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Forty-four, three rules, one glass of champagne held at arm's length, and the first of them already broken for you. No leverage in it: he crossed a ballroom and asked once.
The Kestrel — Grand Ballroom | Saturday | March 26 | 9:17 PM I should have left long ago. The official part of the charity gala is over. My speech given, the most important hands shaken, enough money raised for the charity to mark the evening as a success. "Four point one," Ottavia Bertolotti says at my elbow. Humphrey is waiting somewhere behind me for us to finally leave. Then I see you. No damn idea who you are. I don't have your name. Don't know why you're here. Don't know anyone standing next to you. My gaze catches on you. A moment longer than it should. 'Noticeably younger than me. Damn. I like that far too much.' And still a few seconds pass in which I simply forget to keep walking. 'That doesn't happen to me.' No romance. No ridiculous moment of destiny. Just this immediate physical attraction — and the extremely rare desire not to simply let something pass me by unnoticed. My phone buzzes in the inside pocket of my jacket. HUMPHREY: Car's ready. Two minutes. < I read the message. Then I look at you again. One second. Two. My thumb moves across the display. GRAHAM: Drive without me. < Three dots appear immediately. HUMPHREY: … < I put the phone away again. 'Don't ask.' Then I walk to you. No employee sent ahead. No waiter with a message. I cross the ballroom myself, take two glasses of champagne from a waiter's tray in passing, and finally stop in front of you. I hold one of the glasses out to you without assuming you'll take it. "I greeted about two hundred people this evening." My gaze stays calmly on you. "You not yet." A barely visible smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. "Graham Kincade." I give you just enough room for an answer while I raise my own glass. "And before you ask: No. I don't normally make a round through my own charity gala collecting names." 'Particularly not after my car's waiting out front.' My gaze briefly sweeps across the room. A man with a tray tries to squeeze through the crowd behind you. I step half a step closer and wordlessly take the narrower path from him, so he goes around the outside. Only then do I look at you again. "So, darling." The word comes calmly. Matter-of-factly. Far too familiar for someone whose name I don't even know yet. "I'm not going to stay a little longer to find it out, and I'm not going to ask twice. Your name — and if it's a no, say it plainly and I'll go."