Elizabeth nearly inhaled her cappuccino.
What the hell?
He didn’t stop. Didn’t smirk. Didn’t say a word. Just slid into a table at the opposite corner of the café like she didn’t exist. Like this wasn’t completely insane.
What were the odds? That the one man who’d irritated her more than her mother’s last matchmaking fiasco would walk into the exact café where she was meant to meet a stranger from the very app that man had built. Worse still, what would he think if he knew she was studying his beloved algorithm—not to praise it, but to take it apart. Or, at the very least, tell the world exactly what it was.
Her phone buzzed again. She grabbed it quickly and swiped.
It was a message from Mr. F, “I’m here. Where are you?”
Elizabeth blinked, her mind suddenly fuzzy. She looked around, as if a figure might have entered without her seeing. She knew no one had. Confused, she typed quickly.
“Can’t see you. I’ve got a clear view of the door.”
She typed the message, scanning the café again.
He replied almost instantly: “I just walked in.”
Elizabeth hesitated, then typed—reluctantly—“What are you wearing?”
Maybe, she told herself, Darcy’s dramatic entrance had been distracting enough for someone else to slip in unnoticed.
A moment later, the reply came.
Mr.?F: Grey coat. Black jumper. Reading glasses. Trying not to look like a man meeting a stranger from the internet.
Elizabeth’s pulse stuttered. Slowly, she lifted her eyes.
Grey coat. Black jumper. Reading glasses.
Her breath caught.
No. No, absolutely not.
Darcy was looking down at his phone. Then, as if sensing her, he looked up again—right at her—and this time, his expression shifted. Realisation flickered in his eyes, quiet and unmistakable.
F. Fitzwilliam. Mr.?F.
Her stomach twisted.
She stared at him, speechless, humiliation crawling up her throat. He had the nerve to look… calm. Almost amused.
She swallowed hard, grabbed her bag, and stood.
“Of course,” she muttered under her breath. “Of course it’s you.”
Darcy’s brows lifted slightly, as if to say something—perhaps to explain, or apologise—but Elizabeth didn’t give him the chance.
She turned, walked straight out of the café, and didn’t stop until the cold Manhattan air hit her face.
***
Darcy approached the café with the vague discomfort of someone arriving somewhere they shouldn’t be.
It wasn’t the location itself—he’d agreed to this meeting. Had chosen this café from the shortlist she'd proposed. What unsettled him was everything around it. The possibility of being seen. Of beingrecognised. The low murmur of city life didn’t usually bother him, but here, in the soft-lit intimacy of a street-corner café, everything felt too available.
He hesitated at the door, one hand in his coat pocket, the other tightening around his phone. He’d spent the last five years deliberately avoiding rooms like this—public, warm-lit spaces filled with eyes that might widen in recognition or narrow with expectation. He didn’t do casual meetups. He didn’t do café tables and public discovery. That was the whole point of TrueNorth: precision, privacy, control.
