By morning, the Mediterranean looked like it had never done anything wrong in its life.

The water was flat and glassy, so blue it seemed fake, and the *Meridian* sat anchored off Cannes as if last night's storm had been a rumor. I'd slept maybe three hours. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt a warm palm on my waist.

Julian was already at the breakfast table on the upper deck when I came up, reading glasses on, tablet propped against a coffee pot. Navy suit. Perfect tie. He looked like a man who had never knocked on anyone's door at midnight.

"Good morning, Ms. Ellis."

Ms. Ellis. Right.

"Good morning." I sat across from him and reached for the coffee before I could say something stupid.

He slid a printed contract toward me. "Groupe Lazare. Their director, Delorme, will lead. The sticking point is section nine, the non-compete. Last week they agreed to a five-kilometer radius around the Cannes property. I expect them to try to soften it."

"Soften it how?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't need you." He turned a page on his tablet. "Croissant?"

That was it. No glance, no pause, no flicker of anything. He asked about the croissants with the same tone he'd used for the radius clause.

I took one and tore it apart without eating it. Somehow, his calm was worse than the knock. Last night, I'd known exactly where I stood with him. This morning, I didn't have a clue.

---

The Lazare offices were all white marble and floor-to-ceiling windows over the Croisette. Delorme was a compact man in his fifties with a silver pocket square and a handshake that went on too long.

For the first forty minutes, everything was polite. Then we reached section nine, and Delorme turned to his lawyer and started speaking French at a speed I'd only ever heard from Parisian cab drivers.

I caught the shape of it immediately. They were counting on the speed. They were counting on me getting the gist and missing the details.

"*Donc on garde la formulation*," Delorme said, waving his hand, "*dans la région*, *c'est plus simple*, *personne ne va relire*—"

"Excuse me." I didn't raise my voice, but the room went quiet anyway. "Monsieur Delorme, you just said 'within the region.' Last week's draft said 'within a five-kilometer radius.'"

Delorme blinked at me. His lawyer stopped writing.

I turned to Julian. "They're changing the wording on the non-compete. 'The region' could mean the whole Côte d'Azur. And he said nobody would reread it."

Julian didn't look surprised. He looked at Delorme and waited.

"A translation issue," Delorme said in English, smiling. "Mademoiselle is very careful."

"She is," Julian said. "Which is why we'll keep the five kilometers."

---

In the car afterward, I braced myself for a polite thank-you and silence. That was what clients did. You were a voice. You repeated what people said, and when the meeting ended, you disappeared back into the furniture.

Julian loosened his tie and looked over at me.

"What did you think of him?"

I hesitated. "Of Delorme?"

"Yes."

"You want my opinion?"

"I wouldn't ask otherwise."

I thought about it for a second. "He's not as confident as he acts. He talked fastest every time timing came up. And he checked his phone twice when you said you were happy to wait until next quarter."

"Go on."

"I think someone above him needs this signed by the end of the month. He's not going to walk away. He's trying to grab what he can before you realize that."

Julian was quiet. Then he pulled out his phone and typed a message, his thumbs quick and sure.

"I was going to give them half a point on the management fee to close by Friday," he said. "I'm not anymore. We'll hold everything and let the calendar work for us."

I stared at him. "Just like that?"

"You were right about the clause. I assume you're right about the man." He glanced at me. "I didn't hire you to be a microphone, Nora."

My name again. Quieter this time, almost like he hadn't meant to say it.

I looked out the window so he wouldn't see my face.

---

The calm didn't last.

By three o'clock, we were cruising east toward Antibes, and the wind had picked up again. The *Meridian* started a slow, endless roll, up and over, up and over, and my stomach followed every inch of it.

I'd been seasick since I was a kid. I'd also taken a job on a yacht for twenty-eight thousand dollars, so clearly I'd decided that was a problem for future Nora.

Future Nora was not doing well.

I sat through an hour of email translations in the main salon, sipping water and swallowing hard. When the letters on my screen started to swim, I mumbled something about getting air and went out to the aft deck.

The wind helped a little. I sat down on the cushioned bench near the stern, put my head between my knees, and tried very hard not to throw up on a billionaire's teak.

"Nora."

Of course.

I lifted my head too fast, and the horizon tilted. Julian stood at the top of the steps, frowning.

"I'm fine," I said. "Just getting some air."

"You're gray."

"That's a very rude thing to tell a woman."

He didn't laugh. He didn't make a single joke about the interpreter who couldn't handle a boat. He just disappeared inside, and for one humiliating second I thought that was the end of it.

Two minutes later, he came back with a bottle of water, a small blister pack of pills, and a sleeve of saltine crackers.

"Meclizine," he said, setting them beside me. "Captain keeps it on hand. Crackers first, then the pill."

"I didn't want anyone to know," I said quietly. "It's my second day. I'm supposed to look like I can handle this."

"You handled Delorme. The ocean doesn't count."

I took a cracker. He sat down at the far end of the bench, a good four feet away, his elbows on his knees, his eyes on the white wake churning behind us.

For a while, neither of us said anything. The pill went down. The crackers helped more than I wanted to admit.

"You can go," I said finally. "Really. I'm not going to pass out."

"I know."

"Then why are you still here?"

He kept watching the sea. The wind pushed his hair back off his forehead, and for a second he looked younger. Less like the man who owned this boat and more like the one on the terrace in Geneva.

"Because three years ago, you disappeared before I could ask for your number," he said.

Then he glanced at me, perfectly serious.

"So apparently I've developed trust issues."

A laugh almost escaped me, a surprised, ugly little snort that I tried to hide behind the cracker sleeve. It made my stomach lurch, and I groaned, and that made the corner of his mouth finally give in.

"Don't make me laugh," I said. "I will throw up on your shoes."

"They're Italian. You'd be doing me a favor."

"That makes no sense."

"I know."

I leaned my head back against the cushion and closed my eyes. The boat kept rolling, but it didn't feel quite as awful anymore. He stayed exactly where he was, four feet away, not touching me, not asking for anything.

It was the first time since I'd stepped onto the *Meridian* that I wasn't bracing for something.

---

By the time I got back to my cabin that night, the sea had settled again and my legs finally felt like mine.

I flipped on the bedside lamp and stopped.

On the nightstand sat a small white box. Motion sickness patches, the kind you stick behind your ear. A full week's supply, plus extra.

No card. No note in his handwriting. Nothing that could be mistaken for anything more.

Just a folded slip of yacht stationery, signed by the onboard assistant.

*Mr. Ashford asked us to make sure you had these.*

I sat on the edge of the bed and read it again.

Then again.

It was the most professional thing anyone had ever done for me. Clean, polite, completely appropriate.

So why was I holding that slip of paper like it was the number I'd never given him?

On the third day, the *Meridian* docked in Antibes, and for the first time since Nice, the floor stayed where I put my feet.

The dinner that night was private, held in a stone-walled room above a restaurant in the old town. Eight guests. Two Italian investors, a French family that owned three boutique hotels along the coast, and a Monaco banker who kept switching languages mid-sentence just to see if I'd trip.

I didn't.

For three hours, I lived in the space between voices. Italian to English. English to French. A joke about the Genoa property that only worked in one language, which I rebuilt so it landed in the other. Julian sat at the head of the table and never once looked at me for help, which I'd learned by now meant he trusted me to give it before he needed it.

When the last guest kissed the air beside Julian's cheek and disappeared down the stairs, my throat felt like sandpaper.

Two of Julian's assistants started stacking folders at the far end of the table. Someone from the restaurant cleared the plates. I kicked one heel off under the tablecloth and pulled the Genoa draft toward me to mark the changes before I forgot them.

A cork popped.

I looked up. Julian had taken a bottle from the sideboard, something dark and French with a label I couldn't afford to read. He poured one glass, then held the bottle over a second.

"Ms. Ellis?"

"No, thank you."

He raised an eyebrow.

"The last time I drank with you," I said, "I made questionable decisions."

He set the bottle down and took a slow sip from his own glass. "I thought the decision was excellent."

One of the assistants made a very small noise and suddenly became fascinated by a stapler.

I felt my face heat and bent over the Genoa draft like it held state secrets. By the time I'd initialed two pages, the assistants had gathered their boxes and murmured something about loading the car. The door closed behind them.

Just us now. The candles had burned low, and the window behind Julian showed the harbor lights wobbling on black water.

I put my pen down.

I'd told myself I wouldn't ask. I'd told myself that for three days, and for three years before that.

"Why didn't you look for me?"

He didn't pretend not to understand. He set his glass aside and leaned back in his chair.

"How?" he asked.

"What do you mean, how?"

"What was your last name that night, Nora?"

I opened my mouth to answer, and nothing came out.

Because he hadn't known it. I'd been on a three-day contract through an agency in Zurich, and my badge had said *LinguaPoint Services* in neat blue letters. No name. No number. The agency didn't give out personal contact information, and I'd liked it that way. It had made me feel safe. Invisible.

"The badge," I said slowly.

"The badge." He nodded. "I called the organizers the next morning. They gave me the agency. The agency told me their interpreter had already flown back to London and they don't share private details with clients."

I stared at him. "You called them?"

"I did."

Something tight shifted in my chest, and I didn't like how fast it moved. I covered it the only way I knew how. I laughed.

"Come on. You're Julian Ashford." I gestured at the room, the wine, the yacht waiting in the harbor. "You buy hotels before breakfast. You could've found me."

He looked at me for a long moment. Not offended. Just honest, in a way that made me want to look somewhere else.

"I could have," he said.

The candle beside him flickered.

"But a woman who leaves without giving me her last name is usually communicating something."

I didn't have an answer for that.

For three years, I'd carried a version of that night that I'd never said out loud, even to myself. That I'd been a pleasant forty minutes for a rich man at a party. That he'd gone back inside, found someone else to talk to, and forgotten my face by the time his car pulled up. That he didn't look for me because there was nothing to look for.

It had hurt, quietly, in a way I'd gotten used to.

And it wasn't true.

He hadn't forgotten me. He'd let me go because I'd asked him to, without ever saying the words.

"I thought it didn't matter to you," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted.

"I know." He picked up a folder and squared its edges against the table. "You made that very clear in the meeting on Monday. 'Nice to meet you.'"

"That was self-defense."

"It was a little brutal."

"You called me Ms. Ellis for two days."

"You started it."

I opened my mouth to argue and realized he was right, which was annoying.

We started gathering the contracts, because it was that or keep looking at each other. Genoa in one pile. Cannes in another. The banker's revised term sheet, coffee-stained, which I set aside to reprint. He worked from one end of the table and I worked from the other, and we met in the middle without planning it.

The last folder sat between us. The Ligurian property file, blue cover, his handwriting on the tab.

We both reached for it.

His fingers landed on top of mine.

Neither of us moved.

His hand was warm, his thumb resting on the edge of my knuckle. Not holding. Not pulling. Just there, the way his palm had been on my waist two nights ago, as if he were waiting to see whether I'd step back first.

I didn't.

"You know what the worst part is?" he said quietly.

"What?"

He was close enough now that I could see the faint shadow along his jaw, the tiredness he'd hidden from eight people all night.

"You were supposed to become a memory."

His eyes met mine and stayed there.

"You're doing a terrible job."

My heart was going so hard I was sure he could feel it through my fingertips. I thought of the motion sickness patches on my nightstand. The crackers. The four feet he'd left between us on the bench, on purpose, because he'd understood something about me I hadn't said.

I pulled my hand back first. It took more effort than it should have.

"Four more days," I said.

He didn't reach after me. He just picked up the blue folder and tucked it under his arm.

"I'm aware."

I slid my foot back into my heel, gathered my bag and the coffee-stained term sheet, and walked toward the door. My legs felt steady. Nothing else did.

I had my hand on the frame when he spoke again.

"Nora."

I stopped. I didn't turn around.

Behind me, I heard him set the folder down. No footsteps. He wasn't coming closer. He never did unless I let him.

"If I kissed you now," he said, low and even, "would you regret it tomorrow?"

The harbor noise drifted up through the window. A scooter somewhere below. Glasses clinking in the restaurant downstairs. My own pulse, loud in my ears.

I stood in that doorway with my fingers pressed against the old wood, and I tried to find the answer I'd been so sure of three years ago.

Yes. Of course yes. He was my client. This was twenty-eight thousand dollars and a loan payment and the only job keeping my business alive.

But the word wouldn't come.

Neither would the other one.

I stayed exactly where I was, my back to him, the silence stretching so long it started to feel like an answer of its own.