“Lily.” Martin stroked my face. “Anything she ever did, I told you about it. I feel sorry for her, because she’s your sister, but I wouldn’t stand in the same room with her otherwise.”

“You’ve called her. The police showed me the phone records from the apartment. You were calling her almost every day last March.”

“Is this a joke?” asked Martin. “Last March, when I went to London, Prague, and Istanbul, then attended the Maastricht Art Fair, and then spent a week in Madrid trying to convince you to come home? I wasn’t in New York for more than four days last March.”

He was right. I’d been so upset I wasn’t thinking straight. The police had to be mistaken, even if I didn’t understand how. “Then why are you so determined to find Claudia?” I was trying not to sniffle, and failing.

“I would do anything to lure you back. Don’t you have any idea how I feel about you?”

I was in danger of getting caught up in a tidal wave of old emotions, and it terrified me. “I think you lied to me about her phone call.”

Martin froze for a second. “Lied?”

“There was more said than you told me.”

“Lily.” He pulled me so close that I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face. “I didn’t tell you everything she said, but only because I didn’t see the point.”

“What did Claudia say?”

Martin sighed. “She said she’d always been attracted to me and…”

“What?”

“She said she could do things in bed that you wouldn’t even be able to imagine doing.”

Claudia, that little rodent. When I found her, I was going to wring her rotten little neck. “What else?” I asked.

“Please don’t make me repeat it all. It would make me blush.” He pulled me closer. “Tell me you miss me. You’re in my mind all day and night.” He kissed me, gently at first, then hard and demanding. I put my arms around his neck and he backed me against the desk, pulling up my pencil skirt so that I could wrap my legs around his waist. When someone knocked on the door, we ignored it, and they eventually went away.

CHAPTER 25

“You have to come with me tonight,” Martin murmured when it started to get dark outside. “There’s a business dinner in Boston. I can’t believe I have to go, but I do.” He was nuzzling my forehead and holding me close. One thing I’d always found endearing about Martin was that he never wanted to roll over and sleep after sex; he longed to talk and kiss and stay entangled, as if he’d forgotten where he ended and I began.