"Have fun, try to be cordial," he said over his shoulder.
Jace was already walking back into his office. "Twenty minutes, Ms. Wilson."
Twenty minutes later, I was in the passenger seat of a black Mercedes that smelled like leather and something clean I couldn’t identify, and the silence between us was so thick I could’ve cut it with a knife.
He drove the way he did everything. Precise. Controlled. Both hands on the wheel, gloved, ten and two. Brickell slid past outside the windows, all glass towers and palm shadows and heat shimmering off the pavement, and I sat with my notebook in my lap, waiting. The silence had a texture to it. I could feel him building toward something in the stillness of his hands, the slight set of his jaw. A man arranging words in his head before letting them out.
"I wanted to thank you," he said, eyes on the road. "For yesterday. The elevator."
I turned to look at him. He was staring straight ahead, his profile sharp against the window, and his grip on the steering wheel had tightened just enough to notice.
"The way I’ve conducted myself since you arrived has been…" He paused, as if searching for something precise enough to satisfy him. "I’ve been a pain in the arse."
Something about hearing it in that accent, the careful pronunciation, the way he said it like he was reading from a formal apology written on expensive stationery, made it almost charming.
"It’s okay," I said.
"It isn’t. But I appreciate you saying so."
"Consider it goodwill," I smiled. "For the time I puked on you."
His face did something. I wouldn’t call it a smile, not even close, but the corner of his mouth twitched like it was thinking about it and changed its mind.
"I owe you an apology for that night as well," he said. "What I said was disproportionate."
"I ruined your suit. We’re even."
"It wasn’t about the suit." He stopped. The sentence just ended there, like he’d hit a wall mid-thought and couldn’t climb over it. I let it sit.
The silence settled back in, but it was different now. Lighter. The charged heaviness had eased into something more like two people sitting in the same car without wanting to escape.
"Can I ask you something?" I glanced at him.
"You can ask."
"Are you allergic to dirt the same way you’re allergic to pollen?"
The color climbed from his neck to his ears. Actual, visible color, spreading across skin that I’d only ever seen in one shade: pale and composed. Jace Hunter was blushing. I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste it because if I grinned right now I’d ruin the moment and I was not about to ruin this.
"I’m not allergic to dirt," he said stiffly. "I don’t like it. There’s a difference."
"Is there?"
"There categorically is."
"Anyone who carries personal hand sanitizer has crossed from preference into clinical territory."
"That is a gross oversimplification."
"It’s an accurate simplification."
He was quiet for a second. A brief strain crossed his face, then disappeared, and I waited.
"Everyone has things they can’t tolerate," I said, softer now. "It’s survival, not weakness."
It surprised him. He turned and looked at me directly, his gray eyes clear behind the glasses, the morning light catching them and turning them almost silver. "What about you, Ms. Wilson? What do you dislike?"
He glanced over at me, and the usual sharpness behind his glasses had gone quiet. His eyes were soft, curious, holding mine as if whatever I was about to say was something he wanted to hear.
