Then I send another message to Noah’s phone.
Since I can’t reach you, I’m going to help her.
Giving up on the idea of reaching him at this moment, I rely on Martin to keep on task. As soon as Ezra or Noah answer, he’ll let me know.
“Are you bleeding?” I ask the woman, jogging to the elevator. “Dizzy? Did you hit your head?”
“No blood. I’m fine,”she says after a pause.“Just embarrassed. And my ankle is cross with me.”
“Okay. I’m on my way,” I say, shoving myself into a packed elevator while pushing people out and stabbing the lobby button. “If you get dizzy, you tell me, and I’m calling nine-one-one.”
“Don’t you dare,”she says primly, then laughs at herself and breaks on a tiny sob.“Sorry. I hate hospitals.”
It takes eighteen minutes, three yellow lights, and one taxi driver who is now traumatized, to make it to her building. The foyer smells like lemon oil and old money, a scent I recognize too well.
By the time I’m outside her apartment, which isnotNoah’s penthouse, my heart is about to rip its way out of my ribcage. I knock. “Hello? It’s Bea. From King Developers.”
A thin voice calls from inside. “Door’s open.”
I step into a tidy, sunlit apartment, and I’m met with too many books for the shelves and fresh peonies on a table in a chipped glass pitcher. The bathroom door is open off a narrow hallway. She’s on the tiles with one leg kinked awkwardly and a hand braced against the side of the tub. Her silver hair is tied in a neat bob. A fluffy blue cardigan covers her small frame. She has that kind of delicate bone structure that would look severe if not for the soft, warm brown eyes that stop my heart.
Noah’s eyes. Smaller, feminine, but the same deep brown, the same shape. And her mouth—his mouth. My jealousy trips over itself, cracks an ankle, and dies in shame.
“Hi,” I breathe, dropping to a crouch. “I’m here.”
“You’re not my Noah,” she says, and somehow, it’s apologetic.
I bark out a laugh that sounds hysterical even to me. “I’m definitely not your Noah.” My hands hover. “May I?”
“Yes, please. I’m so embarrassed.” She rolls her eyes at herself. “I slid like a cartoon character. One shoe flew. Don’t tell anyone about the shoe.”
I catalog the scene the way I catalog a crisis meeting—no blood, no visible head bump, her ankle is puffy but not grotesque, pulse quick but steady.
“We’re gonna get you up. Ready?”
“How will you do that? You are tiny.”
“But I’m mighty. C’mon.” The old ballet training I hated when I was a kid and those three years of Krav Maga finally pay off—I shift my stance, brace, and get my shoulder under her arm. “On three. One… two… three.”
We get her up with only one small gasp from both of us. She’s light but her dignity is heavy, and I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m carrying. I steer her to the toilet lid for a quick break for my back, then to the hallway where a sturdy antique chair sits patiently, probably waiting decades for this exact job.
“There we go,” I breathe, easing her down. “I’m Bea by the way, Noah’s assistant.”
“Oh.” Her expression warms in a way that undoes me. “You are the one who managed to slow him down.”
I bark out a laugh. “I don’t know about that. I don’t think there’s slowing Noah King.”
“There’s not.” Her voice fills with warmth. “My boys are very strong-willed.”
Right. Boys. Ezra is her son too, but I’ve never heard Maeve even mention them having a mom. How come she never told me?
“I’m going to get ice. Don’t move.” I don’t go far—just the pretty galley kitchen, where I raid a drawer for a dish towel and fill it with ice cubes. The apartment is quiet but not lonely. There are framed photos on a sideboard—two boys with sunburnt noses on a dock, one taller, one grinning too hard. A younger woman holding them both like she can keep the world from touching them, and I feel envious of those boys. There’s a man absent from every frame.
A knot forms under my breastbone.
Back in the hall, I kneel and wrap the ice just snug enough. “Any dizziness?”
“Only from your shoes,” she says dryly, and I like her more. “They are loud, girl. Beatrice, was it?”
