Gavin refused. The project was delayed 6 weeks. The promotion went to someone else. No regrets? Elise asked.
I'd do the same thing again. That's not what I asked. There are things you can lose and get back, he said. Your sense of yourself, that one's harder to recover. Elise held his gaze for a moment.
She almost told him then the whole thing. She opened her mouth and felt the words sitting right there. Gavin, I need to tell you something about why I was in that cafe. And then she looked at his face, open and unguarded and completely at ease with her. And she couldn't.
She was afraid, not of his anger. She was afraid that the moment he knew who she was, the ease would go out of him and he would become like everyone else became measured and deliberate and slightly off from the person he actually was. She picked up her wine glass instead. "Can I ask you something?" she said. "You've been saying that a lot.
I know you keep having interesting answers." She turned the glass slowly. If someone approached you for a reason, a practical reason, not a personal one, but the feelings that came after were genuine, would that count? Would the beginning matter more than what came after? Gavin thought about it. Depends on the reason, he said.
Not every motive cancels out what follows, but some do. He paused. Why? Just thinking through something. Are you going to tell me what?
Not yet, she said. He nodded once and the conversation moved on. But he had noticed. He was starting to notice a lot of things. A restaurant that was completely full had somehow found them a table after a single quiet phone call from Elise.
She knew the names of CEOs that even industry veterans couldn't have identified offhand and mentioned them in passing the way people mention things that are simply obvious. And there was the gray jacket man twice in one afternoon. The doubt was there, quiet, persistent, like a crack in ice, not dramatic, but spreading. On the morning of the 28th, Gavin was called back to Redwood's offices, full senior staff. The Warren Meridian representatives wanted to meet face to face.
Gavin drove in, parked, took the elevator to the third floor. The conference room door was glass. He could see people through it as he approached. Directors on one side and across from them a small group he didn't recognize. A lawyer with a leather portfolio, a man in his 50s who looked like he'd been arguing since he woke up and considered it a core personality trait.
And at the head of the table, her back to the door. Gavin stopped walking. He knew the set of her shoulders. He knew the way she held herself when she was working. He'd seen a version of it in the kitchen when she was thinking things through and on the porch when she was working something out.