Didn't expect to see you here. I try to get down here once a year. Clear my head. She glanced out at the water. Is that Jaden?
Malcolm felt something shift in his chest. Something small and unexplained. Yeah, he said. That's him. How old is he now?
10. 10 and a half. He'll correct you if you leave off the half. She smiled at that. Not a polite smile.
A real one. The kind that reached her eyes. Smart kid. Jerome being Jerome immediately started angling for her to join them. Malcolm shot him a look that clearly communicated, "Do not do this."
And Jerome being Jerome completely ignored it. We've got plenty of room, plenty of drinks. Sit with us a while. I wouldn't want to intrude. You're not intruding.
Malcolm, tell her she's not intruding. Jerome. Malcolm. Malcolm exhaled slowly. You're welcome to sit, Vivien, if you want.
She looked at him for a second, just a beat longer than necessary, and then said, "All right, just for a few minutes." She stayed for 2 hours, and that surprised Malcolm more than he wanted to admit. Not because she was boring. Vivien Sinclair had never been boring, but in the office, she was always precise, focused, strategic. Here she was, different.
She took her shoes off and dug her toes in the sand. She laughed at Jerome's terrible jokes. When Jaden ran up breathless and Sandy and started explaining some elaborate underwater game he'd invented, she listened to the whole thing with complete attention, asking follow-up questions that made the boy light up like a lantern. You know a lot about kids," Malcolm said during one of the quieter moments when Jerome had wandered off to get food. "I was one once," she said simply.
"Most people forget." She looked at him. "You never do. I've noticed that about you." Malcolm didn't know what to do with that, so he just nodded slowly and looked back out at the water.
That was when he felt it. A shift in the air, not the wind, something else. Attention, sudden and specific, like when a room changes and you don't immediately know why. He saw Vivien's posture change first. Her shoulders drew up, her jaw set.
The easy warmth she'd been carrying for the past 2 hours, drained from her face like water from a tub. He followed her eyline. About 40 yards away, walking along the waterline, a man, early 40s, blonde, expensive watch catching the sun. Khakis rolled to the knee and on his arm, a woman, younger, laughing at something he'd said. "Malcolm didn't know who the man was, but from the way Vivien had gone completely still, he had a pretty solid guess that it mattered.