Page 60 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

Then her smile recovered. “Wow. Put that on my tombstone.”

I exhaled through my nose. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“No, it’s good. Devastating to nobody’s ego.”

“You look striking,” I said.

The words came out more intensely than I intended.

Her smile faltered again, but I caught the twinkle in her eyes. The street noise seemed to recede by a few degrees. Max stood between us, watchful, plum tie centered perfectly against his chest.

“Oh,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

The exchange should’ve ended there, neatly and safely, but Quinn kept looking at me, and I found I could not look away.

I didn’t know what she saw in my face.

I knew only what I was trying not to show: that the sight of her had affected me, and that seeing her here, in a building with worn steps that had unsettled me for reasons I didn’t yet want to examine, made the evening feel less like a legal strategy and more like a threshold.

And that was unacceptable.

She was attached to my legal team because of a boon she’d negotiated with admirable nerve. Tonight served a purpose. We were attending the gala to secure access to a museum director who had ignored direct channels and surrounded herself with philanthropic noise.

Quinn had earned her place because she was resourceful, not because I enjoyed the way she looked at me when I surprised her.

Max sneezed.

Quinn looked down at him, then back at me, color still high in her cheeks. “He says thank you, too.”

“He sneezed.”

“It’s a form of communication.”

“Ah.”

We walked out of her atrocious building, and my driver came around to open the rear door. Quinn glanced at the car, and I watched her take in the sleek black body, the soft interior lighting, the polished details that had been invisible to me until I saw them through her eyes. She recovered quickly, but not before I caught the quick shift of calculation. The tiny mental adjustment of someone reminding herself not to be impressed by the wrong things.

“I had the driver bring a different car than I normally would,” I said.

Her eyes snapped back to me. “What?”

“This one has more room in the back. I thought Max might prefer to lie down.”

“You changed cars for my dog?”

“He is seventy pounds, elderly, and wearing formal attire. Making him fold himself into a sedan seemed discourteous.”

“I just didn’t expect you to prepare for him like a visiting ambassador.”

“He’s part of the strategy,” I said, then looked down at Max. “And he’s wearing formal attire. It only seemed right.”

Max stepped forward.