It was that way with Teresa, his lawyer, and Gav the contractor. Hell, even the exterminator was friendly with Soren.

“Is he home?” I asked, glancing past Walter into the sleek, modern lobby.

“He is, miss. And I’m sure he’d be happy to see you.” The finally was silent.

“Okay,” I said, more to myself than him.

But Walter was quick to whip open the door before I got any ideas about walking off.

“Miss Amato?” Walter called, rushing in behind me.

“Yeah?”

“You’ll need the elevator key,” he said, going behind the desk to rummage around for it. “Here it is,” he said, proudly waving a drop key—a long, cylinder to insert into a hole in the elevator to unlock it—attached to some sort of keychain. “It’s that elevator right there,” Walter said, pointing toward where one was half-hidden by a wall.

“Thanks, Walter,” I said, taking the key and walking toward the elevator before I talked myself out of it. And likely broke poor Walter’s heart.

I stabbed the key in the lock and then stepped inside the elevator car. It was smaller than a typical elevator, feeling a little claustrophobic once the doors slid closed.

That was really the only reason I turned my attention to the key itself—so I didn’t start to feel like the walls were closing in on me.

The key itself was standard.

But the keychain he’d attached to it?

It was a cute, chubby little… cartoon pigeon.

He not only told his doorman about me, reminded him of me daily, and left a key for me to access his private elevator. He’d gone out—or gone online—and tracked down a pigeon keychain because I’d mentioned them. Once.

There it was again, that little swoop in my chest.

Before I could even try to analyze it, though, the car was doing that little drop, and the doors were sliding open.

Right into Soren’s apartment.

I’d spent zero time thinking about where he lived. Like I’d told him, I wasn’t good at visualizing out of thin air, without at least some chunk of text to fill in the blanks in my mind.

But even if I had thought about it, I was pretty sure no image I could conjure up would come close to the reality.

The man had a two-floor penthouse apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows, warm wood floors, oversized gray furniture, walls made of some sort of creamy brown tile with black accents—the floating stairs, the mantle, the ceilings—and lots of pendant lights and uplighting in soft, warm white.

The place practically glowed. Like there were candles hidden all around.

It was sexy and romantic and very, very, expensive.

I suddenly felt incredibly out of place.

I mean, I’d known Soren was rich. Crazy rich, even. But knowing that and seeing it were completely different things.