Chapter 3
He gripped the mug, glaring up at her through his eyelashes. “Where is my personal phone?”
“Locked in the glove compartment.”
“Give me the keys.”
“No.”
“Mercer, this is bordering on kidnapping.”
“It’s medically mandated isolation,” she corrected smoothly, turning on her heel and heading toward the short hallway that led to the cabin’s two small bedrooms. “Dr. Lin was very specific. Zero screens. Zero professional stressors. Elevation, hydration, and absolute bed rest.”
“Dr. Lin looked like he graduated from middle school on Tuesday!” Reid called after her.
“He had very kind eyes,” her voice floated back from the bedroom. “And he agreed that you look like a walking coronary waiting to happen.”
Reid froze, his fingers tightening around the hot ceramic until his knuckles turned white.
*A walking coronary.*
The words stung with an irrational, disproportionate heat. He looked down at the dark, swirling surface of the tea. Beneath his ribcage, that strange, erratic fluttering started up again—a rapid, stuttering rhythm like a bird trapped in an attic. He pressed the heel of his hand against his sternum, exhaling a slow, ragged breath through his nose.
It was just the adrenaline. The sheer, unadulterated aggravation of being outplayed by his own protégé.
He set the mug on the cedar table without drinking a drop.
Reid let his head fall back against the sofa cushions, staring up at the exposed rafters of the cabin ceiling.
He had her. He knew he had her.
Nora was brilliant, but she was sentimental. She had isolated him out of some misguided, maternal impulse to prove she could take care of everything—the firm, the project, and him. She thought she was being noble. She thought she was playing the benevolent protector while she quietly drafted her timber cantilevers in the other room.
She didn't know that the Vanderhoof project had a hidden kill switch.
The city’s zoning variance for the north pier expired at midnight on Wednesday. Without Reid’s personal, notarized affidavit confirming the deep-water foundation stability—an affidavit sitting locked inside the safe in his Boston penthouse—the city planning board would automatically freeze the permit review. Vanderhoof would be furious. The board would panic.
And Nora would have to come to him.
She would have to sit on this very rug, hand over his phone, hand over his keys, and admit that without Reid Vance, her beautiful, light-filled, breathless architecture was nothing more than ink on paper.
He would let her stew until tomorrow evening. He would endure the terrible tea, the silence of the storm, the enforced stillness of this ridiculous fiberglass cast. He would let her draft herself into exhaustion on the living room floor while he watched from the sofa like a deposed king biding his time.
A door clicked shut down the hall.
A moment later, Nora reappeared. She had washed her face; her skin was scrubbed pink, the graphite smudge gone. She carried a thick woolen quilt, folded neatly, and a heavy roll of yellow tracing paper under her arm.
She didn't look at him as she walked past the couch. She dropped the quilt across his legs, tucking it firmly around his cast with an efficiency that bordered on contempt.
“Sleep, Reid,” she said, unfurling the tracing paper across the drop-leaf table.
She pulled an architect’s scale and a clutch pencil from her pocket, clicked the lead twice, and bent over the blank sheet. The soft, rhythmic scratching of graphite against vellum began almost immediately, blending with the steady drumming of the sleet against the glass.
Reid pulled the heavy wool blanket up to his chest, his eyes fixed on the sharp line of her shoulders illuminated by the single desk lamp.
*Forty-eight hours, Mercer,* he thought, feeling the faint, triumphant smirk settle on his lips as the storm raged against the dark. *Let’s see who breaks first.*
By three in the morning, the gale had stripped three cedar shingles from the eaves with the screech of peeling tin.
Reid didn’t care about the shingles. He cared about the pale, oblong glow of Nora’s laptop resting on the far corner of the kitchen island.
She had retired to the back bedroom at midnight, leaving her bedroom door ajar by precisely three inches. It was an insult—an unspoken declaration that an immobilized man in a five-pound fiberglass boot posed no tactical threat whatsoever.
Reid waited until her breathing settled into the long, rhythmic cadence of deep sleep. Then, slowly, inch by excruciating inch, he swung his legs off the sofa.
The fiberglass cast hit the floorboards with a dull, hollow *thump*. Reid winced, freezing in place for thirty seconds.
Nothing. Only the howling wind and the hiss of sleet against the glass.
He didn't need the crutches. His tendon was fully intact; the only thing impeding him was the absurd weight of the cast and the stiff immobility of his ankle. He stood up, keeping his weight planted firmly on his right foot, dragging the left leg across the floorboards.
Three paces across the braided rag rug.
A sudden, hot spike flared directly behind his breastbone. His vision swam with grey fuzz, and his pulse fluttered—erratic, rapid, like a moth beating against a windowpane. Reid stopped, gripping the high back of an oak armchair until the dizziness passed.
*Low blood sugar,* he reasoned, gritting his teeth. *The woman fed me lentils and boiled grass for dinner. Of course my glycogen is bottomed out.*
He took two more dragging steps and reached the island.
The laptop was an aluminum feather compared to his heavy desktop rig in Boston. He reached out, his fingers hovering half an inch above the trackpad, ready to open the terminal and ping the firm’s internal server to verify the status of the municipal zoning filing.
The kitchen lights snapped on.
Not the warm, muted pendant lamps, but the harsh overhead halogens, flooding the room in blinding, clinical brilliance.
Reid jerked backward, his balance slipping. His cast scraped loudly against the stool leg, and he wobbled precariously, his arms pinwheeling before he caught the counter’s edge.
Nora stood in the hallway threshold.
She wore a faded grey thermal shirt, charcoal sweatpants, and thick wool socks. Her hair tumbled in loose, untamed waves around her shoulders, completely unpinned. She wasn't holding a weapon, but the look in her dark hazel eyes was lethal enough.
“What,” she said, her voice dropping into a dry, dangerous register, “do you think you’re doing?”
Reid recovered his posture with all the chilly dignity a man in flannel pajamas and an orthopedic boot could summon.
“I required water.”
“The water pitcher is on the cedar table four inches from your pillow, Reid.”
“I wanted cold tap water. The pitcher water was ambient.”
Nora crossed the floor without making a sound. She didn't look at his cast; she looked straight into his eyes. In the flat halogen glare, the dark circles under his eyes were impossible to hide, but neither was the stubborn arrogance etched into the set of his jaw.
She stepped between him and the island, casually resting her forearm over the lid of the closed laptop.
“You’re sweating,” she observed.
“The woodstove is set to blast-furnace levels.”
“The woodstove went out two hours ago. It’s sixty-two degrees in here.” She reached out, surprisingly fast, and pressed the back of two fingers against the side of his neck.
