Chapter 228

[ 1,038 words ]

Katia’s POV

I was reviewing the quarterly projections when my office door opened. Not knocked. Not buzzed through from reception. Opened. With the force of someone who had decided that the normal rules of entry did not apply to them today and had acted accordingly.

Delia walked in.

She was dressed nicely, hair in place. The full Kensington presentation that she deployed when she needed to feel like herself—which told me before she opened her mouth that she was not feeling like herself.

Sam appeared in the doorway behind her with the expression of someone who had tried to stop something and had not succeeded.

I looked at Sam. Sam looked at me. I gave the smallest nod and Sam stepped back and closed the door.

I put my pen down and folded my hands on the desk. Then waited.

“You are sleeping with my husband,” Delia said.

Her voice was not quite steady. She had rehearsed this; I could tell by the way you could tell when someone had practiced something in the car on the way over, but the emotion underneath it was real, and it was making the delivery uneven.

I looked at her.

“Good morning, Delia,” I said.

“Don’t good morning me,” she said. “You are sleeping with Julian. I know it. Everyone knows it. You walk into my house, and you walk out in different clothes, and you were fucking limping, and he comes home in yesterday’s suit and tells me he sleeps where you sleep, and you are standing there acting like p>

“Delia,” I said.

“Don’t Delia me either p>

“Sit down,” I said.

“I don’t want to sit down p>

“Then stand,” I said. “But lower your voice because I have a floor of people working outside that door and I will not have my sister screaming in my office like she has lost her mind p>

Delia’s jaw tightened.

She did not sit down. But she stopped moving.

I looked at her. At the tight set of her shoulders and the way she was holding her bag and the particular expression on her face that I had known since we were children—the one that meant she had decided something was hers and was finding out it was not.

“You come in here,” I said, “accusing me. In my office. On a Tuesday morning.” I tilted my head. “With what evidence, Delia? What exactly do you have p>

“I have—” she started.

“What do you have?” I said. “Tell me. Specifically. What do you have that you are willing to stand in my office and say out loud p>

She opened her mouth, then closed it.

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

“He told me,” she said. “He told me he sleeps where you sleep. Every day. Those were his exact words p>

“Mm,” I said.

“That is not a denial,” Delia said.

“No,” I said. “It is not p>

She stared at me.

“So you admit it,” she said.

“I did not say that either,” I said. I leaned back in my chair. “What I said is that you have no evidence. What I said is that you came in here with a feeling and a secondhand line from a man who has told you from the beginning exactly what he thinks of you, and you are choosing to direct that at me instead of sitting with what he actually said p>

“He is MY husband,” she said. Her voice cracked slightly on the last word.

I looked at her.

“Is he?” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then act like it,” I said. “Go home. Warm his bed. Make him want to come home at night. Do whatever it is wives do when they want their husbands to look at them.” I paused. “Or—and I say this with genuine helpfulness, maybe the problem is not me. Maybe the problem is that you have been in that house for a year, and you have not managed to make Julian Windsor look at you once, and that is a you problem, Delia. Not a me problem p>

“You think this is funny,” Delia said.

“I think,” I said, “that you are standing in my office on a Tuesday morning instead of standing in your husband’s house. And I think that tells both of us everything we need to know about the state of your marriage p>

“You have always done this,” Delia said. Her voice had shifted lower now, the genuine version of her anger rather than the performed version. “Everything I have ever wanted you have found a way to take. Every single time. The engagement. And now Julian p>

I looked at her.

“The engagement,” I said slowly. “You mean the engagement I did not want. The one you told me you would take off my hands the morning I left for Vegas. You stood in my bedroom—do you remember this?—and told me if I did not want him, you would marry him.” I paused. “I believe your exact words were ’crippled’ or ’not crippled’; the man is loaded p>

Delia said nothing.

“So which is it?” I said. “Did I take him from you, or did you take the opportunity I left behind?” I leaned forward slightly. “Because from where I am sitting, Delia, you walked into that marriage with your eyes open and you have spent a year being surprised that it is exactly what it was always going to be p>

“He looks at you,” Delia said. It came out quietly. Almost despite herself. “He has never once looked at me the way he looks at you. Not once p>

“Then maybe,” I said, “that is information worth sitting with p>

“You think he likes you,” she said. The anger was coming back, finding its footing. “You actually think Julian Windsor p>

“I think,” I said, “that if you are failing to warm your husband’s bed, maybe you should ask me how it’s done p>

Delia’s eyes went wide.

“Since you have been accusing me since the day I came back to this city,” I said, “maybe it is time I actually did what you keep saying I am doing. You think Julian likes me? You think something is happening between us?” I held her gaze. “Wanna bet, sis p>

“You wouldn’t dare,” Delia said.

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