later. “Then we’ll figure that out.”
The song ended and the next one started. Fallon’s hand was still on his chest. His fingers had tightened against her hip—not pulling her closer, just holding on, like he was bracing for her to slip away again.
She could feel the word forming. The clean, smartnothat would end this. She’d said it a hundred times to a hundred versions of this moment, and it had never cost her anything.
But this time it would.
