Chapter 3

A month later, Quentin came to pick me up for Sunday dinner at his mother's house.

His sedan idled outside Voss Spire at six; I was coming down the steps with my chief of staff still on a call behind me.

The passenger window came down.

Nora was in my seat.

She smiled like nothing was wrong. "Hi, Zora. You look beautiful."

The seat was pushed up for her shorter legs. The climate held at seventy-four instead of my sixty-eight. A paper cup sat where I kept my sunglasses.

Quentin leaned toward the window.

"Nora gets carsick in the back. I thought you wouldn't mind taking the rear seat for one short ride."

I looked at him.

"You thought wrong."

Nora blinked. "It's only a short ride."

"Then you'll have no trouble arranging another one."

She looked at Quentin. He ran a hand over the steering wheel.

"Nora, let Zora have her seat."

She climbed out slowly, clutching her purse. When she reached for the back door, I caught the handle before she could open it.

"You're not coming with us."

Quentin looked at me across the roof of the car. He knew this wasn't about an employee accepting an ordinary ride.

Three days earlier, I'd mentioned that the passenger-seat memory had been wiped during the car's service.

He had reset it for me himself. Now Nora had changed it again. Even my scarf, which I'd left folded in the door pocket that morning, had been moved to the back.

She hadn't taken my seat by accident.

She had made herself comfortable in my place.

Nora's expression tightened.

"Mr. Hale offered me a ride. My apartment is on the way."

"You're a six-figure executive assistant. You don't have a rideshare app?"

"Of course."

"Good."

I took two twenty-dollar bills from my wallet and slipped them into the outside pocket of her purse.

"That should cover it. Get home safe."

She pulled out the money as if I'd handed her something dirty.

"You think you can throw money at me just because you're rich? I may not have what you have, but I have dignity."

"Does your dignity depend on my husband driving you home?"

"That's not what I meant."

"No? You said you needed a ride. Now that I've offered to pay for one, you're offended. Maybe transportation was never what you wanted."

Quentin stepped out of the car.

"Zora, that's enough."

I looked at him over the roof.

"You're right. It is."

My chief of staff had stopped several yards away, wisely pretending she hadn't heard a thing. I called her over.

"Wren, add a ten-percent transportation allowance for directors and above at Voss Group. Offer the same reimbursement to Cole Group employees assigned to our joint venture. If senior employees have to rely on the CEO for rides, our transportation policy needs work."

"I'll send you the proposal tonight," she replied.

Nora's eyes began to shine.

"You're humiliating me on purpose."

"I'm fixing the problem you brought to my attention. If you wanted privacy, you shouldn't have made yourself at home in my seat."

I got into the car and adjusted everything back to my settings.

Quentin stood outside for another moment, his jaw tight, before walking around to the driver's side.

He drove off without saying goodbye to Nora.

We rode in silence for five blocks.

Then he spoke.

"Her lease is close to Mom's house. I was only trying to be considerate."

"You were being overly familiar."

"It's a seat, Zora."

"It's the seat I use every time I ride with you. She knew that. You knew that. She changed my settings, and you expected me to sit in the back while she took my place beside you."

"I didn't expect anything."

"That's exactly the problem."

He glanced at me through the rearview mirror.

"The dinner was strike one," I said. "Today makes strike two."

"You can't treat a marriage like a performance review."

"Then don't act like an employee who ignores the same instruction twice."

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

"Listen to yourself. Everything has to be a rule with you. Every mistake needs a consequence."

"Would you rather have a consequence you couldn't see coming?"

"I'd rather have a wife who trusted me."

"Trust doesn't mean pretending I didn't see what happened. It means telling you when something is wrong and believing you'll make a better choice next time. That's what I did after dinner."

He had no answer that didn't involve admitting he'd made the same mistake again.

A muscle jumped in his cheek.

I kept my voice calm.

"I'm not asking you to stop hiring women. I'm asking you to keep the same boundaries you've had for years. That shouldn't be so hard."

He turned his attention back to the road.

By the time we reached Hale Manor, his silence had turned bitter.

I unfastened my seat belt.

"Our joint venture is in the middle of a financing round. We are not bringing a private argument to a family dinner."

"Of course," he said. "Wouldn't want anyone thinking Ms. Zora Voss had lost control."

I linked my arm through his as we walked toward the front door.

"Smile, Quentin. Your mother is watching from the window."

He smiled.

It almost looked real.