Chapter 21: The Long Table

Dot let us in through the service stairs at five and locked the door behind us from the outside.

"Forty minutes," she said through the crack. "I'll stand here and eat a sandwich and hear nothing. Hurry up."

"Dot!"

"I'm deaf. Go."

The sixtieth floor of Hartigan Tower lay empty.

It was a vast glass room full of round tables dressed in white linen.

Four hundred place cards waited on them, and a stage stood at the far end.

The Skyline Awards banner hung over the stage.

The afternoon sun slanted in low from the west, and the whole room was gold and long shadow.

I walked across it in my red dress and my heels, and Leighton walked beside me, and our footsteps echoed.

I went to the corner and stood in front of pane fourteen.

It was a plain pane of glass, with the city beyond it.

Nothing showed in the corner.

I pressed my palm flat against the place where the letters would be.

"Not yet," I said.

"Two hours."

"I know."

Behind me his hand slid up my spine to the zip.

"Leighton, I just..."

"I know. I'm going to be careful with it."

He drew it down an inch.

His other hand came around and cupped my breast through the silk, and his mouth landed on my neck.

I dropped my palm from the glass.

"Dot is outside," I said.

"Dot is deaf."

I laughed, and he turned me around by the hips and kissed me, and it went deep and wet at once.

His hands were all over my back, dragging the dress to my waist.

I tore at his shirt buttons, and one flew across the marble.

"The table," I said, against his mouth. "That one. By the pane."

It was a long banquet table with a white cloth down to the floor and silver set for forty.

He swept a row of glasses aside with his arm, and one rolled and fell and didn't break.

He lifted me onto the edge of the table.