“Did you intend to replicate Mr. Bryson’s designs?”

“No,” Ava replied steadily.

Her lawyer was on her right. A camera rolled on a tripod in the corner.

Today was the start of depositions. For once, my first chair had deigned to participate. Evan Clarke was a thin man with a receding hairline. A favorite of my father’s, Evan was capable but preferred supervising to getting his hands dirty.

Lucky me.

The hardest part for Ava would be keeping her cool. But she responded exactly as her lawyer had no doubt instructed her. Simple, to the point. No emotion.

Which probably came as easily to her as not breathing.

“Have you ever owned garments designed by Mr. Bryson?”

Uncertainty flickered across her features.

She should’ve known that was coming.

Come on.

“Do you need me to repeat the question?” I prompted.

“No.” Her brows drew together.

I saw Evan frown at me out of the corner of my eye. “I asked, have you ever owned—”

“Yes, but it was two years ago. And I didn’t even buy the stupid dress. It was a gift.” Her eyes cut to her attorney.

“Let’s take a break,” John suggested. He shepherded Ava out into the hall.

In the two days since my run-in with her at the coffee shop, I’d replayed the scene more than I cared to admit. It stung that she saw me as some jerk from the right family whose redeeming quality was holding onto a good thing when it landed in his lap.

Part of me wanted to hurt her back. But this wasn’t the place to do it.

Evan leaned over. “You’re going too easy on her.”

“Aren’t we getting what we need?”

Evan turned so his back shielded us from the glass wall between us and where Ava and her lawyer were having their tête-à-tête in the hall. “Nathan. You know as well as I do this is a rehearsal. Bryson’s a small fish. But they help pay the bills, and the firm needs to turn them around so the big fish keep coming.”

I glanced toward the hall. Ava looked agitated as her lawyer said something to her. I couldn’t hear anything until she burst out, “I can’t help it, John! I am angry.” She cut a look at me through the glass. Her lawyer took her by the arm, talking her down.

I hoped it worked, for both our sakes. Because right now she looked like she wanted to put my head through that glass wall.

When John and Ava re-entered a few minutes later, I cleared my throat. “Ready to start?” I asked the air between them.

* * *

It’d been a royally shitty day.

The morning had been taken up with the deposition. Staying composed under Ava’s scathing looks took all the restraint I’d cultivated over the years.

I’d wanted to shake her. To say This is me being nice.

When that was over I’d had to fight fires on two other cases. By the time I got out of the office, it was pouring. Now I was looking forward to a beer and watching the baseball game on TV. Maybe I’d call Josh.

Or maybe not, I thought as I skirted other commuters on the way home. Knowing he was going out with Ava was one more thing in a long line of irritations under my skin.

He has every right to do it. You have zero claim on her.

But a voice wouldn’t let it go.

It was seven when the elevator carried me up to my apartment. I shook the rain off my umbrella, noticing some water from the street had gotten into my Italian shoes. Perfect.

I looked down the hall. “Ava?” She was sitting, leaning against her door, and looked like she’d been caught in a hurricane. Her hair was plastered to her head, and her skirt was wrapped around her legs like a second skin. She glanced up when she heard me approach.

I knelt in front of her, piecing together the puzzle. “You’re locked out.”

“A brilliant piece of detective work, Mr. Townsend.” She glanced back down to her lap, where I realized she was drawing. It seemed to be her preferred pastime.

“Where’s your roommate?”

“California. We gave backup keys to Lindy, but she’s not at the café and not answering.”

I noticed the puddle forming under her. “Shit, Ava. You’re soaked. You’ll freeze sitting here.” This building was notorious for over–air conditioning the hallways.

I pulled my key out and tried to tug her across the hall.

“I don’t want your help, Nate.” Ava dug in her heels—literally.

My usual patience was in short supply. “Just let me get you a towel and some clothes. It’s not worth dying of hypothermia to spite me.”

She didn’t even look up. “It might be.”

Christ. If men were from Mars and women were from Venus, Ava Cameron was from Pluto. Completely irrational.

I walked to my door, reminding myself I shouldn’t care.

It took a couple of tries to get the key in the lock because I was pissed. At myself, for contributing to her foul mood, and at her.

Finally the key turned. I glanced back before stepping inside.

Ava’s face was bent and her eyes were closed. Water stained her cheeks. Not rain. Tears.

My gut twisted. Without thinking, I crossed the hall and bent to take her under the knees and arms. Even soaking wet she was light.

“What are you doing?” Her eyes flew open and her arms grabbed my neck instinctively to keep from falling. Her limbs were cold instead of warm like they’d been the last time I was this close to her and I cursed again.

She noticed the dampness soaking into my jacket. “Nate, I’m wrecking your suit.”

“Fuck the suit.” I managed to get the door open, then deposited her carefully on the other side.

I flicked the light switch on and went to grab her a spare towel from the bedroom. When I came out, she was waiting, barefoot and tiny without her heels, at the door to the bathroom.

Ava took the towel from me wordlessly, her eyes wide and conflicted. Then she shut the door. I heard the shower turn on and forced myself toward the kitchen. Thinking about her in my apartment, in my shower, was dangerous.

“Ah, Nate?”

“Yeah,” I called.

“Did this plan of yours involve clean clothes?”

I’d forgotten. Now images of Ava, naked just a few feet away, bombarded me. I forced the thoughts aside and went to find some things from my room, wondering what might fit her. I managed to scrounge a T-shirt from high school and a pair of pajama bottoms left by my twelve-year-old cousin, who’d stayed the weekend when his parents were out of town last month.

She opened the bathroom door when I knocked, wearing just the towel. Her dark hair was damp around her shoulders. My eyes flicked down. Willpower I didn’t know I possessed brought my gaze back to hers.

Ava took the clothes from me and closed the door in my face. And I could breathe again.

Get a grip.

Ava reappeared a few minutes later in my T-shirt and the pajama pants. Her gaze roamed the room and landed on the couch.

I wondered if she was thinking about the last time we were on that couch. A different time, a different me. But I could remember it like it was yesterday.

Especially the part when I drove into her so hard I thought she’d split in half.

I cleared my throat. “Wine?” I asked, crossing to the kitchen.

“OK.”

My phone rang on the counter and I glanced at the screen. “I need to take this.” I turned my back on her. “Hello.”

“Nathan.” My father always called me that. “How are your cases?”

“Fine. Good.” It was true overall. Ava’s was up in the air, not because of her but because of the legal argument we were trying to make, but the other two were in shape. One was a corporate merger that was looking like it’d go our way. The third was a pro bono, a woman who’d gotten arrested for assaulting her husband when he’d tried to take their kids from her. Those were the cases that meant the most to me, but my father wasn’t interested in the details.

“You’re coming home. Your mother wants you here. It’s been too long.”

“I will, Dad. Soon,” I said evasively. I pulled a bottle of red wine from the rack while listening to his voice, then uncorked it and poured two glasses. “What about this weekend, in the city?”

I turned and caught Ava’s eyes on me. Holding my phone between my ear and shoulder, I carried the glasses into the living room, passing her hers before retreating back to the kitchen for at least the illusion of privacy.

“Have dinner with your mother tomorrow. Balthazar.”

“OK. Tell Mom I’ll be there. You’re coming?”

“Not tomorrow. But we have a meeting next week.”

Even though we worked in the same building, we had to make appointments to talk. Despite what others thought, I had only a slight edge at getting into his calendar over someone off the street. No edge if that person was a client.

“And bring Abigail to dinner.”

“But—” There was no point arguing, but a flag went up in the back of my mind. Ava’s comment from the gala, which I’d dismissed uneasily, resurfaced. “All right. I’ll bring Abby.”

I hung up and took a seat next to Ava, who was flipping through mockups of a charity campaign she’d picked off the coffee table. Between that and work I’d been pulling all-nighters this week.

“Family stuff,” I explained.

Ava set her empty glass down. “What’d you do this time? Miss a ribbon cutting or break a socialite’s heart?” The double-edged question reminded me of our conversation at Lindy’s.

My whole body was suddenly tired. Tired of work. Tired of my family and its politics. Tired of having to justify who I was, who I wasn’t.

I leaned forward and set my glass on the table. “I get that you’re upset. But don’t pretend you haven’t landed plenty of blows.” She tried to interrupt and I shot her a warning look. “No. The other day you made it perfectly clear what you think of me. So at least own up to it.”

Ava’s gaze filled with remorse. “I didn’t mean it, Nate. What I said at Lindy’s.”

“No?” I held my breath.

She shook her head. “I know you work hard,” she said quietly. Hearing it meant more than it should. “Today sucked.”

“I know.” I’d hated every second of that deposition.

“You hurt me.”

“I didn’t want to,” I muttered. There was vulnerability in her voice I didn’t expect. I hated that I’d made her feel betrayed.

A thought occurred to me, and I clung to it like a raft in this unfamiliar sea of feelings. “What about a truce?” I asked suddenly. “We start over. Like we don’t know each other.”

Ava watched me for a minute, assessing. “I don’t think we can start over, Nate. We can’t undo what we’ve done.” I leaned toward the table, exhaling and rubbing a hand through my hair. “But we can try a ceasefire. At least for tonight.”

My head lifted and I looked at her. I’d take anything at this point. “And no talking about the case,” I added.

“Deal.” She extended a slender hand solemnly. I shook it, ignoring the smoothness of her skin. “So if the call with your dad wasn’t about ribbon cutting and socialites, what was it about?”

I took a breath. “My father wanted me to do something for him.”

She looked thoughtful as she propped an elbow on the back of the couch and leaned into it. “Do you go along with everything your parents say?”

It sounded like genuine curiosity, not criticism. I paused with my glass halfway to my lips. “For the most part.”

“Mmm.”

What the hell does that mean? I raised an eyebrow.

“I’m trying to figure out how you can be so dependent and so hot at the same time.”

I couldn’t hold back the startled laugh her words tore from me. “What did you say?”

“I don’t have the filter most people have,” she explained, shifting at my reaction. “Sometimes I’ll say things before I even realize I’ve thought them. But that one was kind of a word bomb,” she said.

“A what?”

“A word bomb. You know, like when you’re having a normal conversation and then someone says something totally ridiculous that blows it all up. Usually me. Don’t you ever have them?”

I imagined a word bomb in Townsend Price. “No.”

“You should try it sometime.”

“Maybe I will,” I said thoughtfully. “So we need a plan for tonight. Besides exchanging word bombs.”

“You don’t have to babysit me, Nate.”

“We’re in my apartment. You’re locked out. I’m all yours whether you want me or not.”

Ava looked ready to protest when a noise like an earthquake tore through the room.

“What the— Was that your stomach?”

She winced. “Yeah. I guess we’re going to eat.”

“We can’t go out like this.” My suit had rain spots on it and she was still half a step up from pajamas.

“You’re right. Go change,” she insisted.

“How come I have to change?”

“It’s called dressing for the lowest common denominator. If you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have a lot of options at the moment.”

We were both surprised I did as she asked, coming back two minutes later in track pants and a worn gray Yale T-shirt.

“We need an umbrella. And keys,” I told her.

“Yeah, you’re so organized. Don’t rub it in,” she groaned as she slipped on flip-flops she produced from her bag and started down the hall without waiting for me to follow.