She was quiet for a few bars. The lights dimmed a degree—someone at the control board with a sense of romance and bad timing.
But she didn’t pull away. “Thank you. For the rescue.”
“You looked like you had it under control.”
“I did. But not the way I wanted to handle it.”
“How did you want to handle it?”
She tilted her head, thinking about it. “He had a full martini on the bar behind him. Three olives. Expensive suit, no breast pocket, so the drink would have gone straight through to his shirt. And those shoes were suede—light gray suede at a black-tie event, which tells you everything you need to know about him. Martini would have ruined them.”
Isaac laughed. Actual laughter, the kind that came up from his chest and surprised him. “You had the whole thing mapped out.”
“I had time. He was talking a lot.”
The first song ended. The second one started. Neither of them moved to separate.
They didn’t trade last names. Didn’t ask where the other lived or who they worked for. Isaac noticed it by its absence. She wasn’t offering credentials, and neither was he. No alma mater, no neighborhood, no name-drop. She existed inside this conversation and nowhere else.
He found himself doing the same thing. Not performing. Just here.
A woman in a red gown swept past them on the arm of a man who was clearly not listening to a word she was saying. He was nodding on autopilot, eyes scanning for someone more important to talk to.
“He’s going to regret that later,” Fallon said.
“The nodding?”
“The not listening. She’s deciding something right now, and he doesn’t even know it.”
Isaac glanced back at the couple. The woman’s smile hadn’t changed, but her hand had dropped from the man’s arm. “You think?”
“She got dressed up, came to a party, and the person she came with would rather be somewhere else. That’s not a date. That’s a countdown.”
He laughed. She steered them slightly, turning him so they had a better view of the room, and kept going.
“See the two by the champagne tower? They came separately. They’re pretending they don’t know each other.”
Isaac found them. A man in his fifties adjusting his cufflinks. A woman twenty years younger studying the auction catalog with intense focus. “How can you tell?”
“Because they’re trying too hard not to look at each other. Nobody works that hard at ignoring a stranger.”
He watched for a few seconds. The man glanced toward the woman. She didn’t look up, but her posture shifted—straightened, softened. “Okay, I see it.”
“And the guy at the end of the bar, the one on his third scotch? He’s rehearsing a speech.”
“For tonight?”
“For his wife when he gets home. He’s been moving his lips every time he thinks no one’s watching.”
Isaac checked. The man was staring into his glass, jaw working around words that hadn’t found their way out yet. “Maybe he’s just drunk.”
“Drunk guys don’t practice. They just talk. He’s got something specific to say, and he’s terrified of getting it wrong.”
Three couples. Three stories. Every one of them pointed outward. She kept his eyes on the room and off of her, and she did it so smoothly that he almost didn’t catch it.
Damn, maybe Zodiac should hireher. Whatever her job was in event planning, she also had some pretty fucking good people-reading skills.
She caught him looking at her and held his gaze, one eyebrow barely raised.
