Page 28

“You also knew why I wanted the evening separate from my ordinary life. I told you I didn't want to spend Sunday worrying about whether I should look you up.”

His eyes stayed on mine. “I heard you.”

He exhaled slowly, but he didn't offer an excuse.

I wanted to shout. I also wanted, with an infuriating lack of cooperation from my body, to remember what his hands had felt like against my skin. The two impulses made me angrier.

“I turned you down when you asked me for coffee because we work together. Then I spent the night with someone I thought had nothing to do with Harbor & Main. You let me believe those were two different men.”

“I did, and I should've told you.”

“Why didn't you?”

He watched me steadily. “Because I wanted the night with you. When you came across that ballroom, I knew what telling you would cost us, and I made the selfish choice.”

“You made the choice for both of us,” I said.

I folded my arms, then unfolded them because I couldn't stand still. “I wanted Saturday night. I enjoyed it. I'm not going to pretend otherwise because I'm angry now. But I wanted to decide whether to spend that night with you, Cillian. I never got the chance.”

He looked at the floor for a moment before meeting my eyes again. “You're right.”

I turned toward the window. Outside, a group of tourists in witch hats stopped to consult a map beneath one of the orange-garlanded streetlamps. The sight was so ordinary that for a second it almost made me laugh. Two days ago, Halloween had felt like permission to do something unexpected. Now I was standing in my office trying to work out how I'd missed the identity of the man I'd taken to bed.

When I faced him again, his attention hadn't wavered.

“You could've stopped me when I walked up to you,” I said. “Or when I asked about the masks. You had opportunities all evening.”

“I am sorry,” he said. “Not that I wanted you. Not that you came upstairs with me. I'm sorry I kept something from you that mattered.”

I hated how much I still wanted to believe him. The man who'd brought me water and offered to walk me downstairs was the same man standing in front of me, but so was the one who'd watched me straighten his mask at the door and tell him I wanted to remember him that way.

“You heard me say I wanted to remember you as a stranger,” I said, my voice quieter now. “You let me kiss you goodbye knowing I'd be looking at you across a conference table two days later.”

His jaw tightened. “I know what I let you believe. I'm not proud of it.”

A knock sounded at the door. I stepped away from the desk and took a breath before answering.

“Just a moment, please.”

Jenna spoke through the closed door. “Sorry, Everly. Martin's asking whether the luncheon room is ready for the caterer.”

“I'll be there in five minutes.”

“Thanks!” Her footsteps retreated.

I looked back at Cillian. “I have a job to do. So do you.”

“I'll finish what we came here to do.”

“I've already done enough work keeping people from interrupting each other today. I don't need this added to the schedule.”

A ghost of his usual smile appeared and vanished. “Fair point.”

I wanted to end the conversation and return to the world where conference rooms were my most irritating problem. But a question had been pressing at me since I'd recognized his scar.

“Those wings,” I said. “You told me you came without an engineering team, but I couldn't find a harness. How did you make them move?”

Cillian glanced toward the closed door. “They weren't a costume, Everly. They were real.”