Page 15 of His Wall

"I'll move them off the seafood." She pushed off the doorframe. "Anything else?"

"No. Thanks, Claire."

"Of course."

She turned. She walked back across the carpet to her desk. Six steps, maybe seven. Halfway there, she looked over her shoulder.

Her eyes met mine through the open door.

She held them for half a second. Then she sat down at her desk, her head bent over her legal pad, and her pen started moving.

I picked up the coffee.

I held it.

I did not drink it for a full minute.

The mug was warm against my palms, the steam was coming up at my chin. I sat there with my eyes on the empty doorframe and tried to put together what had just happened.

Three things.

She called me Julian. She asked me about a dinner I'd told her last night that didn't happen. She stood in my doorway with her hip against the wood and looked at me on the way out.

Three things, in fifteen minutes, none of which she had ever done.

I put the coffee down. I picked up the scone, took a bite, tasted nothing, and set it back in the bag. I ran a hand through my hair.

She brought the Whitfield revisions in at 10:00 a.m.

She came in with the folder, a fresh pen, her notebook against her forearm — instead of taking the chair across from me, she came around the side of the desk and pulled the second chair up beside mine. The arm of her chair touched the arm of mine. She sat down and opened the folder so it lay flat across both our laps.

"Okay. Their counsel sent the redline. They've moved on to the indemnification parity. They've held on to the customer-contract representation. They've added new language in section four-B."

She turned the page.

"Page six. The fee cap."

I looked down at the page. I tried to look down at the page. Her thigh was an inch from mine, and the smell of her was coming up off the warm cotton of her sleeve.

"What about it?"

"They've capped at 1.2. We came in at 1.5. The midpoint is 1.35. They'll take it if you ask for it."

I made myself look at the number, my finger touching the paper next to the number.

"Why 1.35 and not 1.3?"

"Because they'll feel like they won at 1.3. They'll feel respected at 1.35. The five-point basis is the difference between what we accepted and what we agreed."

She turned her head to look at me.

That was the second time. She had looked at me through the whole walk-through. Her gray eyes were a foot from mine. She was waiting for me to react to a sentence that was too good for an executive assistant. She knew it, and she was waiting to see if I would say it.

"That's a sharp answer, Claire."

"But you already knew that."

The corner of her mouth came up.