Page 40

“I’m not sitting here because I need to.”

“Then why?”

Knox leaned forward. He placed his hands flat on the table, mirroring hers, close enough that their fingers nearly touched. “What do you need?”

“I told you. The numbers don’t work.”

“That’s not what I asked. I didn’t ask what’s broken. I asked what you need.”

Lucy held his gaze. The professional mask was gone. The sharp humor was gone. The defenses she’d built across years of refusing to depend on anyone were still standing, but they were thin, and behind them she was staring at the prospect of rebuilding everything for a second time.

“I need someone to tell me it’ll be okay.”

She said it quietly, like the words had slipped out while her guard was down.

Knox didn’t reach for her hand. He didn’t promise to buy the building or fix the financing or solve the problem with the same control he applied to every other crisis in his life. He kept his seat and his silence in front of Lucy.

“It’ll be okay,” he said.

“You don’t know that.”

“No. But I know you. And that’s enough.”

She looked at the table, at his hands near hers, at the printout Ronan had left behind, and the list Tessa had printed, and the bag of croissants Devney had carried through the door without being asked.

“Your friends are ridiculous,” she said.

“They’re your friends, too.”

“Since when?”

“Since they showed up.” He paused. “Marco told me once that you give ground slowly. He said not to mistake slow for reluctant.”

“Marco talks too much.”

“He talks the right amount. You don’t like what he says.”

“I don’t like what any of you say. It’s a consistent problem.” But her voice had softened. The edge was still there, along with the resistance that had built a bakery on the principle of never needing anyone’s help.

She was quiet. Then she straightened, her shoulders finding their familiar line, and she picked up her pen and pulled the offer toward her.

“Stay,” she said. “Help me with the numbers.”

Knox moved to the chair beside her.

They worked through the afternoon, side by side, studying the developer’s offer, Tessa’s alternatives, Ronan’s color-coded analysis spread between them. Lucy calculated. Knox refined. They argued about interest rates and renovation timelines and whether a smaller space could sustain the same volume. The arguing was different now, less sparring than building, two people constructing something together out of numbers and stubbornness and the refusal to accept that a problem couldn’t be solved. Twice her eyes lifted toward the ceiling, toward the apartment over their heads, and Knox followed the second glance and understood. The building held more than her livelihood. It held her home.

His phone vibrated a little after four. He glanced at the screen.

An email from the firm’s document archives waited there. Not the files he had requested. Earlier in the week he’d received notice that the archive copy had come back corrupted, and IT had it in recovery with no estimate on when it would be recovered. He’d followed up twice and gotten the same answer both times. Working on it.

Knox silenced the phone.

Lucy was bent over the numbers, her pen moving fast and sure. She had decided to fight before she’d let herself say so, the decision already in her hands. She didn’t see him close his eyes before he returned to the numbers beside her.

The archive would come when it came. The woman at his side was here now.

Chapter 12