Chapter 20: Slow

Mrs. Radford looked at Brooke's smile, and then at the empty champagne glasses on the tables.

"I'll hear this tomorrow," she said, "at my hotel, at one o'clock. Alone, Miles. Not here."

She turned and left, and the side doors swung shut behind her.

Brooke's lawyer took her by the elbow and walked her out the other way.

Miles and I stood in the wrecked ballroom with Dean's folder between us.

"She didn't look at you once," I said.

"She looked at you twice."

"That's worse."

"It's not," he said. "She looks at things she's thinking about."

He drove me to my apartment, and neither of us talked on the stairs.

He closed my door behind us and stood in the dark of my small living room.

For the first time since the fire, he let his shoulders drop.

"Come here," I said.

He came.

I took his jacket off him and hung it on the hook where my father's cap had hung since I was ten.

I undid his tie, slowly, and he stood with his hands loose and let me.

"I want to do this properly," I said. "No counter. No rain. Just a bed."

"Leah."

"Say it again. My name."

"Leah." His voice cracked on it. "Leah."

I led him down the hall by the hand.

In my small bedroom I undressed him a button at a time.

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