Chapter Nineteen
No More Contracts
The Lancaster Fashion relaunch press conference was at noon.
I landed at ten forty-five.
Clara had told me — not because I'd asked, but because she sent a message that just said noon, Lancaster Tower, conference floor — and I'd understood.
I went straight from the airport. Still in my Paris clothes. My hair in the particular condition of someone who'd slept on a plane and stopped caring.
The lobby of Lancaster Tower recognized me. Heads turned. People moved aside. Someone from PR appeared, looked at my carry-on, and had the excellent judgment to say nothing.
The elevator. The conference floor.
I could hear the press event through the doors — the professional murmur, the camera shutters, a microphone being adjusted.
I pushed the door open.
Lucas was at the podium. Behind him: three screens displaying the Lancaster Fashion relaunch — the new collection, the creative direction, the vision.
My designs were on those screens.
He'd used my work. The midnight blue silk. The architectural white. Six pieces I'd left on the dining table over six months, sketched and abandoned and — he'd kept them. Developed them. Built a relaunch around them.
I stood at the back of the room.
He was mid-sentence when he saw me.
He stopped.
Two hundred journalists, photographers, and industry figures followed his gaze to the back of the room.
I must have looked exactly like what I was — a woman who'd just crossed an ocean.
He reached into his jacket pocket.
He produced a folded document.
I recognized it at thirty feet.
The contract.
He held it for a moment. Then, in front of every camera in the room, he tore it in half.
The room went very quiet.
"The only arrangement I intend to honor from this point forward," he said, into the microphone, into the silence, "is a permanent one."
He stepped away from the podium.
Walked through the room toward me. Every camera tracked him.
He stopped when he reached me. So close I could see the slight fatigue around his eyes — he hadn't slept. I could tell.
He put his hands on either side of my face. Both of them. Like I was something he'd been afraid to touch for a long time.
He pressed his forehead to mine.
No kiss. Not yet. Just — that. Forehead to forehead. His eyes closed.
Like he was making sure I was real.
Around us, the cameras went absolutely wild.
I reached up and held his wrists.
"I read the contract when it was already too late," I said quietly. Against his forehead. For him only.
"So did I," he said.
