Chapter 2

Within two hours, the firm’s executive board had received an emergency notification from Nora Mercer: *Senior Partner Reid Vance has suffered a catastrophic soft-tissue trauma requiring immediate orthopedic immobilization, total sensory isolation, and zero-work convalescence to prevent systemic complications.*

Before Reid could demand his discharge papers to sign out against medical advice, an orderly had arrived with a pre-molded fiberglass walking cast, a set of heavy aluminum crutches, and a bottle of high-potency magnesium glycinate.

And before he could reach the hospital lobby to hail a cab, Nora had backed her battered green Subaru Outback up to the emergency bay doors.

“Get in,” she had said.

“I have a four-o'clock with the structural engineers,” Reid snapped, leaning heavily on the crutches, his dignity hanging by a thread.

“Marcus canceled it. He agrees with me.”

“Marcus is an idiot who hasn't drafted a blueprint since the Carter administration.”

“Marcus is the managing partner who signs our insurance indemnity,” Nora countered. She stepped forward, caught Reid by the belt loop with infuriating leverage, and maneuvered his six-foot-two frame into the passenger seat before he could muster a counter-argument that didn't involve admitting his tendon was as intact as the day he was born.

She took his work phone. She took his tablet from his briefcase. She took his spare set of keys.

Then she drove north.

Four hours through the gathering gloom of an early November storm, past the toll plazas of New Hampshire, past the rocky pines of Portland, until the highway degraded into a two-lane state route, then a frost-heaved coastal road, and finally a winding gravel lane that dead-ended at this salt-bleached cedar box perched fifty feet above the Atlantic surge.

“Here,” Nora said now, breaking his reverie.

She set a steaming ceramic mug down on the low cedar table beside his sofa. The dark, amber liquid smelled aggressively of dried nettles, roasted chicory, and boiled bark.

Reid eyed the mug like it contained industrial solvent. “What is this?”

“Dandelion root and valerian,” Nora said, pulling the cuffs of her oversized fisherman’s sweater over her knuckles. “Good for vascular tone. Reduces peripheral inflammation.”

“Where is my coffee?”

“Coffee elevates blood pressure, causes arterial constriction, and inhibits cellular repair in connective tissue.”

“Mercer,” Reid growled, his voice rasping from twelve hours of suppressed fury. “I drink four double-espressos before nine in the morning. If you deprive me of caffeine, I will not suffer from soft-tissue inflammation; I will suffer from homicidal ideation.”

Nora didn't even blink. She walked back to the kitchen counter, picked up a damp linen cloth, and wiped down the butcher block with smooth, circular strokes.

Under the dim amber glow of the cabin’s pendant lamps, she looked absurdly composed. She had pulled her thick, auburn-tinted hair into a messy knot at the crown of her head, secured with a drafting pencil. Her collarbones were visible beneath the loose neck of the cream wool sweater, pale and sharp. She had a smudge of graphite on the side of her jaw—a habit she’d had since her first week as an intern, unconsciously scratching her face while thinking through an isometric projection.

He knew that smudge. He knew the exact rhythm of her breathing when she was working through an impossible load-bearing calculation. He had spent five years watching her across a drafting table, marveling at her mind while simultaneously building fortress walls to keep her from usurping his domain.

“You’re shouting, Reid,” she said calmly. “Shouting increases your heart rate. Your cast will feel tight if your lower extremities swell.”

“My lower extremities are fine!” Reid snarled, shifting his booted leg an inch to the left.

A sharp, strange thud hammered inside his ribs. A strange, breathless flutter caught in the base of his throat, dizzying him for half a second. He blinked against the sudden gray static in the periphery of his vision.

*Caffeine withdrawal,* he told himself instantly, pressing his palm flat against the sofa cushion until the room stopped tilting. *Classic withdrawal headache. The girl is trying to kill me with herbal water.*

“You don't need to yell at me,” Nora said, her back still turned as she arranged a row of dark glass supplement bottles on the shelf. “The firm is in good hands.”

Reid let out a short, caustic bark of laughter. “Good hands? Vanderhoof is expecting a fully realized schematic for the pier trusses by Thursday at five. You don't have the site survey for the tidal variance. You don't have the acoustic dampening figures for the south arcade. And you certainly don't have the revised envelope specs.”

Nora turned around slowly, leaning her lower back against the counter, crossing her arms over her chest. The firelight caught the amber flecks in her irises.

“I have my laptop,” she said.

“Your laptop doesn't have my direct line to the regional building commissioner.”

“I’m sure Commissioner Hayes can survive forty-eight hours without you flattering his golf handicap.”

Reid’s jaw tightened. He leaned forward, ignoring the dull ache in his chest and the heavy, ridiculous weight of the walking boot propped on the ottoman.

“You think this is your moment, don't you?” he said, his tone dropping into that low, cutting precision that had made junior draftsmen weep in review sessions. “You think because I slipped on a piece of wet grade-four aggregate, the board is going to hand you the commission. You think you’re going to walk into the boardroom on Thursday, lay out those decorative, floating wooden boxes of yours, and play the brave, self-sacrificing lieutenant who carried the standard when the general fell.”

Nora didn't flinch. She didn't drop her gaze. She simply watched him, her expression infuriatingly, maddeningly calm.

“Is that what you think I’m doing, Reid?”

“I know what you’re doing. I trained you. Every instinct you have, you stole from my desk.”

A tiny, razor-thin smile touched the corner of her lips. It wasn't smug; it was something far worse. It was patient.

“If I stole your instincts, Reid, I’d be currently suffering from an imaginary ulcer and screaming at the walls because someone touched my fountain pen.” She stepped toward the sofa, her wool socks whispering against the pine planks. She stopped two feet away, looking down at him.

The heat coming off her was absurd—clean soap, rain, and the faint, bitter scent of the tea she had brewed. For a second, Reid was acutely aware of how close she was, how the cabin seemed to shrink until there was nothing between them but the crackle of burning spruce and the heavy, humid weight of things left unsaid for three long years.

“Drink your tea,” she said quietly.

“I will not drink the dandelion water.”

“Drink it, or I won't give you the spare blanket.”

“I am your senior partner, Mercer. Not your toddler.”

“Right now, you are a patient with an immobilized limb and a gale-force nor’easter outside the window,” she said. She reached down, picked up the ceramic mug, and held it out to him.

Her fingers brushed his as he took it.

The contact was brief—less than a second—but it sent a jolt straight up Reid’s forearm that had nothing to do with soft-tissue damage or caffeine deficits. Her skin was warm. His was like ice.

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