Nora spotted him the moment she walked into the reception hall, and her stomach dropped the way it always did when she saw something beautiful she wasn’t supposed to want. Daniel Ashworth was standing near the bar in a charcoal suit, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else on earth — and somehow, that made him more appealing than ever.
They worked at the same architecture firm in Edinburgh’s New Town. He was a senior partner. She was the associate who had just been shortlisted for the same project he was leading. The firm had an unspoken rule — no relationships between competing colleagues. It wasn’t written in any handbook, but everyone knew. It protected the work. It protected the peace.
It had never felt like a real rule until tonight.
The wedding was for Marcus and Claire, mutual friends from university who had no idea they’d accidentally seated Nora and Daniel at the same table. Table seven. Right by the dance floor, where the string quartet was already warming up with something slow and aching.
Nora smoothed her green silk dress and told herself to be professional. She’d done it for two years. She could do it for one evening.
She made it exactly four minutes before he appeared beside her.
“Nora.” His voice was low, careful, like he was testing the weight of her name.
“Daniel.” She kept her eyes on the floral centerpiece. Ivory roses and eucalyptus. Very tasteful.
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” he said.
“I didn’t know you’d be here either.”
A pause settled between them, warm and uncomfortable, like a room that needed a window opened.
“Should we pretend we’re strangers?” he asked, and she finally looked at him. There was a small smile at the corner of his mouth, the one she’d spent two years pretending not to notice.
“We could try,” she said. “But I think that ship has sailed.”
They sat at table seven together, separated by one empty chair and the ghost of every professional boundary they’d carefully maintained. The other guests arrived in pairs, laughing and settling in around them, and somehow the noise made the silence between Nora and Daniel feel louder.
Dinner was served — roasted salmon, herb potatoes, a wine so good Nora almost forgave the seating arrangement. Almost.
She learned things about him she hadn’t known. That he’d grown up in a small fishing village in Argyll. That he’d wanted to be a painter before architecture swallowed him whole. That he laughed with his whole face when the best man’s speech went spectacularly off-script.
She hadn’t known his laugh. That felt like a crime.
“You never told me you grew up on the coast,” she said, somewhere between the main course and dessert.
“You never asked,” he replied, but gently, without accusation. “We don’t really talk, do we? Outside of the office.”
“We can’t,” she said, and the words tasted flat. True, but flat.
He looked at her for a moment, really looked, the way he never allowed himself to at the firm. “I know,” he said quietly. “I know we can’t.”
The dancing started after the speeches. The floor filled quickly — Marcus spinning Claire in a wide, joyful arc, her white dress catching the light like something from a film. Nora watched them and felt a tenderness she hadn’t expected, a softness in her chest that had nothing to do with the wine.
She felt Daniel watching her watch them.
“They look happy,” she said.
“They are happy,” he said. “Marcus has been in love with her since third year. He just took a very long time to do anything about it.”
Nora smiled at that. “Some people take too long.”
“Some people have reasons,” he said, and neither of them looked away.
The string quartet shifted into something slower. Couples drifted together on the floor. The lights dimmed just enough to make everything feel like a secret.
Daniel stood and held out his hand. Not impulsively — deliberately, like a man who had thought about it and decided the thought was worth something.
“One dance,” he said. “It’s a wedding. It doesn’t have to mean anything we don’t want it to mean.”
Nora looked at his hand. She thought about the project review on Monday. The firm. The unspoken rule that had kept two years of careful distance intact.
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