Chapter 1
“Where did you get that?” I whispered.
Mr. Bennett’s hand rested motionless on the arm of his wheelchair.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
The marble bathroom suddenly felt too small. Steam drifted across the mirror, turning our reflections into pale, blurred shapes, and somewhere beyond the closed door I could hear the quiet ticking of an antique clock in the bedroom.
His eyes dropped to the necklace.
Then returned to me.
“You know it,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
I wrapped my arms around myself, though the room was warm.
“I asked where you got it.”
A faint line appeared between his brows.
“I’ve had it for twenty years.”
My heart stumbled.
“No.”
“Yes.”
His voice had lost its earlier sharpness. There was no impatience now, only caution.
I looked again at the crescent-shaped mark beneath his collarbone.
Twenty years.
A storm.
A borrowed room above a closed lakeside restaurant.
A young man with rain dripping from his dark hair, laughing because the electricity had gone out and neither of us could find the candles.
A silver chain around his neck.
A crescent-shaped mark I had once teased him about.
I heard my own voice from another lifetime.
It looks like the moon forgot a piece of itself on you.
And his answer.
Then you’ll always know it’s me.
My knees weakened.
“Daniel?”
His face changed.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
The guarded billionaire vanished for an instant, and I saw the young man he had once been.
He inhaled slowly.
“Sarah.”
Hearing my name in that voice hurt more than I expected.
Nobody had called me that way in twenty years.
I gripped the edge of the vanity.
“You told me your name was Daniel Mercer.”
“My mother’s maiden name was Mercer.”
“You said you were studying architecture.”
“I was.”
“You said your family owned a construction company.”
“They did.”
“Not half of downtown Chicago.”
His mouth tightened.
“At twenty, I wasn’t very good at explaining my family.”
I stared at him.
“That is one way of putting it.”
“Sarah—”
“You disappeared.”
He blinked.
“So did you.”
I almost laughed, but there was nothing funny in it.
“I went back to that apartment every day for three weeks.”
His expression sharpened.
“What apartment?”
“The one on Halsted. The place I was renting with Jenny.”
His eyes searched mine.
“You moved.”
“Three months later.”
“No. Before that.”
“I didn’t.”
He looked genuinely confused.
“I went there.”
“When?”
“The second week of September.”
My pulse began beating harder.
“That’s impossible.”
“I stood outside the building.”
I remembered September.
Every day of it.
I had been nineteen, frightened, nauseated in the mornings, counting coins for groceries and telling myself Daniel would come back.
“I was there,” I said.
“The superintendent told me you’d gone.”
“Our superintendent barely knew who lived in the building.”
“He said the young woman in 3B had moved to Wisconsin.”
“That was Jenny.”
His face went still.
I stared at him.
The truth was almost embarrassingly simple.
Jenny had left after her mother became ill.
I had stayed behind alone.
Daniel closed his eyes.
For the first time since I had entered his mansion, he looked tired rather than formidable.
“I thought you left.”
“I thought you chose not to come back.”
“I wrote to you.”
“So did I.”
His eyes opened.
“Where?”
“The address you gave me near Northwestern.”
“I wasn’t there anymore.”
“I know that now.”
Silence gathered between us.
Twenty years of certainty began cracking at the edges.
I had built an entire story around his absence.
He had met me, enjoyed a summer with me, and gone back to the wealthy life he had carefully hidden.
That story had hurt, but at least it had been understandable.
This was worse.
This was uncertainty.
This was the possibility that neither of us had known what the other was doing.
Daniel looked toward his shirt, still hanging open.
“We should probably continue this conversation somewhere that doesn’t involve you trying to give me a bath.”
Despite everything, a startled sound escaped me.
Half laugh.
Half sob.
His mouth almost curved.
Almost.
Then he said, “Could you help me with the shirt?”
My hands trembled as I fastened the buttons again.
I avoided the necklace.
When I reached the top button, he stopped me.
“Leave that one.”
I stepped back.
He touched the silver chain with two fingers.
“You gave this to me.”
I remembered.
It had belonged to my grandfather.
Cheap silver, nothing valuable, but Grandpa had worn it for thirty years.
After he died, Grandma gave it to me.
And on the night before Daniel was supposed to leave for three days to help his mother, I had unclasped it from my own neck.
So you have to come back.
He had smiled.
That sounds like a contract.
It is.
Then I accept.
I looked away.
“I thought you would throw it away.”
“I thought you’d come looking for it.”
Those words stayed with me as I helped him back into the bedroom.
Neither of us mentioned bathing again.
Mrs. Alvarez, the housekeeper who had brought me upstairs earlier, appeared at the doorway.
Her eyes moved from Daniel to me.
“Everything all right?”
Daniel answered before I could.
“Change of schedule. Ms. Callahan and I need coffee.”
Mrs. Alvarez raised an eyebrow.
“Coffee?”
“Yes.”
“You hate coffee after six.”
“I’m making an exception.”
Her eyebrow climbed higher, but she left without asking anything else.
Daniel maneuvered his wheelchair toward the sitting area by the windows.
I remained standing.
“You recognized me when I walked in this afternoon.”
He didn’t answer immediately.
“I thought I did.”
“And you said nothing.”
“You didn’t recognize me.”
“Twenty years changes people.”
“Yes.”
His gaze drifted briefly toward his legs.
“And sometimes more than years.”
I regretted my words immediately.
But he spared me the apology.
“When I saw your application, the name caught my attention.”
“Callahan?”
“Sarah Callahan.”
My maiden name.
I had returned to it after my marriage ended four years earlier.
“I wondered,” he continued, “but I told myself there must be thousands of Sarah Callahans.”
“So you hired me because of my name?”
“No.”
He looked almost offended.
“My staffing manager hired you because you told her you wouldn’t quit.”
“That sounds more like me.”
“It does.”
“And when you saw me?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
I touched my hair self-consciously.
At nineteen, it had reached halfway down my back.
Now it brushed my shoulders, threaded with a few early strands of silver I could never afford to hide.
“You’re different too,” I said.
He glanced down.
“I gathered.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
There was no bitterness in the answer.
Only fact.
Mrs. Alvarez returned with two cups and placed them on the low table.
She gave Daniel another questioning look.
He ignored it.
May you like
After she left, I sat opposite him.
The lake beyond the windows was almost black, broken by ribbons of reflected city lights.
