Chapter Text
It was not like the very much put-together, never-with-a-hair-out-of-place Sara Ellis to be clumsy. It was a shock to everyone therefore, and to herself most of all, when she dropped a one hundred pound bottle of champagne in the opening lobby of the British National Gallery. The bottle had smashed, of course, spraying fragments of dark glass in an abstract pattern across the marble floor.
“Shit.” Sara said loudly to the growing horror of her colleagues, her face suddenly drained of all colour, turned white as a ghost’s. In Sara’s defence, the way she saw it, an actual ghost had just walked into the room. No, not walked; brazenly strolled, with all the arrogance of one having thwarted death. Seconds ago, a dead man had strolled brazenly into the bustling lobby and had come to stand opposite her. Somewhere in-between those two actions, she had lost her grip on the champagne. The ghost then offered Sara a sheepish grin, as if to apologise for the champagne, though the mischievous glint in his eye suggested that he wasn’t really sorry at all.
“Lucas.” He said by way of greeting, extending to her a manicured hand. His accent was a clipped and neutral English, the roundness of his vowels lending an impression of settled wealth. “I assume you are also here for the security inspection.”
“You’re English.” She said flatly. A statement, not a question.
“Would you believe me if I said yes?”
“I like your accent.” Sara responded, hoping to express in these few words that she had gotten over her surprise enough to be royally pissed off with him but also that, in spite of this, she would not blow his cover.
“Mmm. And you’re American.” Sara rolled her eyes. Fortunately, the two were forced apart when a staff member arrived to sweep away the spilt champagne and another appeared to usher them away to a private office.
The director of the museum’s board, a surprisingly young- which was to say, under the age of fifty- and surprisingly handsome man, gestured to a red leather sofa for them to sit. His office was a large, luxurious space, as tastefully decorated as one would expect from an art gallery’s director, with a large grained walnut desk stood by the back wall, facing the room’s two latticed windows, each draped with thick, velvet curtains, the only signs of chaos and disorder relegated to one small corner, in which were crammed a pile of identical dark leather shoes and an overflowing waste paper basket. Sara took her place on the sofa stiffly, leaving ample room between her and… She wasn’t entirely sure what she should call him. ‘Neal’ stirred up too many memories, intimate ones, horribly sad ones and an overwhelming sense of betrayal. She would not call him Neal. Since she had to tolerate him and could not yet interrogate him, she supposed that for now she would have to entertain him as ‘Lucas’, the name sitting uncomfortably on her tongue.
“I see that you two have met.” The director offered.
“Briefly,” Neal- no, Lucas- smiled his con man’s smile, full of easy, disingenuous charm. It was nice to see that some things never changed. “She tried to spill some champagne on me.”
Sara reddened. “It was an accident.” She protested, a little too angrily.
“And,” Lucas turned to her, eyes sparkling, “I didn’t catch your name.”
It took all of Sara’s self-control to resist rolling her eyes. ‘You know it already!’ She wanted to snap in response, but instead listlessly replied, “Sara Ellis, from Sterling Bosch, the insurance firm.”
“Sara Ellis.” Lucas repeated her name very slowly, almost wondrously, his tongue licking tentatively through the double ‘l’ of Ellis and drawing out the sibilance of the final ’s’. It was near imperceptible, but Sara thought she could detect his American accent somehow sneaking through. God, it had been a while since she had heard her name on his lips. She had not realised how much she had longed to hear him say it again, had not let herself entertain the possibility since his death. But here he was. Neal/Lucas, saying “Sara Ellis,” and then flashing her that same-old, infuriating, good-for-nothing grin. It was all she could think about as the director ran them both through the plans for the security inspection: first a tour of the entire gallery, then a complimentary lunch, and finally Lucas would have the opportunity to present to them the security flaws he had spotted and, more importantly, could offer solutions to. It was only 9:15 in the morning and Sara felt close to the brink of mental and physical collapse; one thing was for sure, she was in for a hell of a long day.