Chapter Five

The Perfect Wife

The Lancaster family dinner was held in a townhouse that cost more than most countries' foreign reserves. I arrived in a dress I'd designed myself — deep burgundy silk, structured shoulders, a neckline that suggested confidence without begging for attention.

I'd been briefed by Clara: Lancaster's mother had passed away years ago. His father, Richard, had remarried. Two board members and their wives. A handful of inner circle.

And Vanessa Blackwood.

I'd known she would be there. I hadn't known she would position herself at the door.

She was beautiful in the way that expensive things are beautiful — deliberate, maintained, designed to provoke. She extended her hand with a smile that reached nowhere near her eyes.

"Sophia. What a surprise this all was."

"For me too," I said pleasantly, and shook her hand.

She didn't move to let me pass. "We've all been wondering — how does it feel? To marry someone who didn't choose you for love?"

The room wasn't silent. But it was listening.

I looked at her for a long moment. Kept my face exactly as it was.

"The same way it feels," I said, "for every woman in this room, I imagine." I smiled. "Now, if you'll excuse me."

I moved past her. Kept my spine straight. Kept my hands still.

Don't count tiles, I told myself. Walk.

Dinner was a performance I was reasonably good at. I'd grown up in this world, or near enough to it. I knew which fork and which laugh and which silence. I spoke when spoken to and deflected the pointed questions with the precision of someone who has designed armor for a living.

But by the second course I felt it — the low, constant pressure of a room testing whether I belonged.

Then my phone, on silent in my bag, buzzed three times.

I excused myself to the hallway.

Lucas.

I answered.

"How is it going." Not quite a question.

"Fine." I kept my voice steady. "How did you—"

"James is there. He sends updates." A pause. "Vanessa."

"Handled."

A beat of silence. "Go back in," he said. "Put me on speaker."

"Lucas, that's not—"

"Sophia. Speaker."

I walked back to the table, phone in hand. Every eye tracked me.

"Forgive me," I said, taking my seat. "My husband wanted to say hello."

I set the phone on the table. His voice came through, clear and cool, filling the room the way his presence would have.

"Richard. Caroline. I'm sorry to miss the evening." A pause that felt deliberate. "Please make my wife comfortable. She is the most capable person in that room."

He hung up.

The table was very quiet for a moment.

Richard Lancaster — silver-haired, appraising — looked at me with something that was almost respect. "He doesn't call from London for nothing," he said.

"No," I agreed. "He doesn't."

I picked up my fork.

Across the table, Vanessa Blackwood's smile had gone rigid at the edges.

I didn't allow myself to feel anything about that.

Almost.

Chapter Six

Living Together

He came back on a Tuesday.

I didn't know he was home until I heard the elevator open. I was in the living room at the time, fabric swatches and sketches covering the dining table — the flat wide surface was the best workspace I'd found, and since Lucas wasn't here to mind, I'd spread out.

I was in the middle of pinning a toile when the doors opened and Lucas Lancaster walked into our shared life for the first time.

He stopped when he saw the table.

I stopped when I saw him.

He looked like he'd stepped off a transatlantic flight and still managed to appear like a man in complete control of every room he entered. Jacket over his arm. Top button open. The single concession to twelve hours in the air.

His eyes moved over the table. The swatches. The sketches. A half-constructed bodice pinned to a dress form in the corner.

"The dining table," he said.

"I'll move it for meals."

A pause. "It's fine."

He set down his bag. Looked at the dress form.

I waited for the diplomatic suggestion that I set up a proper studio somewhere else in the apartment — a guest room, perhaps. Something contained.

Instead he crossed to the table, picked up one of the fabric swatches — midnight blue silk, with a hand-painted grain pattern I'd been testing — and held it to the window light.

Something in his expression shifted. Brief. Hard to read.

"Lancaster Fashion is relaunching in six months," he said.

"I read about it." I watched him. "Congratulations."

"We're looking for a creative director." He set the swatch down. "Someone who understands luxury without performing it."

I kept my voice even. "I have my own studio."

"I know."

"Then you know that's not something I'd walk away from."

"I'm not asking you to walk away from it." He met my eyes. "I'm asking if you'd consider a conversation."

A conversation. Not a command, not an assumption — a question. From Lucas Lancaster.

I filed that away somewhere.

"I'll think about it," I said.

He nodded once and went to change. No pressure. No follow-up.

Dinner was Mrs. Chen's doing — she'd prepared for his return without being asked. We sat at the cleaned table. He ate with focused efficiency. I ate and watched the city out the window.

The silence wasn't comfortable. But it wasn't hostile either.

It was two separate people, in the same space, not yet sure what the rules were.

"Ground rules," I said, halfway through the meal.

He looked up.

"We share the kitchen. I work in the dining room during the day. I won't leave anything in your study. You don't touch my sketches." I paused. "Does that work?"

He looked at me for a moment.

"Yes," he said.

We finished dinner.

That night I lay awake and listened to the apartment settle — the faint sounds of another person present in it. Him moving to his room. A light under his door at midnight when I went to get water.

Still working.

I went back to bed and stared at the ceiling.

He notices things, I thought. The swatch. The light.

I fell asleep before I could finish the thought — which was probably for the best.

Chapter Seven

A Fever Night

I didn't tell anyone I felt unwell. That's a habit from years of running a studio on a skeleton budget — you don't stop until you physically can't move. By the time I understood that the headache and the chill weren't going away, I was already on the floor of the studio bathroom.

Lily found me. Lily called the penthouse.

I'd told her to call a car, not a person. I found out later that she hadn't.

I was on the studio couch with a blanket when Lucas arrived. He was still in a suit. It was four in the afternoon — he'd been in meetings. I know because I heard him on the phone as he walked in, ending a call in a way that suggested the person on the other end was not pleased.

He crouched down in front of me.

His hand went to my forehead without hesitation. No preamble. Just his palm, cool and certain, against my skin.

"One-oh-two," he said, like he had a thermometer built in.

"I'm fine."

"You're not." He stood. Looked at Lily. "Do you have ibuprofen?"

He managed the next four hours with the same manner he managed everything — efficiently, without fuss, without comfort that felt performed. He got me to the car. He got me to the penthouse. He found the medicine in the bathroom cabinet, brought water, adjusted the thermostat.

He didn't flutter. He didn't hover. He just handled things.

By midnight my fever had climbed instead of fallen. I surfaced from a restless half-sleep to find the room dark and Lucas sitting in the chair by the window, a document open on his tablet.

"You're still here," I said. My voice came out rougher than I intended.

"You're still sick."

"I don't need — you don't have to—"

"Sophia." Quiet. Final. "Go back to sleep."

I looked at him for a moment. In the low light he looked different — less composed, somehow. Or maybe it was the fever.

"You had a meeting," I said. "I heard you cancel something."

A pause. "It wasn't important."

Something about that sentence — the flatness of it, the complete absence of resentment — made something shift behind my ribs. I closed my eyes before my face could say something I hadn't decided yet.

He crossed the room once more to check my temperature — his hand again, efficient, impersonal. Except that he didn't move it immediately. A moment longer than necessary.

Then he went back to his chair.

I woke at six to gray morning light and the sound of rain.

He was still there.

Asleep in the chair. Fully dressed. Head tilted slightly back. The tablet dark in his hand.

He'd stayed the entire night.

I lay very still and looked at him and tried not to think about what it meant that the sight of him sleeping in that chair made my chest do something it had absolutely no business doing.

Remember what it is, I told myself.

But looking at him, I was already less certain.