Page 52 of Beautiful Savage
"Good."
The side door opens. Adrian enters carrying a small white espresso cup on a saucer, the smell of fresh-pulled coffee preceding him. He crosses behind the bar, walks behind Isa, sets the cup beside her whiskey. His hand goes to her lower back as he places it down. The contact lasts two seconds. His palm flat against the small of her back, her spine straightening slightly at the touch.
"My two favorite women, conspiring in the afternoon," he says, the social warmth at full volume but operating fast. "Isa drinking whiskey at three-thirty, very professional. Daphne finding the only quiet corner when there's a whole building to explore."
Isa turns her head to look at him. He's already looking at her. The moment stretches a half-second too long. Both of them perfectly still during it, something unnamed passing between them. Then she picks up the espresso. His hand withdraws. He turns back to me with the warmth intact.
"Make her give you the good stuff, not the rail whiskey she drinks to punish herself." He's already moving toward the back office. "The Japanese bottle, third shelf."
He disappears through the door. My skin prickles with awareness. I've just witnessed something private.
She stands, picks up both drinks. Whiskey in her left hand, espresso in her right. Nods once.
She walks past me toward the back office where Adrian went.
The back hallway stretches ahead. I pass the security office. Door closed, dark.
On the mezzanine, I find Logan's office door ajar. Juliet sits at the desk surrounded by reservation books and a laptop, brow furrowed in concentration. She's smaller than I remember from glimpses. Delicate-boned, blonde hair soft around her face. When she looks up, genuine pleasure lights her features.
"Daphne! Come in, please. I'm drowning in Saturday's reservations."
I enter, stand near the desk. "Bad?"
"Not bad, just puzzle pieces that don't quite fit. The Siren's doing her torch set, but three tables specifically requested upbeat. I'm trying to figure out if I can move them to Sunday without offending anyone." She closes the laptop with a small sigh. "This job is harder than it looks."
She notices me shifting weight foot to foot, the unconscious dance of someone who never quite stops moving. "You're a dancer."
"Was. Am. It's complicated."
Her face transforms. The soft pleasure of recognition. "My sister, Eleanor Rosetti, is a ballerina. I always thought that sounded so fairy-tale, being a ballerina. Actually, I've started classes, just the basics. What style do you dance? Ballet?"
"Ballet, modern, some contemporary. Whatever my body wanted that day."
We talk about dance for five minutes. Real questions, real interest. She attends classes. Gentle stretching, she says, nothing intense. She invites me to come. The invitation is casual, sincere. No agenda beyond possible friendship. My chest aches with something I'd forgotten: the possibility of a friend who doesn't know my history, who might like me for who I am now.
"I'd like that," I say.
She reopens the laptop. "You're welcome to stay if you want company. This is tedious but not private."
"I should keep walking. But thank you."
I leave her office feeling lighter. She's the first person here who wasn't assessing, testing, or protecting. Just offering normal friendship like I'm a normal person.
Back in the hallway, I pass the kitchen. Sera's on the phone, but she raises the wine glass in salute. The side door to the bar is closed. I'm heading for the service stairs when the back garden door opens.
Marisol enters carrying garden cuttings. Bougainvillea branches heavy with magenta blooms, sprigs of lemon balm, a few citrus blossoms. Her golden hair falls loose and chaotic around her shoulders, the at-home version of herself. We stop four feet apart.
She looks at me without smiling. No warmth softens her honey-colored eyes. "Daphne. Settling in?"
"Getting there."
"Good." She shifts the cuttings to her other arm, a few bougainvillea petals falling to the floor. "Adrian's turned the main floor into a crime scene for tomorrow's vendor meeting. Forty chairs where no chairs should be. Consider yourself warned." The joke is there and she steps on it before it can land, like she resents her own mouth for trying.
The comment wants to be funny and won't let itself be. What she gives instead of the warmth I can feel her holding back, two-handed, like it might spill.
"I'll keep that in mind."
She nods once, walks past me toward the kitchen with her cuttings. Forty seconds total. Polite distance, nothing more—except for the half-second where a joke flickered and died behind her eyes. Everyone swears Marisol is all sparkle and noise, always bouncing off the walls. I believe them now. I've felt her holding the whole sparkling weight of it back so it can't reach me. The mother hen, guarding the nest, deciding I'm a hawk.
