Page 38 of Tempting Mr. Knightly

“Your ears are doing the thing.”

Knox adjusted his glasses. “What thing?”

“They turn red when you run numbers you don’t want anyone to see.” Gabriel dragged the visitor’s chair closer before he sat, loose and easy. He’d recently learned that sitting across from someone was better than standing above them. “I know you want to fix this. I know you can afford to fix this. And I know that fixing it would be the worst thing you could do to a woman who built her life on the promise that she’d never owe a man in a suit the ground under her feet.”

Knox closed the browser. Lucy had read him the same way weeks ago, before he’d known what she was doing, which meant he was now legible to the two people he’d least wanted reading him.

Gabriel was right. He hated that Gabriel was right. He hated more that the version of himself who would have bought the building without asking was the same version who had signed restructuring documents in his first year running the restructuring desk, documents that collapsed leases and displaced tenants and treated thirty-year-old businesses like line items on a portfolio review. The archive request from 2018 had been submitted Wednesday. Only the auto-acknowledgment sat in his inbox, and every day it remained unanswered was another day he let himself believe the connection might not exist.

“What can I do?” Knox asked.

“Ask her. Not what she’ll accept. What she needs.” Gabriel stood. “Those are different questions, and nobody asks her the second one.”

Knox arrived at Flour & Honey at eleven. He hadn’t called ahead. Calling ahead would give Lucy time to construct the professional mask she wore when she didn’t want him to see what was happening underneath, and today he needed to see it.

The bakery was open but quiet. The morning rush had passed. Bree was behind the counter, restocking the pastry case in the exact order she once claimed Lucy had drilled into her. Marco was visible through the kitchen pass-through, shaping croissants without his usual narration, which told Knox everything about the mood inside these walls.

Lucy was in the back room.

She was sitting at the farmhouse table with a laptop, two folders, and a calculator that looked older than the bakery itself. Her hair was pulled back, and there was no apron, only a soft gray sweater he hadn’t seen before. Her posture was wrong. In every meeting he’d sat through with her, she held herself straight, a spine that refused to let the room see her bend. Today her shoulders carried a curve that made him look away, then back.

She raised her head when he entered. Her face moved through three expressions in quick succession. Surprise, then the softening around her eyes, then a closing, like a window pulled shut against weather she hadn’t expected.

“You heard,” she said.

“Gabriel told me.”

“Of course he did.” She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I was going to tell you myself. After I figured out what to say.”

“You don’t need a speech. You need information.” He sat across from her, not beside her. He’d learned that Lucy processed better with distance, that closeness made her defensive and space made her honest. “Can I see the numbers?”

She pushed the folder across the table. He opened it. The developer’s offer was aggressive but not predatory, which was almost worse, because it meant the price was fair and Lucy simply couldn’t compete. The building’s commercial valuation had tripled since her original lease agreement, driven by the neighborhood’s transformation from working-class to desirable. The same market forces that brought customers to Flour & Honey were now pricing her out of the space she’d built.

Knox read every page and didn’t speak until he’d finished. Lucy watched him with the patient expectation of someone who’d been handed bad news by professionals before.

“Your lease has a first-refusal clause,” he said. “That gives you leverage.”

“Leverage requires capital. The asking price is four times my annual revenue.”

“There are financing options.”

“I’ve called three banks, two credit unions, and a commercial lending broker Tessa recommended. The numbers don’t work, Knox. Not without giving up equity, and I didn’t build this place to hand it away in pieces.”

He set the folder down. “You’ve already run this.”

“Since five this morning.” Her voice stayed level, and Knox could hear what it cost her to keep it there. The control was the only thing holding her together. “The numbers don’t work. I keep running them and they keep coming back the same.”

The front door chimed. Devney came in carrying a canvas bag and stopped inside the door to read the room before she crossed it. She’d been here before, in a different crisis, watching a different friend refuse help.

“Don’t start,” Lucy said.

“I brought croissants.”

“We’re a bakery. We have croissants.”

“These are sympathy croissants. They’re different.” Devney set the bag on the table and sat beside Lucy without asking permission. She caught Knox’s eye. A conversation passed between them that required no words. She’s not okay. I know. Don’t push. I won’t.

Tessa arrived twenty minutes later with a printed list of alternative commercial spaces in the neighborhood. She spread them across the farmhouse table, calm and competent. Solving problems was her living. “Three are within your current rent range. Two need renovation but have better foot traffic. One is smaller, but the lease terms are favorable.”