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“Bea’s apartment.”
Unfortunately, Jean’s professional behavior only went so far, because he laughed, and kept laughing for the entire half-block ride.
“Well, yes. I knew the buildings were starting to look a bit familiar.”
Allie leaned over her forearms to ask Jean in the front seat, “Does he do this a lot?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.” Jean glanced at Winston in the rearview mirror. “But if I was, I could tell you some stories.”
“You are not. At liberty.” Winston jumped out to regain a little dignity by opening Allie’s door.
“Thanks for the save, Jean.” She gave him a jaunty wave and stepped out, already surveying the building and its surroundings. “I don’t know what your daughter’s problem is. This block really says ‘college’ to me.”
“You think so?” The doorman grabbed Allie’s bag and escorted them into the marble lobby.
“Absolutely. I remember my college days in Madison—that’s in Wisconsin—and their daily, tedious glamour of fresh flowers at the reception desk and uniformed doormen. Just to liven things up, we’d have competitions with our doormen. Make them do relay races. Mine and May’s won the Doorman Olympics two semesters in a row.”
“You’re teasing.” She was, and it was working, because he was hot under his bespoke collar as he pressed the brass elevator buttons and tried to ignore the mahogany paneling.
“No, not at all,” she said in the elevator. “I would never. Hey, Winston?”
“Yes?” He rolled her bag onto the private floor where Bea’s flat waited for her when she got tired of brushing her teeth over a flowerpot on the fire escape.
“Your daughter’s a lucky girl.”
He cleared his throat against the way that statement settled in his chest. “Yes, well. Here you have it.”
She stopped in front of the door while he looked for the key. He remembered that he?
??d given it to Allie only as she slid it into the lock. “You said before that you were married.”
“She asked for a divorce a few years ago. Rosemary. My wife.”
Allie had wandered across the main living area to the wall where he’d hung photographs from home—Bea and her mother on Hampstead Heath. The three of them with Bea in her equestrian costume on the day she’d taken first place for her age group.
“Here’s the thing. I’m still a little tipsy, but not at all tired. Maybe I’m still on Wisconsin time, or something. I bet there’s some tea things around here somewhere. Let me get cleaned up and change, and you make us some tea. After that—” Allie winked at him, and his heart completely stopped in his chest. It felt awful. “After that, you let me be your mailman.”
“The lav’s through there.”
She wheeled off down the hall, leaving him alone in the sterile kitchen to put the kettle on and sniff at herbal tea bags, unsure what she’d like. If she even liked tea, or if that was another thing she’d been teasing him about.
His heart had restarted in some unfamiliar rhythm. He rubbed his palm against it.
He could hear the water run. Allie unzipping her suitcase. She could emerge in anything from a floor-length kimono to a marabou-trimmed…something, and he wouldn’t be surprised.
He thought of Rosemary, drinking something strong and steaming in a climbing lodge with red-cheeked athletes, and of Bea, with paint on her shoes, purple dye in her hair. Those people had something to say to Allie, but he had no idea what he could possibly confess.
When the door opened, a woman with a clean face and soft-looking pants and a ponytail walked barefoot to the breakfast bar where he had set out some chamomile. He was surprised, it turned out.
Surprised he had so much he wanted to tell her.
“You’ve got yourself some excellent water pressure in that bathroom,” she said. “Top-notch.”
“Good to hear.”
She sniffed her tea. “Chamomile. Nice.”
When she set her chin in her cupped palms, elbows on the table, she should have looked too young for a man whose life had carried him so many years away from whatever late night adventures one had with a woman wearing a trench coat one had met in a basement bar. But it didn’t feel that way.
