Page 64 of When Ice Queens Collide
“Astoria, this is my partner, Simone Rousseau.”
Her face went hot at the cheekbones, and her hands stayed in her lap. The word was out in the room, plain and irrevocable.Partner.Astoria's mouth softened. She put her hand out to Simone a second time, and the handshake she gave her was longer than the first one.
“I've been hoping to meet you,” Astoria said. “Properly.”
“Likewise.”
“I'd like to have you both for dinner soon.”
“We'd like that.” Alexandra's voice came out steadier than she felt. Her cheeks still burned, so she drank water to give her hands something to do.
Astoria's eyes came back to her and she touched Alexandra's forearm, brief and warm through the silk of her sleeve, and said, “It's good to see you, Alexandra.”
She did not trust her voice for a second, so she covered Astoria's hand with her own for a beat, and Astoria pressed back. Astoria returned to her table, and Alexandra watched her cross the room. Astoria sat. Miller said something to her and Astoria answered without looking up from her plate, and their table folded back into its own conversation. The pressure in Alexandra's chest eased by a degree. Julianna already went back to her conversation, but Paige was watching them over the rim of her wine glass. Alexandra reached for her water with steadier hands, and she drank.
Simone was watching her across the table. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
Simone smiled, a small, private smile that belonged only for the two of them.
A few moments later, Harriet returned with the wine bottle. She poured, then left. Alexandra picked up her glass and Simone followed suit.
“To us,” Alexandra said.
“To us.”
They clicked the rims of the glasses together, and she sipped the wine to seal the toast.
Simone was telling her about something her mother had said on the phone that morning—something small, in French, about the weather in Montreal—and Alexandra listened while watching her mouth move.
The wine was good, and the bread was warm. Simone was describing the conversation, and her hand was on the table, palm up, near the edge. Alexandra put her hand in it. Simone closed her fingers around Alexandra's without looking down or breaking the sentence she was in the middle of, like it was the most natural thing in the world for them to do.
When they stood to leave an hour later, Simone's hand found the small of Alexandra's back as they crossed the room, light and brief and unmistakable, and Alexandra walked through the Ridge Club with another woman's hand on her for the first time in her life.
EPILOGUE
Epilogue
The apartment in Marylebone, in Central London, had a south-facing sitting room, and at half past nine in the morning, the light streamed across the floor in long, pale rectangles that warmed the rug. Alexandra was in the chair by the window with theFinancial Timesfolded once on her knee and a cup of coffee on the table by her elbow. She’d been reading the same paragraph for the better part of ten minutes because she kept getting distracted by the light. In her defense, though, it was more interesting than the analysis.
She had grown up understanding that London was a place you went to for board meetings or weekend excursions before jetting back off to home. Dorothy had treated it as an extension office, so Alexandra had treated it the same way, never exploring beyond what was strictly necessary. The first weekend Simone had brought her here, she had walked through Marylebone on a Saturday afternoon and felt the discomfort of having been in a city without ever really havingexperiencedit.
That had been four years ago, almost to the week.
They purchased the apartment a year after. Simone had found it. The previous owner had been a retired barrister who had kept the original moldings and replaced almost nothing else, and the place had a quality of having been lived in continuously since 1894, which Alexandra had liked from the first viewing without saying so. She had said so eventually, and Simone had pretended not to know already.
She picked up the coffee. Simone had made it before going out—strong, French press, no milk for Alexandra and a splash of cream for herself. The cup was one of the four they had bought at a market in Bermondsey on a Friday morning when neither of them had been able to remember what they were supposed to be doing. They had gone back to the apartment with mismatched cups and a bag of cheese.
The ring on her left hand caught the light when she set the cup down. Alexandra still noticed it some mornings. It was a plain band, brushed gold, and the inside was engraved with a date in May two years ago and nothing else. She had not worn jewelry for thirty years except for her watch, and the small additional weight on her fourth finger had taken some weeks to get used to. Now it registered only when the light hit it, the way the watch did, and even that was becoming rare.
She heard the key in the door before Simone opened it.
“Hyde Park to Marylebone in twenty-two minutes,” Simone said from the hall. “Which is faster than it should be.”
“You ran.”
“Only at the end.”
