The pen was heavier than I expected. Black lacquer, a gold nib, the kind of pen that exists only to sign things that change your life.
I was forty-one years old, standing on the twenty-ninth floor of a hotel in a black silk dress I had bought that same afternoon. The city lay below the glass like a spilled jewelry box. Someone had opened champagne. And across the table, watching me read the last page, was Julian Hale.
He was not handsome the way men in advertisements are handsome. He was handsome the way weather is. Grey at the temples, a voice that never hurried, a way of holding your eyes one second longer than was polite.
“Stay for one drink,” he said, so that only I could hear. “Not with them. With me.” He turned my hand over, very gently, and I felt something flat and cool against my palm. A key card. The top floor.
