“Forty percent isn’t one hundred, is it?”

The drop of rain falls onto the collar of his suit jacket. He looks entirely confused by what I have said, and his jaw clenches again. As if we’ve been cued, both of us turn to stare out at the street in front of us, the rain coming down impossibly faster. There’s a slice of space between us that’s charged with the strange energy crackling between us.

“This new project,” he says eventually, his voice louder to compensate for the thudding rain on the awning above us. “Will you give up your clients, if you get it?”

A gust of wind blows a mist at us, and I take a step back, watching the pavement get wetter around the toes of my shoes. I feel defensive, prickly—the walk getting off track, the umbrella censure, the way I can still feel where he touched me.

I shrug, playing at a flippancy I don’t feel. “Probably not. I like working with my hands. But there’s only one of me. This job would give me a cushion, and new opportunities. I definitely could take on fewer clients.”

“Everything you do now, it’s freelance?”

I look over and up at him, but he’s giving me his profile, his eyes still on the street. “Yes,” I answer, slowly. Suspiciously. I don’t know how much longer I can play at flippancy in the face of this.

“What if you have a lean month?”

I purse my lips. On the one hand, I don’t want to sound like a pompous jerk. On the other, Reid is being one with this question. “I pick up work easily. I’m in demand.”

He nods. “But if there were lean times,” he says. “You have an LLC, or something? Do you pay yourself a salary out of that?”

Oh my God. Whatever is worse than man-splaining, this is it. This is man-terrogating. Before, at the Promenade, his questions—they were blunt, too abrupt. But they didn’t feel this way, at least. These are vaguely accusatory and not-so-vaguely superior.

“Remember how you said you weren’t a business consultant?”

“Yes,” he says, grimly; then he goes quiet. But when there’s a long stretch of silence, the rain slowing to a steady but still serious shower, Reid clears his throat and speaks again. “What do you do for health insurance?”

“Hey, look,” I say, nodding my head across the street. My voice is still cheerful, but nothing inside of me is. “There’s the None of Your Business Store. And right beside it, the boutique called Things You Have No Right to Ask.”

I don’t look at him, but I know—I know what he’s doing. He’s looking across the street, too. He knows those aren’t real signs, but he’s looking anyway.