Chapter 113
[ 1,047 words ]
Julian’s POV
I had reserved the table three weeks ago.
Not because I had planned this specifically; I had not planned any of this specifically, which was itself a fact I was still adjusting to. I had reserved it because the Burj Khalifa’s At.mosphere restaurant required a reservation three weeks in advance regardless of who you were and because I had known from the moment the Dubai itinerary was confirmed that I was going to use every hour of this week correctly.
The car collected her at seven thirty.
I was already in the lobby when she came down. She was wearing something the colour of midnight, structured, and precise, the kind of dress that made the word ’elegant’ feel insufficient. She saw me and clocked that we were alone — no Zane, no Sam, no team — and her expression did the thing it did when she was recalibrating.
“Burj Khalifa,” I said, before she could ask.
She looked at me for a moment. “Of course it is p>
The elevator was fast, the kind of fast that required a moment of adjustment, your ears registering the pressure change before your brain registered the height. One hundred and twenty-two floors. The city dropped away below the glass with a speed that made even people who were not afraid of heights understand, briefly, what afraid of heights meant.
Katia was not afraid of heights. She stood at the glass and watched Dubai fall away beneath us with the focused attention she gave to things she found genuinely interesting, which was most things, which was one of the things about her that I had catalogued so extensively it had stopped feeling like cataloguing and started feeling like something else.
The restaurant sat at 442 metres above sea level. It was, technically, the highest restaurant in the world, which was the kind of fact that Dubai produced regularly and with complete commitment. The room was circular, the windows running the full circumference, and the city spread below in every direction like something assembled specifically for this view.
The maître d’ showed us to the table. I had requested window-facing, the best position in a room where every position was extraordinary.
We sat.
The menu arrived. We ordered. Somewhere below us, 442 metres below us, Dubai was going about its evening with complete indifference to two people sitting above it in a circular room having a dinner that was not going to be discussed in any professional capacity tomorrow.
“You planned this before we left New York,” Katia said. Not an accusation. An observation — the way she made all her most accurate observations, quietly and without requiring a response.
“Yes,” I said.
“All of it. The souk. The desert. This p>
“Yes p>
She looked at the city below. At the specific quality of Dubai from this height – the geometry of it, the deliberate arrangement of towers and coastline and the Palm spreading into the Gulf like something that had decided to exist through sheer force of human will.
“Why?” she said.
I looked at her. “Because we spend our time in boardrooms and at business events and in cars going between them. And I wanted—” I paused, choosing the word the way she always chose words, with the specific care of someone who understood that precision mattered. “I wanted you to see me somewhere other than those rooms p>
She was quiet for a moment.
“And the desert?” she said. “Was that also about being seen somewhere other than a boardroom p>
“The desert,” I said, “was about something else entirely p>
She looked at me. The city blazed below us. 442 metres of silence between us and the ground.
“Julian,” she said.
“Katia p>
“We should talk about what we’re doing p>
“We are talking about it p>
“More specifically.” She set her glass down. “You are my sister’s husband p>
I looked at her steadily. “Did your sister tell you she was my wife p>
She blinked. “What p>
“Did Delia tell you — specifically, clearly — that she was my wife? That we had a real marriage? That there was anything between us beyond an arrangement that serves two families and nothing else p>
She was quiet for a moment. “What are you talking about? She married you p>
“She did,” I said. “But there is a difference. A significant one.” I held her gaze. “Delia understands her place. We have never shared a room. She lives in the east wing of my estate, and I live in the west. We perform a marriage in public because that is what the arrangement requires. In private there is nothing.” I didn’t even flinch because I Iwas telling the truth. “There has never been anything; I only want you. Even though you went and went and got pregnant for another man, I understand we never met back then, but I still want you with your son p>
Katia looked at me for a long moment. Something was moving behind her eyes — processing, recalibrating, the information landing and rearranging things she thought she had understood.
“That doesn’t change what this is,” she said finally.
“No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t p>
“We shouldn’t be doing this.” She looked at the city below. “The contract. Our companies. My sister. Your grandmother. Everything we have built p>
“Katia p>
“Julian, I’m serious. This is complicated and I don’t think we should p>
I reached across the table, put two fingers under her chin, turned her face to mine, and kissed her.
Not gently. Not tentatively. The way a man kissed a woman he had been holding himself back from for months — completely with the full weight of everything that had been building since the first time she walked into his boardroom and refused to be anything other than exactly herself.
I felt her breath catch. Then her hand came up and gripped my jacket.
I pulled back. Just enough to look at her.
Her lips were slightly parted. Her eyes were dark.
“Stop talking,” I said quietly.
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she picked up her wine glass and took a slow sip and looked at the city below with the composed expression of a woman who had just had a decision made for her and had decided not to argue with it.
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