Page 59 of Tempting Mr. Knightly

Marco emerged from the kitchen with a tray of croissants, golden, flaky, perfect. He set them on the counter and crossed his arms.

“Okay,” he said. “Enough dancing around. The suit. The CFO. The man who memorized her coffee temperature. What’s happening?”

Gabriel grinned. Devney poured prosecco into coffee cups. Lucy took a croissant and tore it open, watching the steam rise.

“He’s coming back tonight,” she said. “It was in the note.”

“Back from what?”

“He didn’t say. ‘Had to handle something. Back tonight.’ That’s the whole note.”

Marco and Gabriel exchanged a look. Devney’s hand paused on the prosecco bottle.

“Handle what?” Marco asked.

“I don’t know.” Lucy shrugged, but the gesture was lighter than she felt. “He said he’d be back tonight. I’m taking him at his word.”

Marco started to say something, then thought better of it. Devney caught his eye and shook her head, a small no, not now.

“To Thursday night,” Gabriel said, raising his coffee cup.

“To Thursday night,” Devney echoed.

Lucy raised her cup, the croissant warm in her hand, the kitchen full of the people she loved. And somewhere in Manhattan, Knox Knightly was sitting in his office, thinking about her.

She was sure of it.

Customers came and went. Lucy ran the register and made the lattes and served them all with a smile that felt foreign on her face, not forced, only unused. She hadn’t smiled like this in years, maybe ever.

At noon, she checked her phone and found nothing from Knox.

Lucy: You okay? You’re quiet today.

Dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again.

Knox: Busy. Talk tonight.

Lucy stared at the screen. Talk tonight was not “Thursdays are now my favorite day of the week.” But he was busy. He was a CFO. He had meetings.

Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. Something was wrong. She felt it the same way she felt a batch of dough gone too dry, an oven running cold, the air pressure dropping before a storm.

Lucy: You’re scaring me.

Knox: Don’t be scared. I just need tonight. Tomorrow I’ll explain everything. I promise. Please trust me.

Lucy: Knox.

Knox: I promise, Lucy.

She set the phone down. Marco appeared beside her with a cup of tea, her mother’s recipe, the one she made when she couldn’t sleep, the one she’d taught Marco to brew during the pipe burst crisis.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“He’s busy. He has meetings.”

Marco didn’t say anything. He just set the tea on the counter and stood beside her, solid and present, like he always was when something was wrong, and she wasn’t ready to talk about it.

The afternoon crawled.