I don’t know who the fuck they’ve been hiring to maintain their sound equipment here, but it appears to have been a grammar school child on a heavy dose of acid, because it’s all a mess. In the corner of what they’d like to pass off as a sound booth — really, it’s a closet with an ancient mixer in it, along with some old speakers and a blown out amp that’s been used for God knows what — is a massive tangle of cords.

Some of them have got connectors I’ve never seen before, and I’ve certainly played in clubs where the sound equipment was twenty years old. This shit must be from the sixties, earlier even, maybe. It’s a wonder I found the right cables at all, and I half expected to find a rat’s nest or some sort of vermin skeleton as I excavated the mess.

Not that I’m perfect or anything. Not that I’ve ever been a stickler for keeping all my equipment perfect and pristine, but all the way up until I had to sell the last of it I was at least aware of how I made a living.

More than once, at the very last second, blitzed to hell and back, Gavin had to spin me around so I’d vomit on something less important, like the furniture, or a groupie. I did the same for him.

God, I do miss that bastard sometimes.

The gala’s going nicely, though. As much as this room looks like the scene in the snake pit from the first Indiana Jones movie, it was relatively simple to set up what Elizabeth wanted: a microphone for her and speakers that could pipe in music when the string quartet is on break. I’ve not set up sound equipment in ages, but that was easy enough.

Otherwise, I’m smart enough to know that my job is stay out of the way, because I’m obviously the help and therefore quite unfit to mingle with the guests, which I can’t help but find entertaining.

I don’t think Elizabeth’s got a clue who I am, or who I used to be, at least. I don’t think anyone here does.

I’m sitting on the blown-out amplifier, working on untangling these cords as I’ve got nothing better to do, when there’s a soft knock on the door of the so-called sound booth.

“Yeah?” I call out, then remember my manners for once. “Come in. Please.”

The string quartet is still playing, and according to the very detailed schedule that Elizabeth gave me, they’re having a cocktail hour for another forty-five minutes, so I don’t think I’m supposed to be doing anything.

Nothing happens. The door doesn’t open.

“You can come in!” I call, probably too loudly.

The soft knock again, and I roll my eyes, standing from the amplifier. Probably some drunk bird who thinks this is the ladies’.

“This is the sound booth,” I say, making the two steps for the door. “It’s open, you can just—”

The door swings in, nearly hitting me in the face, and Frankie’s on the other side.

Alone. Just standing there, wild hair pulled back as neatly as it’ll go, face slightly flushed. She’s got a drink in each hand, and she smiles, holding one out to me.

I take it. Who am I not to?

“You know I’m at work, don’t you?”

“I promise not to tell on you.”

“What is it?” I ask as I take a sip.

“Pimm’s Cup. I asked her to make the most British thing she knew how, and this is what I got.”

Thankfully, it’s not that strong.

“You asked for the most British thing she could make and she didn’t give you a pint of warm, flat beer?”

“I get all of that I need from you,” she says. “Are you gonna let me in or do I have to stand in your doorway like a street beggar?”

“Don’t you have some important gala task to be undertaking?”

Frankie sips her drink, leans against the door frame, both of us still standing in the doorway of the so-called sound booth.

She’s got this dress on, one-shouldered and green and floor-length, made partly of something that shines dimly in the low light, partly of something gauzy and ethereal.

Whatever it is, right now she’s pretty like a painting, one of those turn-of-the-century ones that you see on posters of a pretty girl looking over her shoulder or something, with come-hither eyes and her dress falling off just slightly.

Only I’ve never wanted to fuck a painting. I shouldn’t want to fuck her, either, but she showed up at my door drunk, pretty, and smiling, and I don’t know what else I’m supposed to think about. From the way her dress hugs her curves, shows off one pale, freckled shoulder, the mottled porcelain of her neck, I don’t know what else I can think about.

“Probably,” she says, her eyes lighting up mischievously. “But I think if I have to hear Elizabeth’s shrieky laugh one more time or smile while Alistair calls me Françoise, I might start tossing drinks in people’s faces, so I figured I’d come talk to you for a minute.”

I should tell her that I’m at work and besides, I oughtn’t be in a small enclosed room with someone else’s fiancée, but instead I take another sip of this drink and step back. If I were any good at doing what I ought I wouldn’t be here in the first place, would I?

“Thanks,” she says, easing the door closed behind her. “I know I should be more grateful to be wearing a jillion-dollar dress and drinking free drinks at the event of the season, but I just need to get away for a minute sometimes.”

She sits, carefully, on an old speaker, and I sit on my amp again. It’s a very small room — a closet, really, I wasn’t kidding — so our knees are nearly touching, and she leans back against the wall, looks at me through her lashes.

I consider asking her if Alistair knows that she’s alone in a closet with an alleged part-time-florist, part-time-bartender, but I’m not her babysitter. What she tells him isn’t any of my business, is it?

“Were you really in a band?” she asks, swirling ice cubes in her glass.

“I really was,” I say, mimicking her intonation.

“Don’t make fun me of me.”

“I wasn’t making fun of anyone,” I say, grinning, leaning back against the side of the sound board.

“I brought you a drink.”

“That you did. And I really was in a real band. I managed to set all this up, didn’t I?”

“Rhinoceros, you said.”

“So you’ve memorized my life story.”

Now Frankie’s grinning too.

“I remembered one thing you told me,” she says. “That’s just polite. I bet you remember something about me, too.”

“I remember that I sold you a very lovely bouquet of lilies that you presented to your future mother-in-law early one morning when you had jet lag,” I tease. “It was lilies, wasn’t it?”

She shuts her eyes, blowing air from one side of her mouth.

“Liam, I don’t even remember,” she confesses. “I know that early one morning the driver was out and I struck up conversation and he ended up giving me a lovely little sunrise tour of Shelton and I brought back flowers from a flower shop. I don’t know, I they were like... pointy at the ends.”

“You’re sure they weren’t daisies?”

She opens her eyes, cocks one eyebrow.

“You think I’d bring Lady Catherine daisies? I’m American, not stupid.”

“It’s not as if I know anything about flowers either, what else is pointy at the ends?”

“I guess they all kind of are?” she says, reflectively. “Well, not roses, they’re sort of rounded and in the middle they’re all deep and—”

She stops suddenly, flushing brighter, and I know exactly what she’s thinking.

“Deep and what?” I ask, all cheeky innocence.

Frankie clears her throat.

“That’s all.”

“I’m fairly certain you were about to describe all lovely, feminine folds and intricacies of flowers,” I say. “There’s a word for that, isn’t there?”

She clears her throat again.

“Flowery?”

“That’s not what you were thinking, was it?”

“Sure it was. You can’t read my mind.”

“I don’t have to be able to read your mind to know you weren’t thinking flowery.”

She bites her lips, looks into her drink, embarrassed and trying not to laugh all at once.

“I imagine you were thinking something rather more prurient.”

Now she laughs.

“Such as, smartass?”

“I did just say I can’t read your mind.”

Frankie gives me a long, slow gaze, her eyes lit up with a smile, the corners of them crinkling. She’s dolled up impeccably but sitting on an ugly, dirty speaker looking as if she might come disheveled at any moment, the ring on her finger shining like the point of a very sharp knife.

I ignore it like I’ve been doing.

“I was thinking that flowers are very... yonic.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know that ten-pence word,” I say. “You’ll have to explain it in great detail.”

“You’re a difficult bastard, you know that?”

“And you’re still sitting in my sound closet, tolerating me,” I say. “Come on, explain your posh word to a bloke who barely graduated high school.”

I’m just winding her up, because from context alone, I know exactly what yonic means. I just want to make her say it aloud.

“Fine, it means vaginal,” she says, still bright red but laughing. “Flowers are famously vaginal, I’m sure you’ve seen a Georgia O’Keefe painting before.”

“Probably,” I say, grinning.

“Jerk,” she mutters, draining the last of her drink, and I just laugh.

We both pause for a moment, and I’m suddenly uncertain, because there’s something so easy and normal and lovely in baiting Frankie into saying the word vaginal aloud, but then the next second, I’ll remember why she’s here and who she’s with.

And that she ought not be here, but she really ought not be here with me, drunk and laughing about flowers. That if Elizabeth or Alistair knew where she was right now, they’d likely make my life quite unpleasant.

“Sorry about that,” she says, her voice suddenly serious. “I don’t know why I told her you were a florist, I sort of just... panicked and it was the first thing I thought of.”

“You’re not a very good liar,” I admit.

“God, I’m a terrible liar,” she says. “And I shouldn’t have lied, but I also can’t just tell Lizzie to her face that she’s driving me to drink because God knows that’s improper, so then I lied about it again and now I’m stuck in this whole web of lies, Liam.”

“It’s not a very big web,” I point out. “It’s really just a single strand of lies. White lies at that.”

She clinks her ice cubes around in her glass, darts her eyes at me, and for a moment I’m quite certain we’re both thinking the exact same thing.

They’re bigger than white lies.

“I should head back out there,” she says, though she doesn’t move. “Someone’s probably looking for me.”

“Stay a bit. Give her a problem to think about,” I say. “I admit you’re much more interesting than trying to untangle this mess of cables out of boredom.”

Frankie scoots forward to the edge of the speaker she’s sitting on, her dress glimmering faintly, and she leans on one hand, a half-smile on her lips.

“You already got me to say vaginal despite my best efforts,” she teases. “What else is left now?”

I nearly tell her that saying the word is just the beginning. I nearly tell her that I’m utterly certain I can do things to her that Alistair’s never dreamed of, that I want to map her freckles with my tongue and push her up against the wall and whisper her name in her ear and hear her moan mine in response.

That I know what it’s like to give into temptation, and that she’s as tempting as anything I’ve ever given in to. That I don’t want to be that version of myself anymore, but I would. In half a heartbeat I would.

But I behave myself. For once in my life, I do that.

“You’re right,” I say, leaning forward, bringing our faces closer. “That’s clearly the zenith of all conversation. I don’t know what I could have been thinking.”

“You were just thinking that you wanted to hear me say something dirty,” she teases, one eyebrow raised.

“Frankie, if I wanted you to talk dirty, vaginal isn’t the word I’d be getting you to say,” I tell her, leaning forward another inch.

The drink wasn’t strong, but I’ve been good these last few months, and when you’re not chasing heroin with a pint of vodka nightly, a single drink has quite a bit more effect.

Enough effect for me pretend that it’s just us, here. That there’s no Alistair outside, no Elizabeth, no future family. Enough for me to pretend that maybe to her I’m more than some amusing-but-harmless bartender.

“What would you be getting me to say?” she asks, her voice suddenly quieter, a whispering purr.

Our knees touch. Just the outside edge, bone to bone, but suddenly this tiny room feels like a sauna, heated to the boiling point. Frankie tilts her head a fraction of an inch, a cord in her neck moving under the skin.

“You have to go,” I tell her, shutting my eyes.

“That’s not very dirty.”

“They’ll be wondering where you are.”

She goes quiet.

“And if you’re found in here saying words like vaginal I don’t imagine it’ll end well for either of us.”

Frankie clears her throat. I open my eyes and she’s looking away, toward the door.

“You’re right,” she finally says, giving her head a slight shake. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have — I don’t know what I was thinking. I just needed a break from all of everything out there.”

I stand, offer her my hand, a gentleman for once.

“Can’t be seen fraternizing with the help,” I say, and that gets a laugh from her as she takes my hand, rises to her feet.

“Have fun with these cords,” she says lightly, her hand still in mine.

She looks at me, I at her, but the spell’s broken and I’m no longer in such deadly danger of taking her, kissing her, running my tongue along her neck, tearing the ring from her finger and tossing it into a corner.

Frankie lets me go. She walks the few steps to the door, opens it, leans out, looks around. Glances at me over her shoulder once, indecipherable, then leaves.

I slump back down onto the amplifier, lean back, the cool air from the open door more than welcome.