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“Why?”

I look at her for a moment before answering.

“Because I like watching you when you know exactly what you’re doing.”

Her expression softens slightly.

“You never hesitate in those rooms,” I continue.

“You listen, you decide what matters, and everyone around you adjusts. I like that.”

Blaire lowers her eyes to her martini for a second, then looks back at me.

“You make that sound more intimate than it should.”

“It probably is.”

She smiles.

The conversation drifts away from work after that, not because we’re trying to learn each other from the beginning, but because we have time tonight that we usually don’t have. We’ve talked about our families before, about work, about the ways both of us ended up where we are. Tonight, Blaire takes the conversation somewhere different.

She leans back against the booth and says, “I have a question for you.”

“That usually means trouble.”

“It’s not trouble,” she says.

“At least I don’t think it is.”

I look at her. “Go ahead.”

Blaire turns the stem of her martini glass between her fingers.

“If everything had been different, if there’d been no Kensington Holdings, no expectation that you’d eventually take over, no path already waiting for you, what would you have done?”

I pause before answering. She notices immediately.

“You’ve never thought about it?” she asks.

“I have,” I say. “I just haven’t thought about it in a long time.”

“What was it?”

I look down at my Scotch for a moment, searching for an answer I haven’t said out loud in years.

“Oceanography,” I say finally.

Blaire blinks once, surprised but not amused.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“What about it?”

“I liked the idea of exploration,” I say.

“Deep water, mapping places people had barely seen, studying things no one could reach easily. When I was younger, I read everything I could find about it.”