Chapter 7: Lock on Her Side

I let myself in with the key he had given me and found him standing in his kitchen with his jacket off.

I put the ledger on the island between us and opened it to the tenth page.

"Read it out loud," I said.

Samson did not look down.

"I know what it says."

"Then say it."

"If she leaves, Bancroft forfeits his half of Stockbridge MacKinnon to me." His voice stayed flat. "If she stays until midnight, I forfeit mine."

"And the ten pages before it?"

"Leaves," he said. "Every year. With my initials."

"You bet on me, Samson."

"Yes."

"For ten years you sat at my table and bet on whether I would break."

"Every line in that book is true," Samson said. "And none of it is what you think."

"Then what is it?"

"Tell me to stop and I'll tell you all of it. Tonight. Everything. The hall, the women, why I never said a word."

He took one step around the island.

"Say it, Daphne, and I'll start."

I looked at his hands.

They were big and still and had not touched me since the garage.

I looked at his mouth.

Ten years of dinners, and I had never once let myself look at it.

I was not angry the way I had been in the garage.

I was angry at the one person in this city who had never lied to my face, and I wanted him anyway.

"I don't want the story," I said.

"Daphne."

"I want you to stop talking."

I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled his mouth down onto mine.

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