“It was definitely something on her mind.”

“That’s a great idea, Maggie,” Grady offers softly, close enough to reach out to me, his fingers giving my elbow a light squeeze. Making me smile and wish that it was the evening already and I was curled up with him under the lights of the rooftop garden.

“Well . . .” Jace sets his cup on its saucer. “That sounds like a commendable charity then.” He clears his throat and stands. “Thank you for the tea, Ruby. I should get going now.”

“So soon?” Hans says with a pout.

Jace collects the signed papers from the table and heads for the door, his eyes landing on Grady. He stops abruptly. “You know, I have an idea.” Pulling his coat on slowly, he says, “I’m going to give you the first three months of my earnings—after overhead to the firm—and you can add that to this charity fund.” His gaze rolls over the apartment, ending on the bed. “For your friend.”

My heart speeds up. “That’s very generous of you. Why would you do something like that?” Feeling guilty?

His eyes flicker to my mouth. “I figure I owe you.” He pauses. “And you seem so hell-bent on believing that I’m an asshole, maybe this will change your mind.”

“Don’t forget, December twenty-second. Hollingsworth Gallery. Eight o’clock. Silent auction for Celine!” Hans chirps, his eyes glued to Jace’s smooth strides.

But the second the door shuts behind him, Hans’s undivided attention turns to Grady. “So . . . We have some heavy boxes to lift, and you look strong.”

————

“My back hurts a little,” Grady admits with a chuckle.

“I can’t for the life of me figure out why.” I giggle into his chest. Hans seemed to enjoy ordering Grady around, telling him where to stack boxes, only to make him move them repeatedly because of weight concerns or height concerns or, maybe, just because the lively antiques appraiser liked watching the rugged building superintendent’s muscles strain. “I think Hans has a crush on you.”

Grady shifts his body until we’re pressed against each other from noses to toes in the hammock, my back to the fire. “I think I have a crush on you,” he whispers.

I exhale as nervous flutters fill my stomach. Is that what’s happening to me, too? Am I crushing on Grady? We hardly know each other, and yet I feel more comfortable with him than I have with any guy in recent memory. Too bad he lives worlds away.

He must be able to read my mind. “So, where is home for you, Maggie Sparkes?”

“San Diego.” I pause, hesitant to go on. It’s nice, the feeling that someone doesn’t know—or doesn’t care—how much money you have. I figure it’s one or the other for Grady, seeing he hasn’t brought it up since I let it slip. “Ethiopia . . . Kenya . . . Malawi . . . South Africa.”

He leans in, the tip of his frosty nose touching the tip of mine. “So you like warm climates.”

I laugh. “Yes, in fact, I do.”

He smiles. “Well, I’ll be thinking about you in February, when I’m digging my hammock and fire pit out of a foot of snow.”

I know this “thing” that we have is temporary, so I’m mostly joking when I say, “Or you could come down and help me build a house. If I’m back down there by then,” I add quickly, remembering Rosa, a bitter twinge sliding into my spine.

“What . . . and leave this paradise?”

“You could build another one. Of course, you’d have to build a windmill if you want electricity for the little lights.”

“A windmill. That sounds complicated.”

“A fourteen-year-old boy in Malawi built one using only wood, a bicycle, and tractor blades. Look it up. You seem handy. You could build me a few of those, right? Until I get the solar panels up and running?”

“I’d have to do some research, but I doubt I’m as smart as that fourteen-year-old boy.”

I lean in to steal a kiss, our half-naked bodies pressed up against each other. The temperatures have dropped even further tonight, to the point that we’ve more pushed clothing aside rather than undressed, even under layers of wool covers, which are pulled right to our chins.

I know it’s all talk, but a small part of me wonders if it would be possible. Is there a chance that I could be doing exactly this, with Grady, under the warm skies of Kenya or Ethiopia, in a year’s time? He’s the first guy I’ve been with in years who I could see fitting into my world.

What does he have to hold him back here? No career aspirations, by the sounds of it.

A call from Doug—I’ve assigned him his own ringtone now, to save me from screening—breaks apart this intimate moment.

“Her computer has back doors in it.”

Doug’s words quickly pull me back to my purpose for being in New York City. “Okay? What does that mean?”

“Someone may have hacked into her computer, remotely.”

I sit up abruptly, the cold, the snow, my state of dress, everything else forgotten. “What do you mean? Could that mean something important?”

“Can’t say for sure, yet. Stay tuned. Also, we went through Jace Everett’s school records. He’s a smart guy, based on his grades. Stayed out of trouble for the most part.”

“The most part?”

“Well, he had some issues with fighting at his prep school when he was around thirteen. He had a temper, from the sounds of it.”

“How bad of a temper?” At thirteen, most boys are acting out. At least that’s what I remember of my private school. If they weren’t pushing and shoving each other around, they were trying to cop a feel of the more developed girls to give them something besides their mom’s Victoria Secret catalogues to jerk off to in their sheets at night.

“The report is vague, but that doesn’t surprise me. His dad is a big donor to the school. I’m sure that bought the right to keep specifics out of the paperwork.”

I sigh with frustration.

“I do have some good news, though. We found her phone’s backup in her computer.”

“So you mean—”

“ ‘L’ stands for Larissa Savoy. It’s the only L in there. Thirty-one years old, single, a real estate lawyer at Delong and Quaid, lives on East 30th Street. We’ve got a string of texts between her and Celine. All carefully worded.” He snorts into my ear. “But I’ve got names of clients. Some phone numbers. You want more information on them?”