She was waiting for him on the terrace of his mansion that night, long legs folded elegantly beneath her in a cream dress that probably cost more than Grace would see in a year. The city lights scattered behind her like careful diamonds. A planner lay open on the table between them. Wedding venues. Guest lists. Floral palettes. The machinery of beautiful appearances.
“This one is nice,” she said, tapping a photograph of a beach ceremony. “Simple, refined. Your mother likes it.”
Micah sat down across from her and looked at the page without seeing it.
Tiana set the planner aside. “You’re somewhere else.”
“Work.”
“No.” Her tone stayed soft. That was one of the things people underestimated about Tiana. They saw beauty first, then polish, then money. They mistook all three for emptiness. But she had a disciplined intelligence and a long memory. “When it’s work, you get sharper. Lately you disappear.”
He reached for his glass of wine, then didn’t drink. “I’ve had a lot on my mind.”
“Does it have a name?”
He looked up.
She met his eyes without blinking. “Whatever this is.”
The question lingered between them.
Tiana had been with him through the worst period of his adult life, when fraud accusations had turned his face into a headline and his enemies had scented blood. She had stood beside him in front of cameras when board members avoided him. She had put her own reputation under strain to keep donors from abandoning his foundation. She knew what it cost to remain in the blast zone of a powerful man’s scandal. She also knew, perhaps better than he did, when his attention had shifted somewhere he could not admit.
He put the glass down. “I’m sorting something out.”
“With another woman?”
He should have denied it. The hesitation said enough.
Pain moved across her face so quickly most people would have missed it. Then she smoothed it away.
“I deserve honesty, Micah.”
“You do.”
“But not tonight?”
He had no answer she would respect, so he gave none.
Later, long after she left, he went to his room and opened the top drawer of his bedside table. Inside, beside cufflinks and an old passport holder, lay the small toy lion Hope had pressed into his hand that afternoon.
“For when you’re sad,” she had said solemnly.
He picked it up now and sat on the edge of his bed with it in his palm, a grown man holding a cheap toy like evidence.
The rain came two days later.
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