“No.” I turned us slightly, angling away from Ivan’s sightline. “That’s the truth.”
A pause. She was processing. I could feel it in the slight tension of her hand, the way she was looking just past my shoulderwith the focused inward expression of a woman running an assessment.
“Do you know him?” she asked. “My father.”
“I know of him. Tonight was the first time we’ve met.” Both statements factually accurate. I held her gaze. “I was here for the art and the networking. Nothing else.”
She looked at me then, really looked, the way she had in the private room when she’d decided something. The music moved around us and the crowd shifted and I turned us again, slowly, until I was reasonably certain that from Ivan’s position near the Cézannes we were just two people dancing at a gala and nothing worth watching.
“You’re very good at this,” she said quietly.
“At dancing?”
“At all of it.” Her eyes were steady on mine. “The room. The introduction. The—“ she stopped. “You’re very good at being exactly what a situation requires.”
There was something in her voice that wasn’t quite an accusation and wasn’t quite a question and sat in the space between them with significant weight.
The guilt was there again, the way it had been for days. Not loud, just present, a low-frequency note beneath everything else.
“Polina.” Her real name, quiet enough that only she could hear it. First time I’d said it out loud to her face.
Something moved in her expression.
“I don’t want to pretend I don’t know you,” I said. “Now that you’re in the same room, I find I’m not particularly interested in doing that.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“For the next three minutes we do.” I turned us again. “Let me come tonight. To the house.”
Her eyes sharpened. “That’s impossible.”
“Say yes anyway.”
“You don’t know what you’re suggesting. The security system, the guards—“
“Give me the codes for the security system. I’ll manage the guards.” I held her gaze. “All I need is yes.”
“That is an extraordinarily arrogant thing to say.”
“Probably.” The music shifted, slowed. “Is it working?”
She looked at me for a long moment. That measuring look, the one that felt like being read in a language I hadn’t given her access to and she’d learned anyway.
“You can’t get in,” she said. “It’s not possible.”
“If I can,” I said, “will you see me?”
The song was ending. I could feel it in the way the tempo began its gentle close, in the way the crowd around us had started the small movements of people preparing to uncouple. Twenty seconds, perhaps less.
“This is a terrible idea,” she said.
“Yes.”
Another beat. Her hand was still in mine. Neither of us had moved toward separation.
“There’s a balcony,” she said quietly. “East side. My father won’t follow me there. He finds the cold disagreeable.” Her eyes met mine. “I need some air.”
The east balcony was nearly empty.
