“I know. It doesn’t alter the fact that he did escape.” And while it was somewhat comforting to know that, with the severity of his wounds and the fact we’d decimated his forces, he’d be incapable of any sort of revenge for a while yet, that didn’t mean it wouldn’t come.

We weren’t out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot.

I pushed away from the door. “Just the coffee and croissant?”

“Bagel, not croissant.”

“Oh, right.” I grabbed my purse from the coffee table and slung it over my shoulder as I headed downstairs. Though it was still only early morning, the light shining through the foyer’s glass was bright enough for me to spot the figure waiting for me near the exit.

Sam.

I stopped abruptly. “What are you doing here?”

He peeled away from the wall he’d been leaning against, but didn’t move toward me. “We need to talk.”

“I’m due in at your office this morning. We can talk then.”

A smile touched his lips, and though it was little more than a ghost of the ones that I’d seen so often in the past, it nevertheless affected me as strongly as ever.

“No, we can’t, because that’s business and this is about us.”

I thrust my hands deeper into my coat pocket. “There is no ‘us,’ Sam. We were over a long time ago.”

“I know.” He waved a hand toward Portside, the café just up the road and the place I’d been heading for the bagels. “Shall we take this discussion to a more comfortable location?”

“There’s no point.”

“I know, but humor me all the same. I have something that needs to be said.”

“What if I don’t want to hear it?”

“I’ll keep pestering you until you do. Ultimately, it would be simpler and easier to just listen now.”

“Fine,” I muttered, and stalked past him. The morning air was crisp, but I was too aware of the man at my back to feel it.

I selected a table away from the other patrons and sat down. He slid out the chair opposite.

“What do you want to say?” My voice was flat—almost harsh.

He didn’t immediately answer; instead, he smiled at the waitress as she appeared at our table, and he ordered a coffee. I ordered drinks and bagels for both Rory and myself.

“You have until that order gets back,” I said. “Then I’m leaving.”

“Fine.” He laced his fingers together and leaned forward. “What I attempted to say in Brooklyn—and what you obviously took the wrong way—is that I can’t have any relationship until I know, one way or another, what is going to happen to me with this virus in my blood.”

I blinked. “You were having a relationship with Rochelle, weren’t you?”