Page 4 of The Pakhan's Secret Babies
I know his coffee order. I know which council members he finds tolerable and which ones he doesn’t. I know the exact quality of silence that means he has made a decision versus the one that means he is still turning something over.
He knows my name is Lena and that I work in finance.
The imbalance of it is worrying.
“You keep going quiet,” he says.
“I’m listening.”
“I wasn’t saying anything.”
“I know.”
Another almost-smile. I’m collecting them without meaning to, filing them away with everything else I have no business keeping.
“You’re not from money,” he says.
“Is it that obvious?”
“You look at this room like you’re reminding yourself not to be impressed by it.”
That lands closer than I would like. “Maybe I’ve just seen a lot of rooms.”
“Maybe,” he says, in a tone that means he doesn’t believe me at all.
I look away. The night air is cool, and the party noise is muffled behind the glass doors, and out here it’s almost possible to forget that in five hours I will be back in this building with a completely different reason to be in it.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Go ahead.”
“Do you know everyone here tonight?”
He considers the question. “I know who they are.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
He looks at me. “No,” he says again. “It isn’t.”
There’s a beat of quiet between us that feels different from the others. He’s still watching me with that focused attention, and I’m trying very hard to hold myself at a normal level of composure and doing a mediocre job of it.
“You,” he says, “I don’t know.”
“No,” I agree. My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “You don’t.”
He reaches out and moves a strand of hair from my shoulder, his fingers grazing my collarbone, and it is not accidental, and we both know it, and I feel it from my collarbone to the soles of my feet.
“Lena,” he says. Just my name. Turning it over.
“Roman,” I say back.
His eyes drop to my mouth for a moment.
“Come inside,” he says.
I know what he’s asking. I know exactly what I’m agreeing to and what it will cost me, and I agree anyway, because I am twenty-three years old and I have been in love with this man since approximately the third week of my employment and tonight, behind this mask, I am just a woman he wants, and I cannot make myself walk away from that.
Not tonight.
