“Yes. He wants to marry me.” She shook her head. “I got two proposals in the same night. One from Mikhail, and one from Channing Warfield.”

“Lord, Sydney, not Channing. He’s not your type.”

She shoved the coffee aside to lean closer. “Why?”

“In the first place he’s nearly humorless. He’d bore you mindless. The only thing he knows about Daddy’s business is how to take clients to lunch. And his only true love is his tailor.”

She really smiled. “I’ve missed you, Peter.”

He took her hand again. “What about your big, bold artist?”

“He doesn’t have a tailor, or take clients to lunch. And he makes me laugh. Peter, I couldn’t bear to marry him and have it fall apart on me again.”

“I can’t tell you if it’s right. And if I were you, I wouldn’t listen to anyone’s good-intentioned advice this time around.”

“But you’ll give me some anyway?”

“But I’ll give you some anyway,” he agreed, and felt years drop away. “Don’t judge whatever you have with him by the mess we made. Just ask yourself a couple of questions. Does he make you happy? Do you trust him? How do you imagine your life with him? How do you imagine it without him?”

“And when I have the answers?”

“You’ll know what to do.” He kissed the hand joined with his. “I love you, Sydney.”

“I love you, too.”

Answer the questions, she thought as she pushed the elevator button in Mikhail’s lobby. It was twenty-four hours since Peter had listed them, but she hadn’t allowed herself to think of them. Hadn’t had to, she corrected as she stepped inside the car. She already knew the answers.

Did he make her happy? Yes, wildly happy.

Did she trust him? Without reservation.

Her life with him? A roller coaster of emotions, demands, arguments, laughter, frustration.

Without him? Blank.

She simply couldn’t imagine it. She would have her work, her routine, her ambitions. No, she’d never be without a purpose again. But without him, it would all be straight lines.

So she knew what to do. If it wasn’t too late.

There was the scent of drywall dust in the hallway when she stepped out of the elevator. She glanced up to see the ceiling had been replaced, the seams taped, mudded and sanded. All that was left to be done here was the paint and trim.

He did good work, she thought, as she ran her hand along the wall. In a short amount of time, he’d taken a sad old building and turned it into something solid and good. There was still work ahead, weeks before the last nail would be hammered. But what he fixed would last.

Pressing a hand to her stomach, she knocked on his door. And hoped.