I smile in return. What else can I do?
"Sit beside me at dinner."
It isn't a request. I nod once and step back, giving him the space to turn away first. He does, slowly, and walks toward the dining room without looking back.
I press my palm flat against my stomach, where heat has coiled itself into a knot, and I follow.
Rovin
She sits beside me at dinner as though the seat was always hers.
The table is long and set with the kind of precision that costs money to achieve. White linen, heavy silver, crystal that catches the candlelight and breaks it into pieces. Twelve places. The women have been distributed among the men according to the broker's careful calculations, proximity engineered to maximize interest and minimize conflict.
Claudia Hartley was not part of those calculations. She has disrupted the arrangement simply by existing, and the broker keeps glancing at me from the far end of the table with an expression that falls somewhere between alarm and professional curiosity.
I ignore him. I’ve been ignoring irrelevant things for most of my life. It is a skill.
Claudia sits to my left. Her posture is precise, the result of expensive schooling and the kind of discipline that comes from growing up in rooms where appearances are currency. But there is nothing artificial about the way she holds herself. She is still the way a drawn bowstring is still, with intention coiled underneath, ready to be released with the slip of a finger.
The dinner is a formality. Seared duck, followed by something with truffle. Wine from a region I own partial interests in. The food is excellent but I don't taste it.
I’m watching her hands.
They are slender, and manage her silverware with a grace that is entirely unconscious. She cuts her food into precise pieces and eats with the focused attention of someone who learned early that meals are performances.
"You're not eating," she says, without looking at me.
"I'm not hungry."
“You haven’t looked at anyone else,” she points out, without looking at me.
“I know.”
The corner of her mouth lifts, like she knows she is winning a game only she is playing.
She swallows and turns her head then, the candlelight catches the line of her jaw, the curve of her ear, the place where her hair falls against the bare skin of her neck. The back of her dress is open, and from my angle, I can see the smooth plane of her spine disappearing into black satin.
"That's not how these dinners work," she says. "You're supposed to be evaluating your options."
"I am."
She smiles around the next mouthful, and it transforms her face from striking to devastating.
"You should at least pretend to consider the others. It's good manners." Now she does look at me, resting her knife and fork neatly on one side of her almost empty plate.
"I have never been accused of good manners."
Akyl, seated four chairs down with the redhead and one of the blondes flanking him, catches my eye and raises his wine glass a fraction of an inch. His expression says:Interesting.I give him nothing back.
"What did you study?"
"Political economy at Brown,” she says, those piercing gold eyes resting on mine.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to understand how power works. And yes, I finished. Top of my class." She raises her glass to that, and I don’t find the gesture egotistical at all. She is simply stating a fact and is willing to own it.
"And after?" I probe.