Chapter 6

Devin’s POV

I stood in Eve's kitchen after she left for her appointment with Marguerite Chen and stared at the coffee maker for five full minutes without seeing it. She'd said she needed to do this alone. I understood that about her, the fierce independence that sometimes tipped into self-destruction. Push too hard and she'd pull away. So I let her go, and I cleaned her kitchen, and I checked my emails, and I pretended I wasn't counting every second until she walked back through that door.

Mark called around eleven. "The investor meeting is rescheduled for next Thursday. Your grandfather's assistant left another message. He wants to know what family emergency required you to fly across the country."

"Tell him I'll explain when I'm ready."

"He won't accept that."

"He doesn't have to accept it. He just has to live with it."

I hung up and checked my phone for the fifth time in ten minutes. Nothing from Eve. I knew she was fine. She was in a meeting and would call when she was done.

She called around noon, right when my pacing had reached the point where I was seriously considering manufacturing an excuse to show up at Marguerite Chen's office. Her name lit up the screen and I grabbed the phone before the second ring.

"Eve. How did it go."

"The clause is ironclad. There is no flexibility, I have thirty days to get married or Martin takes everything." She paused, and her voice tightened in that way it always did when she was holding something back. "Marguerite warned me to choose my next partner very carefully. Not all poison comes labeled, apparently."

"Wise woman."

"Terrifying woman. She hinted that my mother built other protections into the will but refused to explain them. I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse."

I leaned against the counter and stared at the skyline. "Did she give you anything useful."

"She told me to find someone I trust. The rest was riddles." Another pause. "I'm going to walk around for a while. I will window shop to clear my head. I'll be back in a few hours."

"Do you want me to join you?"

"No. I need to think. I'll call you later."

"Okay." I said it without hesitation. She was out there alone with the weight of a deadline pressing down on her shoulders, and I was here in her apartment, useless.

Two hours passed quickly. I answered emails I didn't care about, I had Mark walk me through quarterly projections for the Singapore office and absorbed none of it. I made a sandwich I did not eat and checked my phone eighteen times. Eve had not texted, had not called, had not sent so much as a single emoji.

By three o'clock the knot in my gut had blown into full anxiety. She wasn't answering my calls or reading my messages. What if she had found someone else? What if she had walked into a bar and struck up a conversation with some handsome stranger who had a nice smile and a willingness to marry an heiress in distress? What if she was sitting across from him right now, laughing at his jokes, telling him everything?

I had waited seven years for this woman. I had stood in the background of her life and watched her date a finance bro who made her yawn and an architect who bored her to sleep and a human toothache named Ambrose who had absolutely no business being within a hundred feet of her.

I had swallowed my feelings and kept my mouth shut and let her believe I was something I was not because it was the only way she would let me stay. This was my only chance to situate myself in her life firmly and I wasn’t going to let it slip through my fingers.

I called Mark. "I need you to find her."

"Find who? Miss Lovelace?"

"Yes, she went to clear her head and she's been gone three hours. I need to know where she is."

Mark's pause was pointed. "You want me to track her phone."

"I want you to send me the location of her last transaction. She's been shopping so there must be a trail."

"Sir."

"Mark."

"This won’t look good."

"I'm aware of what it looks like. Do it anyway."

He sighed, but I heard the click of his keyboard. "She used her credit card at a boutique on West Fifty-Second about forty minutes ago. There's a bar three blocks from there she's been to before. The one with the red awning. I can't guarantee she's there, but it's reasonable."

"Thank you."

"Sir, I hope you find her before you give yourself an ulcer."

I grabbed my jacket. I didn't know if she was at that bar. I didn't know if she wanted to see me. But I couldn't sit in her apartment for one more minute waiting for my future to slip through my fingers while I did nothing. I had done nothing for seven years and I was done doing nothing.

The cab ride was twenty minutes of mental torture. I rehearsed what I'd say if I found her. Something casual, something friendly. Not a confession that would send her running, and I wasn't ready to lose her.

I paid the driver and stepped onto the sidewalk. The bar with the red awning was exactly where Mark had described it, a quiet little hole in the wall with fogged windows and a neon sign flickering in the afternoon gloom. I was halfway to the door when my phone rang with a call from Eve.

"Hello."

"Is this Devin?" A man's tired, professional voice. "This is Frank, bartender at The Red Awning. I've got a young lady here who says you're her friend. She's had a few too many and asked me to call you."

My heart slammed against my ribs. "I'm already outside."

I pushed through the door and scanned the dim interior. For a moment I saw nothing but scattered drinkers nursing their glasses. Then I saw her.

Eve was perched on a stool near the back, her hair slightly disheveled and her cheeks flushed with alcohol. She was wearing the same elegant clothes from her appointment, but they were rumpled now, soft at the edges. She was staring into a glass of wine like it held the answers to every question she'd ever asked. On the stool next to her, a man was leaning in too close, and I watched with a surge of cold fury as she waved him off.

"Not interested," she said, loud enough to carry. "Also, probably insane. So really, not a good investment."

The man backed off. I crossed the room in four strides and reached her just as she turned, and her face lit up with a smile so bright and relieved it nearly knocked me backward.