Chapter 18: The Winter Dinner

The Winter Dinner was held in the same ballroom as the gala.

The same four hundred people were there, and the same camera stood on its stand by table nine.

I had not been inside the room since I walked out of it.

At six o'clock, in Ben's bedroom, I stood with my back to him in a green dress I had bought that afternoon.

"Zip me up," I said.

"I'm thinking about it."

"Ben."

He drew the zipper up slowly, one inch at a time, and his knuckles ran along my spine the whole way.

At the top he stopped and put his mouth against the back of my neck.

"We're going to be late," I said, and did not move.

"We'll be fashionably late." His hands slid around my waist. "You look ready to ruin a man's career."

"Is that a compliment?"

"It's a statement of fact." He turned me around and kissed me, carefully, so as not to smear anything. "Go and do it."

At the ballroom door I put the flash drive in Norma's nephew's hand, and he nodded once.

Norma sat at table nine in a black dress, with her reading glasses on a cord and her arms folded.

"I brought a roll in my purse," she said. "In case it's a long night."

Ben sat on my left, and Janelle, in a long dark coat she did not take off, sat three tables away, alone.

Alastair was at the head table with the CEO.

He saw me come in on Ben's arm, and his smile did not flicker.

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