Chapter 1 · Betrayal, Then a Stranger

His palm hit the only door before I got my hand on it.

Not a grab. A bar. Rain on his wrist, sleeve rolled, gray at the temple. The bar had no sign and one way out, and he was standing in it. I took the step anyway. My chest met his. He did not give the inch back.

"You're not walking out of this night," he said.

"Move."

"No."

I ducked. His forearm caught me across the collarbone and put me back on the wood, and the shock of that went down my spine and stayed. I'm forty-one. I have walked out of courtrooms with worse men in them. This room did not have a second door. The man filling this one had already decided I was staying.

"An hour ago," I said, because if he was going to hold me in a doorway I was going to put the disaster in his hand while his arm was still there, "I walked in on my fiancé. Caspian Thorne. Thirty-six. On my couch.

Inside a woman I pay. Eight months. The prenup was in two pieces on my floor. I took the ring off and left it where he'd have to step over it. I am not going back. And I am not going to stand here while a stranger plays the lock."

His eyes were the color of river ice. His thumb found the corner of my mouth and stayed, and I felt my own pulse under it.

"Then stop walking," he said.

"I don't know your name."

"You will." His knee came in against mine. Neither of us moved it. Cedar, cold rain, the heat off a man who had not raised his voice once. "The door does not open. Not for a no. Not for him. You are already staying."

The bartender set a whiskey down by my elbow. I hadn't ordered. The arm across the door did not lift.

"You don't know what I drink."

"Ink on your right middle finger. Rain in your hair. A tan line where a ring was an hour ago." He was right, and I hated that more than the arm. "You drink it neat, and you hate being guessed. He was a fool."

"You don't know him."

"I know what a woman looks like when she has just buried somebody and the grave is still on her shoes." His chest stayed where it was. East 52nd could have been another city. "Drink. Then say it again, so I know you heard yourself."

I drank. The only exit stayed shut behind his shoulder. I've cross-examined men who lie for a living. I know what it sounds like when the answer is already in the room.

"Yes," I said.

He didn't take the yes as a reason to step back. The arm stayed. I finished the whiskey with his chest still against mine, rain off his wrist soaking the shoulder of my dress. When I turned my face toward the street he put me back on the wood, not rough, not negotiable.

"Again," he said.

"I already said yes."

"Say you're not walking out."

The phone in my coat buzzed. I knew the name without looking. His hand covered the pocket, warm, and the buzz died against his palm.

"He can wait," he said. "You can't. Say it."

"I'm not walking out." It tasted like a plea and a threat, and I gave it to him because the other option was a lie and he would have felt it. His thumb stroked once at the corner of my mouth.

Only then did he take the alley door, still between me and the street, one hand at the small of my back, the other never off the next lock until it caught behind us. I kept the dress on in the car. I kept my mouth on his anyway. In the elevator I said, "If you tell me to be careful, I get out on the next floor."

"Don't," he said.

The car rose. I stopped counting floors.

***

Gray light. A wall of glass. Fifty-something floors, judging by the roofs.

My dress was on the chair. His shirt was on the floor. My hair was a wreck and my mouth tasted like whiskey, and a hand-shaped warmth was still fading on my hip. I knew exactly what I had done. I had no idea who I had done it with.

The shower cut off.

He came out with a towel low on his hips, water on his chest, and he looked like a man crossing the first item off a list.

I sat up with the sheet under my arms. "Good morning."

"It is." He lifted the jacket off the valet stand, and I saw the pin.

Black enamel. The scale-and-column crest of Vance & Rourke. One thin bar of platinum under it.

That pin is not for sale. Eleven people wear it. The named partners, and the outside owner who bought our debt last spring. I know all eleven faces. I have had dinner with nine of them.

I had never seen this face before last night.

He turned the pin in his fingers like a coin.

"You're not going to make the eight o'clock," he said. "That's a shame. It's an important one. Vance."

I hadn't told him my name. I hadn't given him anything but a doorway and a yes. He was already taking the doors down.

"You're going to be late because of me," he said, straightening the lapel, "and I would like to be honest about that, since I'm going to be in the room."

"My son has been calling," he added, and he watched my face while he said it.

I didn't know he had a son. I didn't know anything except the pin, the glass, and the fact that my phone was lighting up with one name I refused to count.

"Don't," I said.

"I'm not done." He nodded at the phone, still lighting the nightstand with a name I would not say in this room. "Neither is he. You walk into that lobby and my driver's people will tell him whose floor this is before you hit the street. You want that sentence in his mouth, or in mine?"

"I want a name for the man who bought my firm."

"Ask again when you're not reaching for a door."

I got the dress on. The shoes. I went for the suite door because standing still was going to finish me.

His palm hit the wood before I touched it. Not a grab. A bar. Same wrist. Same gray at the temple. The only way out of the suite, and his body was in it again, close enough that the next breath put me against his chest.

"Ask me who owns your firm," he said.

I waited.

He didn't tell me.