Page 2 of Dial F for Finance

“I can be in Tokyo by the end of the week.”

“Good. Just don’t let them see the NeuraTech angle. If Nakamura figures out we need this deal more than we’re showing, the equity ask doubles.”

“I don’t show my hand.”

“You’re showing your hand right now.”

“Excuse me?”

He grins and nods toward Jenna. “Every time you look at Ms. Pemberton.”

I take a sip of whiskey to cover the hit, but Landon has already moved on—scanning the room, cataloging attendees, his brain processing social data with the same speed he applies to balance sheets.

“Enjoy the wedding,” he says, which is Landon’s version of goodbye.

He moves toward the bar, where his wife, Willa, joins him. She touches his arm. He covers her hand with his. The gesture is small and private and so at odds with the man who was just coolly dissecting supply-chain vulnerabilities that it reminds me—not for the first time—that the sharpest people are often the softest in the places they don’t let anyone see.

I look back to Jenna. She’s moved—Layla has pulled her toward the dance floor and Jenna is going reluctantly, the way she does everything she secretly wants to do, with visible resistance and invisible willingness. Layla spins her once, and Jenna catches herself with a laugh that’s surprised and unguarded and so unlike her public face it makes something in my chest physically hurt.

I’ve been in love with Jenna Pemberton since the day she walked into Bennett’s office and told him his filing system was “an insult to alphabetical order and the concept of retrieval.” She was twenty-six. She was furious. She was the most competent person I’d ever seen, and I thought: there. That one. Whatever it takes. However long.

For seven years I tried to get her attention the way I get everyone’s—charm, jokes, impeccable timing—and she looked straight through the performance like it was a window. Then three years ago I stopped performing and started pursuing her outright, because somewhere in there it stopped being want and became arithmetic: no version of my life added up without her in it.

It’s been a long decade.

The evening moves the way wedding receptions move—in waves. Dancing, then sitting. Champagne, then coffee. Conversations that start at tables and migrate to corners and eventually to the terrace, where the lake is black and the air is cold and the music from the pavilion carries just enough to be atmospheric without being intrusive.

I’m outside sometime around eleven. Not avoiding anything. The room just got warm, my jacket got heavy, and I needed two minutes where I wasn’t performing for anyone. I lean against the stone balustrade, look at the lake, and breathe.

The door opens behind me.

I know it’s her before I turn around. I don’t know how. Some combination of the sound of her heels, the displacement of air, the way my body has spent three years calibrating itself to her proximity with a precision that would embarrass a satellite.

“Sneaking away?” Jenna says.

I turn. She’s standing in the doorway with her champagne, backlit by the warm light from the pavilion, and she looks . . . she looks like the thing I’ve been afraid to want because wanting it too loudly might make it disappear.

“Needed air,” I say. “It’s hot in there.”

“It’s spring.”

I look at her. There’s nothing to say. It is spring, and yet the world is still cold, and the air is sharp, and she is standing in that light looking like a problem I intend to solve even if it ruins me.

Jenna steps onto the terrace, not shivering, not rushing, just walking like the night belongs to her. I can’t help but watch the subtle way her hips move, the unstudied precision of every step. She comes to stand beside me, not touching but close enough I could reach out and wrap a hand around the curve of her waist if I wanted. Which I do.

She tips her face up at me. “You’re out here avoiding everyone, but especially me. The question is why. We’ve had fun tonight, haven’t we?”

I exhale slowly. She’s not wrong. I’ve been hiding from her, but only because proximity is an invitation I can’t say no to, and tonight I’m trying not to fuck up the years-long campaign to get her to want what I want.

She is not a woman you chase with bravado.

If you come at her with the wrong velocity, she’ll sidestep you and leave a vapor trail, and I won’t be the man who loses her because of too much, too soon.

“It’s Bennett’s night,” I say. “I’m just a guest star.”

Her mouth curves. “You hate being a guest star.”

“Do I?”