Page 73 of Tempting Mr. Knightly

“Good. Because I can’t.”

“I’m asking you to understand that I came here to tell you. Tonight. Before you found out. I was too late. But I was coming.”

“You were too late.”

“I know.”

Her arms tightened around the folder. Her eyes were bright with tears she could no longer refuse.

“You sat at my mother’s table and ate her dumplings. You held my hand. You came to my bed.” Each sentence landed separately, methodically, a woman laying out the facts the way he laid out balance sheets. “And you knew.”

“I didn’t know any of it until Friday morning. Thursday night was real, Lucy. Every part of it. I didn’t know.”

“But you suspected. And you stayed away after.”

“Because I couldn’t touch you without telling you. And I wasn’t ready to tell you.”

“You’re ready now?”

“I’m not ready. But I’m here.”

Her answer took its time arriving. The security light hummed. The moth found its way out of the bulb’s orbit and disappeared into the dark. Somewhere in the distance, a subway rumbled.

“Go home, Knox,” she said.

“Lucy.”

“Go home.” She stepped back. Her hand found the door. “You asked me to trust you. I did. Remember that.”

The door closed.

Knox stood in the alley. The security light hummed. The door stayed closed.

He waited, and not because he expected it to open. He didn’t. Lucy did not open doors she had closed. She built walls for a living, and she built them to last.

Chapter 23

LUCY

The alley had gone quiet a while ago. Lucy sat on the bakery floor with her back against the door she’d closed on him, the folder still against her chest, and she did not cry. She had counted to ten, and then to twenty, and then to fifty, because ten wasn’t enough and twenty wasn’t enough and the number that would be enough hadn’t been invented.

The tile was cold. The ovens were off. The display case was empty because she’d sold the last croissant at four and hadn’t restocked, because she’d spent the evening waiting for Knox, waiting for whatever confession he’d been carrying all week, waiting with the stubborn, stupid hope that it would be smaller than the space she’d cleared for it.

It was not smaller. It filled the bakery. It filled the alley. It filled the years between a restaurant in Queens and a bakery in Brooklyn and every decision she’d made to survive the distance.

She got up and walked to the drawer where she’d kept the business card and the receipt, stored away as if they were precious pieces from a scrapbook. She took out the receipt with his handwriting on it.

Had to handle something. Back tonight. K.

She crumpled it into a ball and stared at it. She couldn’t throw it away and she couldn’t keep it. The paper sat there, creased and indecisive, a perfect metaphor for the woman staring at it.

She called Devney.

“He told me,” Lucy said, leaning back against the wall for support, then sliding back down to the floor.

Devney was quiet a moment. “I know. Gabriel called. Lucy, I’m so sorry.”

“Did you know?”