Page 119 of Suite 7

“I know my sister.” I rinse Vera’s plate, stack it. Straighten the barstool. “Trust me. Go.”

“My shoes are by⁠⁠—”

“I’ll handle it. Go.”

She goes. I hear the bedroom door settle behind her, and turn to do the fastest structural assessment of my own penthouse I have ever performed.

Her shoes by the front door. I pick them up, open the coat closet, set them on the floor behind my weekend boots.

Her clutch on the arm of the couch. I pick it up. Look at it. Look around the room. There is nowhere to put a woman’s clutch that doesn’t look like a woman left her clutch here. I stuff it between my charcoal overcoat and the side wall of the closet and close the door.

I sit at my desk. Open the Moretti revisions. Arrange my face into someone who has been here all morning.

The elevator chimes.

Sloane steps out with a paper coffee tray and a white bakery bag, the place on Clement Street, their cardamom rolls. I can smell it from across the room. She looks at me with her head tilted.

“You’re working.”

“Yes.”

“It’s Sunday, Kane.”

“Buildings don’t care about Sundays.” I lean back from the screen. “You could have called.”

“I called three times this week. You answered once.” She sets the tray on the coffee table and drops onto the couch like she owns it. “I texted Vera but she’s having a slow morning, so you get me instead.”

“Lucky me.”

She pulls a cardamom roll from the bag and tears it in half. Her eyes track around the kitchen with the same instinct Vera has, reading rooms, reading details.

She studies me. “Are you seeing someone?”

There it is. Faster than I expected.

“Good morning, Sloane.”

“Kane. I’m asking. Just to make sure you’re okay. You know Lisa, from my office? She’s still looking for a nice man.”

“I’m not looking to date right now.”

She rolls her eyes. The full rotation. “Lisa is nice, by the way. And she actually understands what you do, which is more than I can say for most people you’ve ever⁠⁠—“

“Sloane.”

“Fine.” She sits back. “Fine. I’m dropping it.” She picks at the roll. “But you did the thing.”

I look at my screen. “What thing.”

“The jaw thing. You do it when you’re managing what you say. Like you’re editing before you speak, you tighten, right here.” She touches her own jaw. “You’ve done it since you were sixteen. You did it when you broke Dad’s watch and spent three days deciding how to tell him.”

“I don’t have a jaw thing.”

“You absolutely have a jaw thing.” But she lets it go. She always does — notices, names it, gives you room to not respond. She has more patience than she looks like she should have.

“Not looking to date right now,” she repeats, mildly, to her cardamom roll. “You’ve been saying that for years.”

“And I mean it every time.”