Chapter 4: Separate Doors

Lucas Gorski lived on the sixtieth floor in a glass box with four bedrooms and one pot.

I found the pot at nine that night, when I went looking for something that wasn't a hotel mint.

"You have a refrigerator full of lemon drops," I called.

"And butter.

"And one egg."

"That's a pantry," he said from the doorway.

He had taken off his jacket and rolled his sleeves to the elbow.

I hadn't known his forearms were a problem until that second.

"Sit," I said.

"I make grilled cheese.

"It's my mother's recipe."

"Is that a policy?"

"It's a threat."

He sat at the island and watched me work with an expression of deep suspicion.

My room was down the hall, with a lock he had shown me twice.

His was at the far end, behind a door he'd closed himself.

The whole apartment had the careful quiet of two people walking around a bomb.

"You've never had one?" I asked, flipping the sandwich.

"I had a nanny.

"She made things on a plate."

"A nanny."

"Until I was a teenager."

I put the sandwich in front of him, cut in triangles.

He ate it with no commentary, which was the best review I'd ever got.

Afterward he took me to his study to sign the building paperwork for my key card.

It was a dark room with a long desk and one lamp, and a leather chair that had been sat in until it remembered him.

He opened a drawer and held out a glass jar.

"Lemon drop?"

"Is there anyone in your life who hasn't been offered one?"

"No."

I took one and put it in my cheek.

The taste went through me.

"My mother used to carry these," I said.

"She was a housekeeper at the Lakeview Hotel in the Dells, and they were in her apron all summer."

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