Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
“Mr. Almazov.” I stand. Extend my hand. His grip is dry and brief and I let go first, which I’m proud of, and then I ruin it by gesturing at the file like a flight attendant pointing out the emergency exits. “I’ve prepared the account summary. The retainer agreement, all current correspondence, and a timeline of key dates are tabbed and cross-referenced.”
He pulls out the chair across from mine. Not the one at the head of the table, where clients sit. The one directly across from me, so that when he sits and leans back, we are separated by a stretch of polished white surface and nothing else.
Kaye takes the head. “Daisy has been exceptionally thorough,” she tells him. “Top of her class at Boise State. We’re lucky to have her.”
“Boise.” He picks up the file. His fingers find the first tab, the red one, and he opens to the page and his eyes move across the text before they lift to me. “Idaho.”
“Yes.”
“A long way from Monaco.”
“About five thousand miles.” The number comes out before I can stop it. I calculated it on the plane. I don’t know why I’m sharing this.
His mouth does something. Not a smile. The corner lifts, holds, and his eyes stay on mine, and the lift tells me he is either charmed or entertained and I can’t tell which and I’m not sure it matters because either way my face is getting hot.
“Five thousand miles,” he repeats. “And how are you finding the other end?”
“The coffee’s better here.”
Kaye laughs. Anton doesn’t. His eyes don’t leave mine. He turns a page of the file without breaking contact, and the gesture should be rude, dismissive, except that his fingers brush the yellow tab on the retainer clause, the one I added, the one Blythe told me to file blue and forget, and he pauses.
“You added a category.”
My pulse picks up. “Yellow. For items that don’t fit the standard coding but seem relevant.”
“Relevant to what?”
“To the overall picture. The billing structure has a discrepancy between the service description and the—”
“Daisy.” Kaye’s voice is smooth. Warm. A hand on the wheel. “Mr. Almazov is here to discuss the new account scope. Let’s stay on track.”
I close my mouth. The heat in my face changes flavour, from flustered to something closer to shame, and I sit back in my chair and fold my hands in my lap and I’m young and I just tried to flag a billing discrepancy to a client and got shut down by my own aunt, and I want to dissolve into the polished white table.
Anton closes the file. He doesn’t mention the yellow tab again. But his thumb rests on it for a beat too long before he sets the file aside, and when he sets it aside, he does it gently, and I don’t know what to do with that.
“So, Miss Fletcher.” He leans back. His jacket falls open, one button undone, and his hands settle on the armrests with the ease of a man who has sat in every conference room and owned most of them. “Tell me about yourself.”
I blink. “I—pardon?”
“Yourself. Where you grew up. How you ended up here. Whether you like Monaco.” His head tilts. “Personal questions.”
“I’m not sure that’s relevant to the account scope,” I manage, and from the head of the table Kaye makes a sound that might be a cough.
His eyes change. Not the colour. The temperature. The grey warms by a single degree, and the half-smile returns, and I have the wild, ungrounded thought that I just passed a test I didn’t know I was taking.
“Humour me.”
I glance at Kaye. She nods, small and encouraging. So I talk. I tell him about Idaho, about the house with the porch that needs repainting, about my parents who think Monaco is near Milan and sent me a guidebook to the wrong country. I tell him I studied pre-law because I liked the logic of it, how rules build on rules until the structure holds weight. I don’t tell him that I brought my own adhesive tabs from a stationery shop in Boise or that I calculated the flight distance on the plane or that I’ve been in this conference room a while and I can still feel the handshake in my palm.
He listens. That’s the thing. He listens. His eyes don’t wander. His phone stays in his jacket. He asks follow-up questions that have nothing to do with law or Keyes or the retainer agreement. He asks if I miss the mountains. He asks if I cook. He asks what I read before bed and I tell him mystery novels and he tells me, “Of course you do,” and I don’t know what that means but how he says it makes my ribs feel too small.
He is attentive and warm and charming and something about him in that chair, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, his fingers tapping a rhythm on the armrest that I suspect is unconscious, makes me feel like I’m being interviewed for something that isn’t in the job description.