The overpowering combination of Chinese food, kitchen grease, customer perfumes, and an imminent sewage problem in the restrooms almost gagged Sean as they stepped into ShenYen. As the waitress seated them, he breathed shallowly, adopting the unawareness of Gretch and the rest of the patrons, who clearly weren’t affronted by the stench.

As soon as the waitress took their order, Gretch sipped her iced tea and scrolled through her phone. Perfect. Sean excused himself to go to the restroom and walked out, gulping breaths of fresh air before heading into Donatello’s Art and Supplies.

A young guy with a scruffy beard sat behind the register, leafing through a comic book and nodding in time to loud alternative rock coming from ceiling speakers. When he spotted Sean, he tipped his chair back, lowered the volume on the stereo, and slipped the comic book out of sight. “Can I help you?” His sullen tone implied the exact opposite.

“A friend showed me a painting he bought here in October. I was hoping to find more from this artist.” As he spoke, Sean scanned the merchandise on the shelves. The brands were inferior, supplies Moore and Morrow would never use. The art on the walls was substandard. “It’s a landscape of a wheat field in winter? Face of a bleak-looking farmer. The artist signed it Salvatore.”

The slouching clerk popped off his chair. “You know where that painting is?”

The eagerness and recognition of such a shitty piece threw up a big, fat red alert. Sean shook his head and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Naw. He showed me a picture on his phone. I think he took the art with him to Europe.”

“Who showed you?”

Sean paused. This was so not the way he’d expected the conversation to go. “A college friend,” he answered, even though Rick was eight or nine years younger. “It sounds like you recognize the piece.”

“I sold it by accident.” The clerk rounded the counter and strode forward so rapidly that Sean instinctively eased into a subtle martial arts stance. “I can’t believe you found it.” The clerk stopped in front of Sean, face flushed. He reeked of onions and BO. His nametag, Johnny, rose and fell rapidly on his chest. “I need to get it back,” he said in a higher octave. “It’s, like, crazy important I find it.”

Sean lifted his palms and shrugged. “I can ask,” he said. “Is it valuable or something?”

“My father painted it. He owns this place.” Johnny waved around the store. “It was part of his personal collection.”

Sean looked around the walls again. If this place was part of a black market art ring, it was in sad shape. “Why would he put his collection on display with the rest of these?” he asked, fishing for anything.

“It was hanging behind the register. Only two days, man.” Johnny thumbed the vacant place he’d just left. “Some guy came in and needed a gift, like, ASAP. When he pointed at it, I just made up a ridiculous price and out came this wad of cash. I never got his name or nothin’. I had no idea it was so important.”

Sean’s skin prickled. It’s two hundred million dollars important. He had enough information to give the FBI. He needed to get back to the restaurant. Gretch had the patience of a gnat. “I’ll tell my friend to call you. You got a business card?”

Johnny nodded eagerly and bounded to the counter, swiping one off a stack. He returned, beaming. “Thank God you came in. I need your friend to call me, today, bro. My old man’s still yellin’ at me.”

“Sure.” Sean pocketed the card. “I’ll tell him it’s critical.” He turned on his heel while the kid still yammered over the importance of the painting. Dumbass hadn’t bothered to get Sean’s name, either. Johnny’s father was going to hit the ceiling.

When Sean opened the restaurant door, the combination of odors hit him full in the face again. Stress or exhaustion always heightened his olfactory sensitivity, and he was a ball of both. How would he last through lunch? He swallowed his nausea and claimed his seat across from Gretch.

She lifted a shapely eyebrow without looking up from her phone. Their steaming entrees were on the scalloped paper placemats. Despite the reek, his stomach grumbled.

“Sorry,” he muttered, “long line in there.”

She flipped her phone over and pursed her lips. “Why are we here?”

“Sustenance. Also known as lunch, although the British call it dinner—”

“Why so far from the office?” she snapped. Despite her expert makeup, dark crescents puffed under her eyes like smudged mascara.

“I heard they have the best Peking duck in the city.”

“You’re a vegan.”

Sean modified the precise angle between his stinky plate and his iced tea. “I meant for you.” This shallow breathing was making him lightheaded. His comebacks weren’t up to par.

Gretch leaned forward, pointing her finger. “Don’t bullshit me. We’ve never even eaten in the break room at the same time. What do you want?”

The brittleness in her eyes looked like treacherous black ice. He stilled. He didn’t have the wit today. Honesty was the only option. “I want to talk about last night.”

“It’s over. If we’re going to continue working together, you need to forget it happened.”

A waitress holding an iced-tea pitcher approached. Sean shook his head in warning, but she smiled and bowed her head shyly, still on course. When she reached their table, Gretch waved her away with a formidable scowl. The poor woman scuttled off, shoulders hunched. It was uncalled for, and Sean sat up straighter.

“There’s no need to bite everyone’s head off, Gretch.”

She sighed like the weight of the world just set up camp on her shoulders. “Look, Sean, you’re a nice guy—”

He braced for impact.

“—and I realize you probably don’t date, so let me clue you in. It’s an unspoken rule that you move on from a one-night stand. You don’t ask the girl out for Chinese; you don’t discuss it. It’s done.”

She toyed with her food, expressions flitting across her face like she was arguing with herself. Finally, she lowered her fork and rubbed her lips together. “You did like it, right?”

Her vulnerable expression wiped the floor with his heart. So they were going to discuss it after all. Sean paused. How to put this precisely? “I floated up to the pearly gates and high-fived all the angels.”

She pricked her forefinger on the prongs of the fork, still lying on her placemat. “Then why aren’t you acting like all the others do afterward?”

Christ, how do normal guys act? He’d massaged her feet, escorted her to work, taken her to lunch… “Give me a hint,” he said, hating the helpless tone. What had he done wrong all these years with other women?

“I don’t know.” She waved her hand. “Grovel? Gush? Propose marriage to get me to do it again?”

He stared at her, and she stared back, chin up, lips firm. Given her reaction when he’d brushed her breast, those choices sounded abhorrent. How insensitive were these guys? Surely some, if not all, had tried to touch her before, during, or afterward. They hadn’t picked up on the damage? “I may not date a lot,” he said hesitantly, “but it seemed like you weren’t having as good a time. At all. When I accidentally touched—”

“Check, please!”

“Gretch.”

She grabbed her purse and began sliding out of the booth.

The terrified waitress appeared instantly. “You no like?”

“We’re fine.” Sean clamped Gretch’s wrist across the table. “I’ll shut up.”

She hesitated, head down. His breath sawed so inefficiently he grew dizzy. Before this week, their relationship had been tenuous at best: a few insults, a lot of ignoring, occasionally agreeing to do a favor if it benefitted someone else. But all that time he’d hungered for her. The larger-than-life personality, her wit, the killer body she clearly had issues with.

The problem with last night was now he craved the real woman underneath that sparkly, prickly package. He wanted to shoulder the burden of her inner scars, wanted to heal her wounded heart. He was a certifiable doormat, which was tragic, because her attraction leaned toward the exact opposite. Shakespeare would’ve had a field day with this.

Gretch shifted back to the middle of the booth, and he released her wrist. With a nod of assurance to the waitress, he picked up his fork. The distraught Chinese woman slipped the little tray with the check and fortune cookies by his glass and hurried off. Patrons throughout the restaurant gawked at them. A few whispered.

What a freaking debacle. Sean dug into his steamed rice and vegetables, ignoring the way Gretch picked at her food. How easily this tactic came back to him. Eat fast, hold as still as possible, retreat into his head so deeply that he was only physically present. This whole fiasco was a replica of restaurant meals as a kid. His older brothers and their rowdy antics used to shrivel him in his seat. Countless times he’d shoveled in food, wishing he could disappear. Eventually the horrific meal would be over, his mother apologizing to the waitress, his father cuffing the boys or adding extra to the bill to pay for broken items.

“Do you always eat clockwise?” Gretch asked in a tone like, “Have you always had four nostrils?”

Sean blinked down at his plate. Dread slithered along his spine. When he ate in public, he was cognizant to pick from different areas of his plate even though it gave him the heebie-jeebies. She’d wound him up so tightly he hadn’t paid attention. The precise wedge of food remaining resembled eleven to twelve on a clock.

He laid down his fork. “I can’t believe you of all people didn’t know it’s International Eat Clockwise Day.”

“I’m not an idiot, Sean.”

“Google it.”

Her unamused glare slathered on another layer to the already backbreaking tension. The contents he’d gobbled dumped into his stomach all at once. He almost moaned.

She placed her fork on her plate and patted her mouth. “Finished?” She’d had six pieces of chicken and thirteen broccolini spears when the plate had been placed in front of her, and that was what remained.

“Yeah. Thanks for coming all this way to sit with me.” He dug for his wallet, counting out cash when she snatched the bill.

“I’ll get this. I owe you.”

He almost said for what? He’d caused her nothing but problems this week. And every time he’d tried to make it up to her, he just made things worse. If only he knew how to be normal. “Thanks,” he said—and meant it, but it came out clipped and sullen.

She shook her head with an I-give-up expression and dropped a credit card on the bill. In seconds, the fidgety waitress rang it up and returned. Gretch signed, and Sean’s heart thawed at the extravagant tip she left. Once again her prickly exterior hid a softer, decent side. Naturally, she noticed him peering at the bill and slid out of the booth with frosty displeasure. “I need to stop at the ladies’ room.”

“I’ll wait outside.” He shouldered the door open and sucked in air like he’d been exhumed from a caved-in coalmine. He shoved his fists in his pockets and stared at the curb. If it hadn’t been clear enough last night that they didn’t belong together, this meal was the fat lady singing. He shouldn’t have asked her to lunch, hadn’t meant to stare at the tip she left. It was socially unacceptable. Why did he do shit like this? And now, ladies and gentlemen on the El, I give you another silent freeze-out back to work…

A door chimed, the recognition of it like a two-by-four to the head. “That’s him.”

Sean pivoted, teeth clenched at his idiocy. Johnny stood just outside the art store with a morbidly obese, gray-haired man in a brown pinstriped suit. The man’s beady black eyes held no humor. No humanity. Oh shit.

As sensei, he hammered home mindfulness to his students. Awareness of their surroundings, the threat level. What a fucking bonehead to have been so distracted by Gretch that he’d overlooked the obvious. Johnny hadn’t gotten any contact information, so he’d be damn frantic to find Sean again. And here Sean stood, waiting to be found. His heart beat erratically.

“Sal Donatello,” the older man said, unfastening the button of his suit. “My son tells me you know where my painting is.”

Damn, damn, damn. “No, sir. I can’t get hold of my friend.”

There was no question the obese man was mob. High up in the hierarchy, too. Small potatoes didn’t hang the world’s most famous stolen painting behind the register disguised as crap. They stored it in a locked vault with high-tech sensors.

Without breaking eye contact, Sal jerked his head, and Johnny scrambled to open the door. The chimes jingled merrily again. Sal gestured magnanimously. “Come tell me all about your friend. You see, I’m very eager for that painting to be returned.”

Sean shifted his weight. Please don’t come out right now, Gretch. “I can’t help you, sir. I only saw a cell phone picture of it. Months ago. I stopped by to see if there were other paintings by that artist—you, I mean. It was exquisite.” He raised his palms. “I don’t want any problems.”

Sal smiled, a lizard-like flash. With a sleight-of-hand motion, he opened the right side of his blazer, where the handle of a menacing Sig Sauer glinted. He nodded to the door. “Inside.”

Sean’s combat composure emerged like the flipside of a coin. He could take these guys. Could definitely unarm Sal before the man blinked. The sequence whirled through Sean’s head: pivot left, roundhouse kick to Johnny’s skull, reverse pivot, uppercut to Sal’s chin, unarm him as the man went down. “Sorry,” he said, breathing in a feral sense of serenity. “I’m late for work.”

The door behind him whooshed open; Chinese odors wafted out. “Thanks for waiting,” Gretch said. “Sorry I ruined lunch.”

Sal’s tiny eyes widened, eating up her beauty head to toe. His smile broadened to a real one, which, ironically, was way more intimidating and deadly. Shifting his gaze to Sean, he placed a hand lightly near his unbuttoned blazer, message crystal clear. On some level, he must’ve known Sean wouldn’t give in without a fight, but he was also confident Sean wouldn’t dare risk anything now, with Gretch mere inches from a stray bullet.

Sal nodded to where his son still held the door open. “It’s your boyfriend who ruined lunch, miss. Please step inside.”