“Posy,” I chuckle. “It’s fine. I could buy a ticket if I wanted to go.”
“It’s not fine! I voted for him! TWICE!” she shouts at my father. “Our beloved mayor. What a load of crap you’ve been spinning.”
A uniformed police officer—probably assigned to my father’s security detail—pokes his head into the room. “Everything okay in here, sir?”
“Everything is NOT OKAY,” Posy yelps.
“I’m fine, Schultz,” the mayor says. He takes off his hat in a gesture of defeat, and without it he looks a couple decades older. “My political successes have always been greater than my personal ones. You aren’t even my only kid who hates me. Everyone I’m close to gets there eventually. And I know I haven’t been a real father to you. But there’s still one thing I can teach you.”
“What’s that?” I ask, because I can’t think of a thing. Except for the stats of every Mets player since I gave up watching baseball.
“Don’t ignore the people who matter in your life, because you’ll miss them when they’re gone. You even took a bullet to turn your woman’s electricity back on.”
“Not intentionally,” I mutter.
“I’ve heard worse reasons. And in my lifetime, I’ve taken a lot more risks for my constituents than I ever did for my family.” He sighs. “I regret that sometimes. And, sure, I’m a little relieved that you don’t need a kidney. My organs are probably too pickled with gin at this point to do you any good.”
“But what happens when you need a kidney?” Posy pipes up. “Did you ever think of that?”
“Good question!” calls Scout from the hallway. “Men never think this shit through.”
I want to laugh. But instead I reach out and hook my uninjured pinky around Posy’s, just to let her know that her loyalty moves me.
“Guess I’d better hope I never need one,” the mayor says. He replaces his hat on his head. “Be well, Son. I’m glad to see you have so many people who’ve got your back.”
“We do, sir,” Carl says.
He turns to go. “If you need anything, though, go ahead and call me. I’ll answer.”
Oh, like that will ever happen. “Thanks,” I grunt.
My nurse struts back in just then. “The mayor of New York was here to see you?” Her eyebrows practically disappear into her silver hair. “Aren’t we fancy. But now I need everyone to clear out of here. You can have one more minute with your wife before we send you down for a couple of tests.”
“I’m not his—” Posy says, but it’s too late. The nurse has marched out again.
“Well then. Take care,” Carl says.
“Thank you.” I lean back against the pillow and take another sip of my new best friend. “This is really invigorating,” I say, swirling it around in the travel mug. “Who knew?”
“Literally everyone,” Max says. Obviously now that I’m not dead, he’s back to being his usual know-it-all self. “I’ll be back tonight to check in on you. Got a lead to chase down, first.”
“What is it?” I ask, because I can’t help myself.
“I heard that Xian Smith was detained at the border. He was in a limo headed to Canada.”
“Really. That’s interesting.”
“Only if it’s true. See you soon. Duff is stationed right outside, if you need anything.” He gives me a wave and slips out the door.
I’m alone again with Posy, which is a nice way to be. “Is there anything I can do for you?” she asks.
“Just come here a minute.” I beckon to her. “That’s all I ever needed from you.”
Smiling, she steps closer.
“I mean, it would be great if you could get me out of here.”
“That’s going to have to wait,” she says, carefully draping an arm around me. “But as soon as they let me, I’ll take you home and make a fuss over you.”
“Aw, that sounds nice. Will there be pie?”
“There will. And I hate to point this out, but it seems like you’re stuck in your least favorite city until you heal up.”
“That’s okay with me, so long as I can get more of your attention. I’ll try not to hate New York as much as I used to.”
She kisses me on an unbandaged part of my face. “Well, your disdain for my city makes more sense now. When is the jerk’s term up, anyway?”
“At the end of the year.” That’s when his influence over the city will wane. It’s a shame I let his influence over me affect me as much as I did. “Fuck it. I’m asking Max for a permanent transfer to Manhattan. Effective immediately.”
Posy lets out a squeak of surprise just as I capture her pretty face between my fingertips and kiss her. Right on the mouth.
35
Posy
Seven Months Later
I’m late, damn it. So when I see the elevators at the SoHo Luxe starting to close, I put on a burst of speed. “Hold the elevator,” I gasp, skating on my dressy shoes toward the closing gap.
A hand shoots out to stop the progression of the doors.
“Thank you,” I gasp as I step over the threshold.
“What floor, miss?” asks the woman. She’s wearing a maid’s pinafore and carrying a stack of towels.
I’m instantly suspicious. She may be an operative in disguise. I know things.
“Um, rooftop. Thank you,” I say, and she presses the button.
We ride up two floors before the doors part and she gets out.
I can’t help myself. I press the door open button, then stick my head out and watch her walk down the hallway.
She joins two other women in maid’s uniforms, hands one of them the towels, and then grabs a vacuum cleaner and heads into an open room.
Okay. She’s probably part of the hotel’s cleaning staff. But ever since I met Gunnar, I look at life just a little differently. You never know when a guy who looks to be sleeping behind the wheel of his car is really on a stakeout. Or if the elevator’s light fixture is secretly reading the texts on your phone.
I don’t really know why Gunnar wanted to have dinner here tonight. He only said that it was perfectly safe because Xian Smith hasn’t been seen in New York for months, not since the Canadian authorities let him go after only a ten minute detention. “Max was beside himself. He wanted to nail that guy. But we don’t have to worry about bumping into him at the SoHo Luxe.”
So here I am, stepping out of the elevator at five minutes past seven o’clock on the Friday night before Memorial Day. And the first thing I see is the deepening sky over Manhattan, with a million twinkling lights set against it.
“Wow,” I gasp. “Nice view.” It’s been years since I was up here. Late in my marriage, my life had become a grind. I hadn’t even realized it.
But not any longer. With a quick scan of the elegant dining tables, I zero in on the hot guy who’s waiting for me in the corner. And then I hustle over there.
Gunnar catches sight of me and rises from his chair.
He’s still rehabbing the injured leg. He walks with a limp, and running doesn’t work so well just yet. But he works out with a physical therapist twice a week and does upper body work in the gym with his pals at Company headquarters.
But he’s shockingly healthy, and awfully upbeat for a man who had two more surgeries after his incident. “You’re late, baby,” he says. “I thought maybe you were going to stand me up.”
“Never,” I say, although I know he’s just teasing. “The puppet show ran longer than I expected.” It was my afternoon to hang out with Aaron because Ginny had an art class. I’ve scaled back my hours in the pie shop. Originally, my goal was to be there for Gunnar as he healed. I moved into his apartment so he wasn’t reliant on a visiting nurse.
It’s just that I never left. We’re having too much fun together. And I only work at the pie shop five days a week these days, and reasonable hours. The rest of the time I spend with my family or with Gunnar. And sometimes both at once.
“How was your day?” I sit down and drape the napkin over my la
p. “Nice table, by the way. You must have given the hostess your best loverboy smile.”
“Isn’t it though?” He gives me one, too. “My day was just fine. I’m working on a camera that reads sound waves off distant light fixtures.”
“Dare I ask why?” Some of the things Gunnar is working on for Max right now are so intricate that I get lost as soon as he tries to explain.
“When you talk, the sound waves you’re making wiggle everything around you, even if you can’t see it with the naked eye. But we’re building a super sensitive video relay that measures these vibrations off a lightbulb—because those are easy to see at a distance. And Max’s nerds will write a piece of software that translates the lightbulb’s wiggles into an audible recording of the distant conversation.”
“Yikes,” I say as the waiter approaches.
“Evening, ma’am,” he says. “Can I bring you a drink to start?”
“Why yes! Someone told me that you guys make an excellent margarita.”
The waiter flashes me his own tip jar smile. “That’s absolutely correct. I recommend the Conmemorativo margarita on the rocks. Would you care for salt?”
“Yes please,” I say easily. He takes Gunnar’s order, too, before walking away.
“He upsold you on the tequila with that smile,” Gunnar says, crossing his arms. “You were putty in his hands.”
“Does his technique make you jealous?” I whisper.
“Not in the least.” He gives me a warm smile. “Thank you for coming out with me tonight.”
“You know me. I’m easy.” Although, to be honest, I still have a mild case of PTSD from the last time a man made a reservation for an expensive meal and then told me he wanted to discuss his plans. “I don’t know why you picked this place, though. Did you want to tell me something about the hunt for you know who?”
Gunnar shakes his head. “No way. We’re here for the magical view of my new favorite city. And for the margaritas.”
I beam, because Gunnar isn’t really kidding about loving New York. He’s thrown himself into some new projects at work, and we’ve been dining our way across Manhattan.
“There’s three things I want to discuss with you.”
“Three?”
He reaches across the table and covers my hand with his. “Can I just say upfront that none of them involves opening our relationship? Don’t panic, okay?”
“Who’s panicking?”
He grins.
“I guess I’m not that good an actor.”
“You know why we used to bicker behind the bar?” he asks, squeezing my hand.
“Because you were a slick, overconfident know-it-all?”
“No.” Gunnar laughs. “Because we’re so much alike. We both like to be in control of every situation. And it freaks us out when we can’t be.”
“Fair enough. Drop your bombs already. I don’t like mysteries.”
He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a small envelope. Inside are two tickets. “Check this out. I just received them today.” He holds them near the candle flickering on the table, so that I can read the print.
Mets vs. Rockies. July 17th. Mayor’s Executive Box Seats.
I gasp. “That’s your birthday.”
“It is. We’re both invited.”
“Will he be there?” I have to ask.
“Yes, actually. I asked the same thing.”
We both crack up. The mayor has reached out to Gunnar a number of times these last few months. He’s asked him to lunch and he even introduced him to his other two grown children. Gunnar said the first meeting was awkward as hell. But now he and his half-brother play pool together every other Thursday at a divey billiards club in Alphabet City. “It turns out that my half-brother doesn’t like rich guy games very much either,” he’s told me. “Go figure.”
“Well, that’s fun. I’d love to go to the baseball game with you. What else do you want to tell me?”
The waiter turns up again with our drinks, though. And then we order dinner. So it’s a few minutes before we’re alone again.
“Look,” Gunnar says, still holding my hand. “I’ve been waiting for this.”
The sky is a brilliant shade of pink, and all of New York looks like a fairy tale. “It’s beautiful. But what does that have to do with—” I catch sight of Gunnar’s free hand, and the little velvet box he’s holding. “Oh my.”
“Posy,” he says. “I brought you up to this rooftop so you’d know that I’ve really come around on my feelings about New York. I’m happy to stay here forever, so long as you’re by my side. Will you be my wife?” He opens the box with his thumb, and there’s a beautiful emerald cut diamond ring inside.
I’m literally speechless. If you’d asked me a year ago whether I’d ever marry again, I would have laughed in your face.
But nobody’s laughing now.
“Yes,” I gasp. “Wow. I didn’t see that coming.”
He smiles, removing the ring from the box. “Try this on, then. Let me know what you think. I know you have very strong feelings about the way you like things to be.”
“You’re just teasing me now,” I say with a giggle. “It’s beautiful.”
“I know you’ve done this before, though,” he hedges. “I don’t know what the other one looked like. I stood in that store and worried that I was going to choose something that reminded you of him.”
“It’s not the same at all,” I gush. And I mean both the ring and the man. “Nothing is the same. I’d be honored to be your wife.”
“Lucky me,” he says, standing up, leaning over the table and kissing me.
I lean in and kiss him right back. And when we break apart a moment later, the whole restaurant is watching. When Gunnar sits back down, there’s some polite applause.
“Thank you, thank you!” Gunnar gives everyone a wave. “We’re here all week.”
“Stop,” I giggle, admiring my hand. “This dinner is even more exciting than I thought it would be.”
“That’s every day with you, sweetheart,” he says. “Especially the days when you bring home pie.”
And I kick his good leg under the table.
* * *
The food is probably wonderful. I’m not sure I even bother to taste it. I’m too happy.
Gunnar asks me what kind of wedding I want, and I tell him a small one. “Planning a wedding is a drag. Planning a honeymoon, though? That’s something I can get behind.”
“Fair enough. Then that’s what I want, too.”
It takes me all the way to the dessert course to remember that Gunnar had three things to discuss.
“Okay, yes,” he says when I prompt him. “I really don’t want to kill the mood. But I also don’t want any secrets between us. So I have to tell you that I learned a few new things about Saroya.”
“Oh,” I say softly. She disappeared the morning after Gunnar’s injury, which was also the morning after she and Spalding had a huge fight. Nobody has seen her since, and there were no more strange incidents at the pie shop. But a few months ago, Gunnar asked me if he could look into her some more, and I’d said yes.
“Posy, you’re not going to like what I found. It has to do with your dad.”
“Oh.” I gulp. My dad and I have been getting along better lately, too. “All right. What is it?”
“Saroya’s mother didn’t come to work at Paxton’s until 1998. But in 1996, your father started paying her a monthly check. It came out of an account your father has in Grand Cayman.”
“A secret bank account?” I roll my eyes. “Was he hiding money from my mother?”
“Probably.”
“Okay. That’s not that surprising. But why was he paying …” I think about it for a second. “Oh hell. How old is Saroya?”
“She was born in 1996.”
My stomach drops. “Oh my God. You think—” I can’t even say it out loud. “She’s his ...”
Nope. Still can’t say it.
“She might be his child,” Gu
nnar says gently. “Though DNA tests weren’t as common back then. It isn’t a certainty.”
“But he paid her,” I repeat. “So he thinks she is.”
“Yeah, probably,” Gunnar says quietly. “The checks stopped after Saroya turned eighteen.”
“But she wanted more.” My head is spinning. “My dad is rich. She thinks she got a bad deal. And she came after me?”
Is there any other way to explain this?
“She’s angry. She wants what other people have,” Gunnar says simply. “We all do, right? She just hasn’t handled it very well.”
“I’ll say,” I snort. “She might be my—” I can’t say it.
“Half-sister,” Gunnar supplies for me.
“But she didn’t tell me that. She still tried to ruin me. It’s like a Greek tragedy.”
“Euripides would be impressed,” he agrees.
“I mean, I feel for the girl on some level. But she got someone to throw a brick through my window.”
“Allegedly,” Gunnar says with a sad smile.
“No wonder the break-in makes no sense. We never considered revenge or jealousy as a motive. What is her motive, anyway?”
“She might need some professional help,” he says. “But you’d have to feel very alone in the world to do what she did.”
I take in a deep breath and blow it out. “Wow, Gunn. Just wow.”
He gets up from his seat, carries his chair around the table, and deposits it next to mine. Then he sits down and pulls me into his arms. We both look out at the city lights, twinkling against the dark sky.
I lean into him and sigh. Saroya may be my half-sister. That’s … startling. And confusing.
But everything is a little less confusing with his arm around me. “I love you,” I whisper.
“And I love you,” he whispers back. “Sorry to blow up your brain twice in one night.”
“I really enjoyed the first one.”
He laughs. “I’ll always be here to pick up the pieces.”
I lift his hand to mine and kiss the back of it. “Thank you, Gunn.”
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