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“My left eyebrow is going to get you in trouble.”

“It already has.”

Lucy didn’t grin. She absolutely didn’t grin. She turned toward the kitchen and walked away with her spine straight and her chin level and the cortado warm in her hand, and if Marco saw her face as she passed, which he did, neither of them acknowledged it.

She made it as far as the kitchen doorway before her legs refused to carry her any farther. From there, Lucy watched Knox sit alone at the window table, his cup empty, the investment proposal open beside it and unsigned. She could still feel the heat of the spot where her hand had rested on his, and she was still looking at it.

He picked up his bag, stood, straightened his tie, and walked to the register.

Marco intercepted him. “Knox.”

Lucy couldn’t hear what Marco said at first, only the low rumble of his voice, the familiar towel wiped across the counter. Then, “She gives ground slowly. Don’t mistake slow for reluctant.”

Knox nodded. He pushed through the front door into the late afternoon, the bell chiming behind him as the sidewalk swallowed him.

Lucy stayed in the kitchen doorway. A conversation about truffles and fathers sat between her ribs. Her hand still remembered his knuckles. She steadied herself against the doorframe and watched the street where he’d disappeared, and she didn’t move until Marco cleared the register and looked up and caught her eye.

He didn’t say a word. He tipped his head toward the door Knox had left through and went back to wiping the counter.

She went back to the kitchen.

Chapter 11

KNOX

Lucy hadn’t texted, and Knox noticed at seven fifteen, which was fifteen minutes past the window she’d established without acknowledging it.

Every morning since the investment proposal, she’d sent something between six-fifty and seven. It was never personal. A photo of the day’s brioche, a question about the flower budget, once a picture of Marco holding a croissant like a microphone, captioned, “He’s doing a weather report. I can’t stop him.” The texts were brief and they were punctual. Lucy ran her life on internal clocks she’d never admit to having, and the clock was late.

He checked his phone twice during the eight-fifteen meeting about Q3 and found nothing. He checked again at nine, then called at nine-fourteen and got voicemail after two rings, which meant she’d seen his name and declined.

Gabriel appeared in his office doorway at nine thirty.

“You heard?” Gabriel asked.

Knox thumbed the screen dark and set the phone aside. “Heard what?”

“Devney called Tessa this morning. The building Lucy’s in, the one with the bakery and Mrs. Hadley’s dry cleaner. It’s being sold. The developer made an offer. The landlord gave Lucy right of first refusal, but the price is…” Gabriel paused, choosing his words with care. He understood numbers and their consequences. “It’s not a number Lucy can match.”

Knox’s hand went still on the desk. She’d had a rent increase a week ago, forty-three percent. He’d registered the management change when Mrs. Hadley grumbled about it during a Tuesday meeting, and he’d filed it as routine, since Brooklyn commercial buildings rotated owners every few years. It wasn’t routine. A management change like that had two endings, and this was the second one.

“How long does she have?”

“Ninety days. Maybe less if the developer pushes.”

Knox pulled up a browser window before Gabriel finished the sentence. Commercial real estate listings, Park Slope, the block he could map from memory, the bakery on the corner, the dry cleaner beside it, the apartments above. He found the building in three clicks, assessed the asking price, and ran the math against his personal portfolio.

He could buy it. The number was large for a private purchase but manageable for a man whose annual compensation had seven figures before the bonus structure. He could buy the building, restructure the lease, lock Lucy’s rent at below market for a decade, and she would never need to worry about displacement.

He could also guarantee she would never speak to him again.

“Don’t,” Gabriel said.

Knox raised his head.

“Whatever calculation you’re running right now, stop. You cannot buy that building.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”