That's a big deal to you. I'm just observant. It's my job. I notice rooms. You notice him.
There's a difference. Cass wrapped both hands around her coffee and studied her the way she studied a bad blind date. Thoroughly, without mercy. And this sister, you're telling me a man mentions his dead mother to you at 2:00 in the morning, but never once mentions he has a sister? Maybe they're not close.
Maybe. Or maybe you're doing the thing where you build the nicest possible explanation out of nothing so you don't have to ask him a real question. Nora looked out the window instead of answering because the honest version of things was that somewhere around November, watching Julian Cole fall asleep on his own couch with a paperback open on his chest, the business part of the arrangement had started feeling like the least true part of her week. She hadn't said that out loud to anyone, not even Cass. Saying it out loud made it a fact instead of a feeling, and facts came with consequences, and she'd built her whole adult life around not needing anyone enough to get hurt when they left.
It's a contract, she said finally. I don't get to have feelings about a contract, and I definitely don't get to interrogate him about a sister I've never met based on something the doorman said in passing. That's not a rule anyone's ever successfully followed in the history of contracts, Cass said. And Nora laughed because it was easier than arguing, and underneath the laugh, quiet and inconvenient, was the plain fact that she'd started rearranging her whole week around the shape of his Tuesdays. And a woman doesn't do that for a man she doesn't care what happens to.
She hadn't planned on going back to the loft before Thursday, but the seamstress finished the alterations on the gala dress three days ahead of schedule, and Nora had a key of her own now, Julian's idea back in December, so she could let herself in on nights he ran late from the office and start dinner without waiting on the doorman to call up. It had felt like a small thing at the time, a practical thing. She hadn't let herself think too hard about what it meant that he trusted her with a key to the one place he actually let his guard down. She used it now, letting herself into the quiet loft a little past 6:00. The dress bag over one arm, already composing the joke she'd make about surprising him for once instead of the other way around.
The apartment was empty. His jacket hung over a bar stool, his laptop open and dark on the island, a mug of coffee gone cold beside it. He'd clearly stepped out and meant to come right back. She set the dress bag over the back of a chair and crossed toward the kitchen to rinse the mug. And that was when she saw it, on the sofa, draped casually over the arm, the way you'd toss a scarf you weren't thinking about, a bra.
Black lace, delicate, expensive-looking, and definitely not hers. Nora stood very still, the mug forgotten in her hand, running through every reasonable explanation her mind could produce. A cleaning mishap, something left behind by whoever Enzo called his sister, something from before September, before any of this except the lace still looked new enough to have a price tag ghost somewhere on the strap. And the cleaning service came Mondays, and this was Wednesday. The elevator chimed behind her.
She turned as Julian stepped in, keys in hand, still in his coat, stopping mid-stride when he saw her standing in his living room a day early, holding a coffee mug like a weapon and staring at his sofa like it had personally wronged her. Nora, "Hey, I thought we said Thursday. " She didn't answer right away. She set the mug down on the counter, slow and deliberate, the way you set something down when you don't trust your hands not to shake. And she looked at him, then at the sofa, then back at him. His eyes followed hers.
Whatever he'd been about to say died somewhere in his throat. He went still the way people go still when they walk into a room and realize, half a second too late, that the story they'd been telling themselves about their own life just got a lot more complicated. His gaze moved from the lace on the sofa arm to her face, back to the sofa, like he was checking if it would still be there the second time he looked. That's not he started. So, I'm not the only one, huh?
The words came out quieter than she meant them to. Not a shout. Not even really an accusation, just a fact laid flat on the table between them. And underneath it, so far underneath it she almost didn't recognize the sound of her own voice, something that felt embarrassingly close to hurt for a woman who kept telling everyone this was business. Julian's mouth opened, closed.
His eyes went from her face to the sofa and back again. And for a man who ran board meetings for a living, who could talk his way through a hostile takeover without breaking a sweat, he looked, for one long second, like he genuinely had no idea what to say. I don't know whose that is. It was the wrong thing to say, and Julian seemed to know it the second it left his mouth, because Nora's face did something complicated and closed, like a door swinging shut on its own weight. You don't know whose it is.
I mean it, Nora. I haven't had anyone here. I haven't. He stopped himself, dragged a hand down his face, started again slower. I was at the office until 5:00.
I stopped at the pharmacy for my dad's blood pressure medication because apparently that's my job now, too, and I came straight home. I don't know how that got there, okay? She picked up her bag, not the dress bag, her own bag, the one with her wallet and her keys, his key, the spare he'd given her in December that suddenly felt like it weighed 10 lb in her hand. Where are you going? Home.
I have an early client tomorrow. Nora. You don't owe me an explanation, Julian. That's the whole point of the contract, remember? No touching that isn't for cameras.
What you do with your Wednesdays isn't actually any of my business. She heard how flat and mean it sounded even as she said it, and some small ugly part of her was glad. Because it was easier to be mean than to stand in his living room and let him see how much her hands were shaking. It's not what you think, he said, and reached for her arm and stopped himself an inch short of touching her. Like he'd remembered the rule the same second she had.
I swear to you, it's not what you think. Then what is it? He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. Whatever answer he had, he wasn't ready to say it out loud.
And Nora watched him not say it for three long seconds before she pulled the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder and walked past him to the elevator. He didn't follow her down. She noticed that, too, and hated that she noticed, and hated more that some part of her had wanted him to. Cass didn't say I told you so, which was somehow worse than if she had. He didn't chase you, she said instead, setting a second glass of wine in front of Nora that neither of them had ordered but both of them clearly needed.
That bothers me more than the bra, honestly. He's not obligated to chase me. We're not a real couple. You keep saying that like it's going to start being true if you say it enough times. Nora turned the glass in a slow circle on the bar, watching the wine climb the sides and settle back down.
I feel stupid. That's the part nobody tells you about pretend relationships. You start out so sure you can keep the two things separate, the business and the feelings. And then one Tuesday you're standing in a stranger's kitchen furious about a bra that has nothing to do with you, and you realize you crossed a line about 4 months ago and didn't even notice you were doing it. You're allowed to have feelings about a bra on his sofa, Nora.
That's a normal human thing to be upset about, contract or not. Is it normal to be this upset over something that isn't real? Cass didn't answer that one, and Nora appreciated her for it, because she didn't have an answer, either. And some questions are worse when somebody tries too hard to fix them for you. Julian didn't sleep much that night, which wasn't unusual, except this time it had nothing to do with quarterly numbers or his father's phone calls.
He sat on the edge of that same sofa at 1:00 in the morning. The lace thing bagged up in a Ziploc like evidence because some instinct told him he'd need proof of something eventually, and he ran back through every person who'd been in the loft in the last week. The cleaning service, his assistant Marcus, who dropped off contracts on Monday and left within 5 minutes. Nora, obviously, whose presence in this apartment he could account for down to the hour. And then Enzo's voice came back to him unprompted from a conversation he'd half-listened to on his way out that morning.