I'm not in a position to do this the way you're used to things being done. I'm not going to take you to places that cost what I can't afford, and I'm not going to let you take me to places that cost what I shouldn't accept. If that's a problem, it's better to know now. She looked at him steadily. What are you actually saying?
I'm saying I'd like to keep meeting you, he said. And I'm saying I have conditions. She almost smiled. Now, who's attaching conditions to an offer? She said he did smile then fully for the first time.
It changed his face considerably. Deal or no deal, Miss Whitmore. She thought about the last man she had trusted. She thought about the investor meetings she had learned about after the fact, the emails she had found, the careful way he had always positioned himself between her and her own network. Then she thought about the way Ethan Parker had handed back an envelope with $6,000 in it without a second thought.
"Deal," she said. "And it's Natalie." He nodded once as though that settled something. And the strangest courtship she had ever been part of quietly began the woman that every man in San Francisco was trying to impress, deciding to work for the attention of the one man who hadn't bothered to try. The first time Natalie invited Ethan to an industry event, she told herself it was practical. She had two extra tickets to a waterfront investment dinner hosted by a commercial real estate coalition.
And she had already declined to bring her usual plus one, her director of communications, who had a standing invitation for exactly these occasions, and who always spent the evening doing useful work. She told herself she was curious to see how Ethan moved through a room he didn't belong to. She did not tell herself the other thing, which was that she had been thinking about him with an inconvenient frequency. For someone who prided herself on maintaining perspective, he showed up in a dark blazer over a plain white shirt, no tie. It was the right instinct, slightly underdressed for the room in a way that read as deliberate rather than careless, and she was aware enough to know she had not expected him to get that right.
He stood beside her for the first 20 minutes with the ease of a man who had nothing to prove and no one to impress, which meant that paradoxically, people kept finding reasons to approach him. Then Grant Holloway appeared. Grant had a talent for arriving at the exact moment he would be most noticed. He crossed the room toward Natalie with a glass of Bordeaux in each hand, offered her one, and then turned to Ethan with a smile that was technically cordial. I recognize you, Grant said.
Bayview Grand opening, wasn't it? You were doing electrical work. I was, Ethan said. Good response time on that fault, Grant said. I heard the panel was in bad shape.
Transfer switch, Ethan said. Phase reversal. Somebody signed off on an inspection they didn't complete. Right. Grant nodded as though filing this away.