Page 62 of One Wrong Move

“That was a long time ago. I was…”

“Young?”

“An idiot,” I say. “For a large part of my early twenties, that’s exactly what I was. You, on the other hand, are very impressive.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m twenty-eight.”

“But you were twenty-four when I first met you, and you were certainly not accidentally setting fire to books in the college library or having all-night benders.”

My mind is still thinking about what else Dean might have told her. How much of her impression of me is filtered through his words.

“How would you know that?” she asks with a wide smile. “Those are assumptions.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Oh, I know you were wild in other ways. You always have been. But not in stupid ways.”

“I think there’s a compliment in there somewhere.”

“There is.” I glance down at my watch, and away from her too bright eyes. They draw me in like nothing else. “Come on. We have a ways to go still and only forty minutes to make it.”

“Where are we heading?”

“You chose the movie,” I say. “Let me choose this. I’m willing to bet you’ll enjoy it.”

“Lead the way, then. As long as I don’t end up in New Mexico in a stolen Rolls-Royce…”

I laugh. “Not this time, Harper.”

We walk down to the river and cross it into Battersea. The city grows increasingly quiet around us, the stillness punctuated only by the occasional car or a rowdy yell. More than one taxi stops beside us, but I decline them all.

Harper’s earlier energetic, wine-assisted chattiness has settled into something more mellow. She tells me about her coworker and that coworker’s friend, and about the new exhibition the gallery is planning, and mentions the restaurant a block from her work that she wants to try.

And then she asks me the same types of things.

If I like my coworkers, which of my cars is my favorite, and what I do at the office.

“Just explain what you did today. Like, step-by-step, from when you arrived at work. What were the actual tasks?”

I hide my smile with the back of my hand. But I do what she’s asked, and she listens like she actually cares.

Like she honestly wants to know.

So I detail how I led the regional team meeting, sat in the two meetings with key clients, double-checked my financial team’s reports before forwarding the files to New York, and had a strategy session with my brother about our future growth opportunities.

She listens to all of it. Asks follow-up questions.

“It’s interesting,” she finally says.

I smirk. “You don’t have to lie.”

“No, it is. I mean, I don’t understand everything you said, at least not yet, but I think I’m getting there.”

“You don’t have to,” I say, and look at the maps app on my phone. It says we’ve arrived. “We’re here.”

Harper looks at the unassuming metal building in front of us.

“And this is…?”

I reach for the door and pray that I’ve done my research correctly. “Come on, Harp. Get inside.”

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