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“I have to go,” I say.

“You’re leaving voluntarily?” she asks.

“I still run a company,” I reply.

“I was beginning to wonder,” she says.

I button my jacket. “Geneva in ten minutes. New York after that.”

“Then stop loitering,” she says.

“I’m not loitering.”

“You are.”

I look at her. For the first time since last night, something lighter moves through her expression. It isn’t forgiveness or trust, but it isn’t retreat either.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say.

“You assume a lot,” she replies.

“I usually do.”

She shakes her head and turns back to her bag. I leave before I’m tempted to stay. Blaire doesn’t need grand declarations from me. She needs consistency. That I can give her.

***

Over the next several days, I learn how much of Blaire I can have without asking for more than she’s ready to give, and some days that amounts to twenty minutes.

My schedule doesn’t suddenly become accommodating because I want it to. There are mornings when I’m tied up at Kensington Holdings until well past lunch, afternoons consumed by New York, and one entire day when Geneva takes everything I have. I don’t cancel obligations to manufacture time with her, but when a genuine opening appears, I use it. Sometimes that means arriving at the archive late enough to catch the end of her day. Other times, it means a text between meetings asking whether she has eaten or whether the latest round of Trust paperwork has driven her insane yet.

Her answers stay restrained at first, then gradually get longer. Not much longer, but enough that I notice.

By Thursday afternoon, I’m sitting through a strategy meeting when my phone lights up beside my folder.

Blaire: Your collection administrators have officially sent me the same document three times under three different filenames. I’m beginning to think this is intentional.

I look at the message longer than I should before typing beneath the table.

Ross: They’re testing you.

Her response comes almost immediately.

Blaire: I passed the test on version one.

I smile before I can stop myself. Richard, seated across from me, notices, so I straighten my expression and put the phone facedown.

When the meeting ends, I find another message waiting.

Blaire: Also, thank you for lunch. Again.

I’d had food sent to the archive because I knew she was working straight through the afternoon with Helena and Clara. Nothing elaborate, and enough for the entire room, because sending Blaire a private lunch in front of her colleagues would’ve embarrassed her and made the gesture more about me than her.

I reply before heading into my next call.

Ross: You’re welcome.

That evening, on my way back from a dinner I barely wanted to attend, I stop at a jeweler I’ve used for years. I tell myself I’m only looking, but twenty minutes later, I’m staring at a pair of diamond earrings that immediately remind me of her.