Chapter 3: First meeting

It took Bria exactly three days to build a profile on Liam Wade thick enough to work with.

Gym at six a.m., three days a week, same private facility. Coffee from the same place every Thursday. No bodyguards inside a four-block radius of his building, because he apparently hated being handled.

"He's a creature of habit," Bria said, sliding her laptop across the kitchen island. "Which is either going to make this very easy, or very obvious. Depends on how careful you are."

"I'm always careful," I said.

"You cried into my couch cushions three days ago."

"That was before. I've recalibrated."

Bria snorted, but she didn't argue.

The gym was too public. The coffee run was too quick — ninety seconds, in and out, no room for a real conversation. What I needed was something that looked like an accident but gave me time. Real time. Enough to make an impression that would survive past the next morning.

I found it in his Thursday routine — the covered parking garage two blocks from his coffee place, empty enough at that hour that a stalled car wouldn't draw an audience.

The morning I set the trap, my hands were steadier than I expected.

I parked my car in the exact spot Bria's research said he'd pass, popped the hood like I had any idea what I was looking at, and waited.

Six-forty a.m. Right on schedule, a black car slowed at the garage entrance, and a man stepped out to walk the last stretch on foot — apparently another habit, one Bria's notes hadn't fully captured. Tall. Dark coat. Unhurried in a way that made everyone around him look frantic by comparison.

I didn't have to fake the moment my breath caught. The photos hadn't done him justice, and I hated that fact immediately.

I bent further over the open hood, letting my hair fall forward, and waited for him to get close enough.

"Car trouble?"

His voice was lower than I'd pictured. Closer, too — he'd stopped just behind me, not beside me, close enough that I felt it more than heard it.

I straightened up slowly, wiping my hands on a rag I definitely didn't need. "Something like that. It just died on me. I don't actually know what I'm looking at."

His eyes moved over the engine, unimpressed, then back to me. Not unkind. Just assessing.

"You're not going to fix that by staring at it," he said.

"I was hoping intimidation might work."

The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Close enough that my pulse did something inconvenient.

"Pop it again," he said, stepping in.

He leaned over the engine, and for a moment I actually panicked — Bria and I had disabled the starter, not sabotaged anything visible, but if he actually knew what he was doing—

"Battery terminal's loose," he said after a second. "That's probably it."

Relief and alarm hit me at the same time. He tightened something, straightened, and gestured for me to try it.

The engine turned over clean, because of course it did — the terminal really had been loose, an accident inside an accident, and I would owe Bria an apology for underestimating her thoroughness.

"Thank you," I said, and this time the surprise in my voice was real. "Seriously. I was about to be late for a job I don't even like very much."

"Which job?"

I hesitated, just long enough to look like I was deciding whether a stranger deserved that much of my life.

"Marketing. Nothing exciting." I offered my hand. "Samantha. Sam."

He looked at my hand for half a second longer than necessary before taking it.

"Liam."

His hand was warm, his grip deliberate, and he didn't let go quite as fast as politeness required. Neither did I.

"Well, Liam." I pulled my hand back first, mostly because I didn't trust myself not to enjoy it too much. "You saved my morning. I owe you a coffee, at minimum."

"You don't owe me anything."

"I insist. It's a character flaw." I nodded toward the coffee shop at the end of the block — his coffee shop, though I said nothing about already knowing that. "Fifteen minutes. I promise I'm more interesting than a battery terminal."

He studied me for a beat too long, like he was running some calculation I couldn't see.

I braced for him to decline. Men like Liam Wade didn't take coffee from strangers in parking garages. That was the whole reason this plan had felt insane at two in the morning when Bria and I mapped it out.

"Fifteen minutes," he said finally. "I have a call at seven-thirty."

I smiled, and it wasn't entirely performance.

We didn't talk about anything important over that coffee. Weather. A bad review he'd read of a restaurant neither of us had been to. The absurdity of six a.m. meetings.

But twice, I caught him watching me a beat longer than the conversation required, like he was reading something underneath the words.

And once, when I laughed too loud at something he said, he looked almost surprised at himself for smiling back.

When his phone buzzed — the seven-thirty call, right on time — he stood, buttoned his coat, and looked at me for a moment like he was deciding something.

"Same garage tomorrow?" he asked. "Car trouble seems to be a theme with you."

My pulse kicked, sharp and unwelcome, because that hadn't been part of the plan. The plan was supposed to feel like work.

"Maybe," I said. "If I'm unlucky."

He almost smiled again. "I hope you're unlucky, then."

I watched him walk away, and it took me longer than I wanted to admit to remember why I'd started this in the first place.

Bria was waiting at my apartment that evening, perched on my counter with a bottle of wine already open, like she'd known I'd need it.

"Well?" she demanded. "How'd it go? Did he buy it?"

"He bought it." I dropped my bag on the counter and reached for a glass. "Loose battery terminal, apparently. We didn't even need to fake it that well."

"I told you I was thorough." Bria poured for both of us. "So? Details. Is he as intimidating in person?"

I thought about the low, unhurried voice. The way he'd looked at my hand before taking it. The way he'd watched me over coffee like he was reading something between the lines of every sentence I gave him.

"He's..." I searched for the right word and didn't love the one I landed on. "Careful. Watchful. Like he's used to people wanting something from him."

"Because they usually do," Bria said. "Including you."

"Including me," I agreed, too quickly.

Bria tilted her head, studying me the way she used to when we were fifteen and she could always tell when I was lying about a crush.

"You're not going soft on me already, are you?"

"Don't be ridiculous." I took a long sip of wine. "This is a plan. He's a means to an end."

"Uh huh." Bria didn't sound convinced. "And the coffee tomorrow? Also strictly business?"

I hadn't told her about tomorrow yet. I hadn't even fully admitted it to myself — that I'd said maybe to a man I was supposed to be using, and that some small, traitorous part of me had meant it.

"It's strategy," I said. "Consistency builds trust. That's all this is."

Bria raised her glass in a mock toast, eyes glinting with something between amusement and warning.

"Sure it is," she said. "Just don't forget which one of you is supposed to be running the game, Sam. Men like that don't stay predictable for long."

I didn't answer right away. I was too busy replaying the sound of his voice saying I hope you're unlucky, then, and wondering, uneasily, which one of us that line had actually been for.