Page 27

“Ronan,” Knox said.

“Yes?”

“That was perceptive.”

Ronan almost looked pleased. “Devney says I’m improving.”

“Devney’s right.”

“I’ll tell her you said that. She keeps a log.” Ronan took both empty mugs. “Also, for your reference, she didn’t reject the grant on the spot. That means the anger is personal, not principled. Principled rejections are immediate. Personal ones require processing time.”

“When did you become an expert on emotional processing?”

“Chapter seven of the book Devney gave me. ‘Emotional Responses and Their Temporal Signatures.’ There’s a chart.” He paused in the doorway. “I can send you the chart.”

“Please don’t.”

“Sending the chart.”

Gabriel grinned. Knox adjusted his glasses, picked up his pen, and returned to the term sheet.

He read the same line four times, and nothing stuck. The numbers had been his native language since he was sixteen, his refuge, his proof that the world operated on logic rather than chaos, and they refused to resolve into meaning.

Knox closed the file and took off his glasses. He pressed his fingertips against his eyelids and sat in the dark behind his own hands.

His father’s voice, the one that had taken up permanent residence in every decision Knox made, said, This is how it starts. You give something. She takes it. You give more. She expects it. You lose track of the ledger and one morning you wake up and you’ve leveraged everything you have on a woman who will leave when the account runs dry.

But Arthur Knightly had given to perform. Knox had given to solve. And Lucy had stormed into his office not because she wanted more but because she wanted less, because being helped without asking felt like losing ground she’d fought to hold.

She wasn’t his father’s story. She wasn’t anyone’s story he recognized.

Knox put his glasses on and opened a new file, but it didn’t hold his attention, so he looked out the window. He stared at a city that looked different than it had an hour ago, though he couldn’t explain why, and let himself sit with the fact that for the first time in his adult life, the numbers were not enough.

Chapter 8

LUCY

Lucy was deep into testing her third ganache variation at midnight. She’d been at it since nine, after the day’s baking was done and the kitchen belonged to her alone. Wedding cake research. The ganache had to be right, rich enough to anchor the chocolate tier without overwhelming the elderflower on the level above. Too heavy and the summer heat would turn it to soup. Too light and it would taste like an afterthought.

She’d already rejected two batches and was scraping the third into a bowl when the knock came, a single firm rap against the glass that made her flinch and nearly drop the spatula.

Knox was standing on the sidewalk with no suit jacket, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled to the elbow. His glasses caught the street light, and his face gave away nothing, a man who looked like he’d walked a long way without deciding whether this was a good idea and arrived at her door anyway.

Lucy crossed the kitchen, wiped her hands on her apron, and unlocked the front door.

“It’s midnight,” she said.

“I know.”

“The bakery is closed.”

“I know that, too.”

“Then why are you standing on my sidewalk?”

He looked at her, hands in his pockets, shoulders tense, like he’d run out of places to set something down. “I couldn’t sleep. I walked. I ended up here.”

“You took a midnight train to Park Slope because you couldn’t sleep.”