Chapter 2: Table for Two

The courtroom smelled like polished oak and stale coffee, the kind of brew that had been sitting on the hot plate since dawn. I tugged at the hem of my navy suit jacket, the one that always made my deep brown skin stand out against all the sterile whites and grays, and tried to ignore how Preston's shoulder kept brushing mine at the plaintiff's table.

He wore charcoal again, the three-piece cut so sharp it looked weaponized. Fifteen years had etched harder lines into that jaw and those eyes, but the predatory stillness was the same one that used to pin me against library stacks back at Yale.

"Ready to play nice for the judge?" he murmured, breath warm against the curl that had already escaped my pins.

I kept my gaze fixed on the bench. "Ready to not tank this deposition hearing? One wrong word and Marcus will have both our heads on pikes by lunch."

His low chuckle slid under my skin like a subpoena. Bastard.

The bailiff called order, and we dove into the preliminary arguments on the Whitaker antitrust mess. Hargrove, opposing counsel with a voice like oil over gravel, painted our clients as textbook monopolists. Standard theater. When our turn came, Preston led the rebuttal on the cross-border data issues, his baritone slicing clean through every objection.

I watched his hands, the way they gestured with precise economy, and felt my own pulse kick up. When he paused for transition, I picked up the thread without missing a beat, my fingers cutting through the air the way they always did when the logic caught fire. Our rhythm clicked too well. The judge leaned in. The gallery shifted. Even Hargrove looked faintly constipated.

By the time the hearing recessed, the air between us felt charged enough to short-circuit the courthouse Wi-Fi.

"Not bad, Lockhart," Preston said on the courthouse steps, sunlight bouncing off the glass towers around us like it was personally invested in the drama.

I shoved folders into my bag, jaw tight. "We bought ourselves two weeks before the next motion. Strategy session back at the firm. Thirty minutes. Don't be late."

He fell in beside me without asking, stride eating pavement with that quiet dominance that made my heels feel louder than they should. The short walk passed in heavy silence. Every unspoken threat from last night in my office still hung between us like a pending appeal.

---

The thirty-second-floor conference room gleamed with mahogany and city views, all sharp lines and zero mercy. I'd claimed the head of the table out of pure habit, my color-coded notes spread like a battle map. Preston dropped into the chair right beside me instead of across, close enough that his knee almost touched mine underneath.

I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to ease the knot that had lived there since he walked back into my life. "The European subsidiary transcripts are garbage. We need to get ahead of their motion to suppress on the data privacy angle."

He traced one finger along the table's edge, that old plotting habit of his making the hairs on my arms lift. The fountain pen beside his notepad caught the light, probably one of the relics from his father's collection. I wondered if he still kept that photo in his wallet, the one that reminded him exactly who had burned his legacy down.

"You're missing the compliance officer," he said after a beat, voice low and thoughtful. "Hargrove will trot her out as the noble whistleblower. We depose her first on the incentive bonuses. Undermines the halo."

I stopped mid-reach for my water glass. Damn. The angle was clean, surgical. The kind of insight that reminded me why he'd always been dangerous. A flicker of something too close to respect tried to surface; I shoved it down hard enough to feel it in my stomach.

"That's... usable," I managed. The words tasted sour. Under my breath I started whispering the counter-argument the way I always did when my brain needed to test the shape of it. "Incentive structure creates bias, Your Honor. Pattern of..."

Preston's finger stilled. "You still do that. Whisper like the shower's the only safe place to rehearse."

Heat crawled up my neck. I busied my hands restacking the blues on top of the reds, anything to avoid those eyes. "Some of us prepare, Inverdale. Others brood and hoard pens like they're going out of style."

He leaned back and loosened his tie with one casual flick, exposing the strong line of his throat. My brain supplied the memory of salt on that skin without permission. I looked away fast.

"Speaking of preparation," he continued, voice dropping into that register that should probably be illegal in conference rooms, "when were you planning to mention you have a daughter?"

The room didn't tilt. It just got smaller, the city noise outside suddenly too loud. My hand twitched toward the drawer down the hall where my emergency chocolate lived, but I stayed rooted, nails pressing crescents into the mahogany instead.

"She's none of your business." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "And how the hell do you know anything?"

His smile was small, sharp, and entirely too satisfied. "I make it my business to know everything about you now, Adelaide. Fourteen years old. The timing lines up with that spring at Yale. Funny thing about secrets. They don't stay buried when someone starts digging."

My stomach knotted so tight I tasted metal. He didn't say her name. Didn't mention chess or allergies or Instagram. Not yet. But the threat sat there between us like a live exhibit. The star-shaped birthmark on my inner thigh suddenly itched under my skirt like it remembered his mouth.

I stood so fast the chair scraped loud enough to echo. "You stay the fuck away from that part of my life. This case is between us. Nothing else."

Preston rose too, slower, using every inch of that broad-shouldered frame to crowd the space until the table edge dug into the backs of my thighs. His hands braced on either side of me, not touching but caging. Heat rolled off him in waves that made my pulse hammer against my ribs.

"Between us?" His breath mixed with mine, whiskey and mint and fifteen years of rot. "You helped tear my family apart. Lied about the baby. Built your perfect little empire on top of the rubble while I clawed my way back. And now you want to draw neat lines?"

I should have shoved him. Instead my hands fisted in his shirt, bunching expensive cotton. "I hate you," I whispered. It sounded ragged, too close to the way I'd once moaned his name in a dorm room that smelled like cheap beer and bad decisions.

"Say it again." His grip landed on my hip, possessive enough to bruise, and the spark shot straight between my legs.

"I hate you." Louder this time, but my hips tilted toward him anyway. His thigh slid between mine with deliberate pressure, fabric catching and pulling. My skirt rode up. The hard line of him pressed against my stomach and my body remembered every mark he'd ever left on me.

One of his hands cupped the back of my neck, thumb finding the exact spot I'd been rubbing. The touch was too gentle for what this was. It made everything worse. "Fifteen years, and your body still responds like it never forgot who owns it. Tell me I'm wrong."

I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of an answer. But my nails were already dragging down his shoulders through the shirt, leaving marks I knew would show tomorrow. Our mouths hovered so close I could taste his exhale. The almost-kiss felt sharper than the real thing ever could.

His fingers flexed, bunching my skirt higher. If he reached that birthmark now I'd splinter apart. I could already feel the liquid heat building, the terrifying slide from control into something that looked a lot like surrender. "Preston..."

The way his name broke in my throat snapped whatever leash he'd been holding. His growl vibrated against my lips as he closed the distance, mouth claiming mine with teeth and fury and fifteen years of everything we'd never said. No tenderness. Just raw hunger and the metallic tang of his lip when I bit back hard enough to draw blood.

He lifted me onto the table like I weighed nothing. Papers scattered. My legs wrapped around his waist before my brain could file an objection, heels digging into his back. The grind of us together pulled a groan from him that I swallowed like evidence.

This was reckless. The cleaning crew could walk in. Marcus could knock with his oily smirk and Montblanc pen. But Preston's callused palm was sliding up my thigh now, catching on silk, heading straight for the star mark that had always undone me. His fingers traced the edge of it with the same precision he used in court, and I arched despite myself.

"Don't you dare," I gasped against his mouth, even as my body begged for the opposite. The war inside me felt louder than any closing argument: the need to stay in control versus the bone-deep want to let him wreck everything.

He stilled just short of where I ached, forehead pressed to mine, breathing like he'd run ten blocks. That rare genuine smile ghosted across his face, the one that only appeared when he'd made me come apart. "You still taste like chocolate and terrible choices."

I laughed once, shaky and raw, my hands still fisted in his ruined shirt. No pretty epiphanies. Just the sick twist of shame and want and the knowledge that I'd let him get this close again. That some broken part of me had missed the violence of it.

He stepped back first. I slid off the table on legs that weren't steady, smoothing my skirt with fingers that still trembled. We straightened the scattered notes in silence thick enough to choke on. My neck burned where he'd gripped it. His shirt showed every line my nails had left. We looked exactly like what we were: two lawyers who'd almost fucked on a conference table and still had a merger case to win.

Preston picked up his fountain pen and clicked it once, watching me with those unreadable eyes. "This isn't finished."

"It never was," I answered, voice steadier than the rest of me. Inside, the cracks in my armor felt wider than before. He was learning the shape of them, and the worst part was how badly I wanted to see what he'd do with that knowledge.

My phone buzzed against the mahogany. I glanced down, expecting a client ping or Marcus demanding an update.

The text was from Zoe.

Mom, some guy with a verified account just liked my chess tournament photo. His name's Preston something. Isn't that the same last name as that old family story you told me once? The one about the guy who disappeared before I was born? Kinda weird, right?

The floor didn't drop. It just got colder under my heels. Preston's gaze sharpened on whatever showed in my face, that predatory stillness snapping back into place.

One accidental like, and the entire lie I'd sold my daughter for fifteen years was one notification away from blowing apart.