Page 11 of Dial F for Finance

I quietly exhale.

Jenna, you will not catastrophize. You will not let your brain fill the exquisitely soundproofed space with the sound of your own spiral. You can do this. You can sit in a small, moving room with the man you propositioned while inebriated and then verbally eviscerated on moral grounds. Because you are very, very good at playing it cool. You are a professional.

“We have a pre-takeoff beverage menu, if you’d like something,” the flight attendant says.

“Sparkling water, please.” There’s a kind of dignity in refusing the full bar—though part of me suspects it’s the bar’s fault I’m here at all.

She vanishes, presumably to source a bottle of water from somewhere so rarefied there are probably treaties to protect its aquifer.

I take the seat closest to the window and recheck my phone, purely for appearance. There is no new email. No incoming missile from Bennett. I consider texting Dominic a brief, “On the plane,” but dismiss it as both needy and passive-aggressive—telegraphing a wish for his arrival, which is highly irregular and not at all germane to my function as deal-closer and professional ruiner of men’s overconfident days.

Instead, I inspect the safety card. As if, in the event of a catastrophic failure, my ability to locate the nearest oxygen mask will be the difference between a minor embarrassment and a true viral fiasco.

The attendant brings my sparkling water.

“If you can make sure your seatbelt is on, we’re about to start taxiing to the runway.”

I open my mouth to point out that we’re still waiting on Dominic when I notice the second glass on her tray. A heavy crystal tumbler with two fingers of something amber.

Whiskey.

My mouth closes. But she seems to hear the question anyway.

“Mr. Cruz is on a call in the office at the back of the plane,” she says as she sets a folded napkin beside my glass. “He said to let you know he’ll be out as soon as he’s able. He apologizes for the discourtesy.”

“He’s working,” I say. “It’s not a discourtesy.”

“He was very clear that I should communicate the apology, ma’am.”

I look at her for a beat. She gives me the same neutral smile she gave me when I boarded, and I can’t decide whether he’s being gracious or whether this is the thing a man does when he intends to keep his distance and wants the on-record proof.

“Thank you,” I tell her.

She moves to the back of the cabin and disappears through a narrow doorway near the galley, and despite every instinct in me insisting I shouldn’t look, I look.

The office door is half open.

There he is.

Dominic stands with one hand braced on the edge of a glossy walnut desk, jacket off, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, phone to his ear.

“—push legal on the revised language. I don’t care what they ‘understood’ from the prior draft. If the valuation collar moves, the governance provision moves with it. That’s not optional.”

The attendant steps inside and offers him the whiskey.

He takes it without looking away from whatever disaster is currently trying to set fire to our deal. Then he looks up.

Our eyes catch.

It is one second. Possibly less. More than enough.

Something flickers over his face—surprise, heat, restraint, all three stacked so fast I can’t sort them—and then his expression shutters into something professionally unreadable. He gives the smallest nod, not even a greeting, more an acknowledgment that I exist inside the same oxygen supply. Then the attendant steps back into the corridor.

“Call me when Sato stops pretending this is a translation issue,” Dominic says as he reaches out and swings the door shut.

Softly. Efficiently. Entirely. A completely normal interaction between two adults who kissed like arsonists twelve hours ago.

I stare at the blank veneer for a beat too long. Then I turn back to my water with the rigid composure of a woman absolutely not reacting to anything.