Page 53 of Tempting Mr. Knightly

Lucy typed back.

Lucy: He took me to his father’s grave.

Three dots appeared, and then the reply landed.

Jane: Lucy. That’s not a non-boyfriend. That’s a man who’s trying to let you in. Let him.

Lucy locked her phone and set it in her lap, watching the highway lights stream past the windshield.

She was still falling. And she had stopped trying to catch herself.

Knox pulled up outside the bakery, where the lights were off and the CLOSED sign hung crookedly in the window. Above it, the second-floor windows of her apartment were dark. He put the car in park and sat with his hands on the wheel, engine running, looking at something she couldn’t see.

“What?” she asked.

“Thank you. For coming with me.”

“You drove. I sat.”

“You stood at my father’s grave and told him I was infuriating.” He turned to her. In the streetlight his face was half-lit. “That’s more than anyone has given him in sixteen years.”

She kissed him, briefly. His hand came up to her jaw, held her there, then released.

“Goodnight, Knox.”

“Goodnight, Lucy.”

She climbed out and watched him pull away, standing on the sidewalk with her arms wrapped around herself and the terrifying hope of a woman who had stopped running.

Chapter 16

KNOX

Thursday gave Knox eleven hours of meetings and not one useful minute.

He sat through a portfolio review and retained none of it. At four he caught himself sketching the route to Westchester on a legal pad, every turn of it, and couldn’t have said why. At six he stopped pretending the day had been productive. By eight he was on a train to Brooklyn with no defensible reason to be there.

The bakery was dark when he reached her block, the CLOSED sign hanging in the window. Above it, the second-floor lights were on.

He stood on the sidewalk and typed.

Knox: Are you still up?

The reply arrived in under a minute.

Lucy: Tuesday is our meeting day.

Knox: I’m aware of the day.

Lucy: Come around to the back.

The kitchen door opened the moment he reached it. Lucy stood in the light, no apron, her hair loose from its band, strands of it curving against her neck. The kitchen behind her was quiet.

“Twice in one week,” she said. “People will talk.”

“Marco already talks.”

“Marco narrates. It’s different.” She stepped back to let him in, then closed the door and faced him. Her expression was unreadable, not closed, not open, something in between. She’d spent years building walls, and someone had recently found the door.