Chapter 18: The Night After

The hotel on Park Avenue had a lift with a mirror, and I did not look at it once.

Cedric stood at the other wall with his hands at his sides.

Eleven floors passed.

"I took my name off your file this morning," he said to the doors. "I called Chester from the airport."

"What did he say?"

"He said it took me long enough."

I laughed, and it came out unsteady.

"So I'm not your client," I said.

"You never were. You were my partner's daughter, and then you were the woman I couldn't stop watching at Heathrow."

The lift opened.

He walked me down the hall with one hand barely at the small of my back.

Every inch of my spine knew where it was.

At the door of his room he stopped with the key card in his fingers.

"Lydia."

"Open it."

"I want to be sure..."

"Cedric," I said. "I walked out of a hearing today."

"I am forty-three years old, and I have wanted exactly one thing all day."

"Open the door."

He opened it.

I was against the wall inside before it finished closing.

His mouth came down on mine, and this time there was no landing, no stairwell, nobody three floors below.

He kissed me slowly and thoroughly, and he took his time.

I took his jacket off his shoulders and let it fall.

I opened his shirt button by button with fingers that would not stay steady.

He let me, breathing hard through his nose.

His chest was warm and broad and lightly furred with gray.

I put my mouth against it.

"Christ," he said.

"I've been thinking about this since the ladder."

"I've been thinking about it since your ankle." His hands went to my cardigan. "May I?"

"Yes."

He pushed it off my shoulders, then the blouse under it, and he went still when he saw me.

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