It took me a second, but I finally recognized her as the girl who’d worked the entrance my last time here. “Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for Evan.”

“Again?”

“Excuse me?”

She shrugged. “He’s in a meeting right now,” the girl said, and I silently cheered. At least he was somewhere on the premises.

“I’ll just wait at the bar.” I took a step in that direction, and the girl fell in beside me.

“Um, is that okay?”

Instead of answering, she looked me up and down. “So you’re the flavor of the month.”

I blinked at her. “Excuse me?”

“It’s just that he fucks a lot of women. None of us, of course. Rules and all that shit. But he brings them here. Gets them all hot, you know?”

I didn’t say a word.

“Anyway, the point is it never lasts. I mean, I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know, am I? He was up front, right? About the fact that you’re just a temporary thing.”

I swear there were giant rocks just sitting in my stomach. “Is there some reason we’re having this conversation?” It was surreal. I was sitting at a barstool talking about sleeping with Evan to a woman whose breasts were only inches from my face. What the fuck was wrong with that picture?

She shrugged. “Consider me a walking, talking public service announcement. Because if he didn’t tell you, then you should know. Because there’s only one woman for Evan. He may burn through a dozen pussies, but in the end, she’s the one he goes back to, every goddamn time. I mean, hell, he’s even got her tattooed on his arm.”

“He’s got—wait. What?”

“Ivy,” the blonde said. “That tattoo on his arm. It’s for his girl. What? You didn’t know?”

“I knew,” I said, sliding off the stool. “And I know that I need to go talk to him now.”

She didn’t try to stop me as I went through the same door that Evan had taken me through the last time I was here. I remembered seeing offices back there, and since I didn’t have a better idea, I assumed that he was in one of them.

I pushed through, found no one on the other side to stop me, and kept on going.

Ivy. What the hell? I thought of the tattoo on his arm. I’d even asked him about it, and he hadn’t told me that it referred to a woman.

Shit.

And did that mean that Evan was lying to me—or was the blond bitch the liar?

I knew the answer I wanted. I even knew the answer I believed.

I just wasn’t sure if what I believed was true.

I heard voices from behind the closed conference room door, and I paused, my head cocked as I tried to discern if Evan’s voice was among them.

Then the door jerked open—Evan was right there—and I jumped so high I almost bumped my head on the ceiling.

“Lina?”

“Holy fucking crap, Evan,” I shouted, more because I was embarrassed at getting caught than because I was actually scared.

Behind him, I saw Tyler and Cole at a conference table that was covered with blueprints and technical drawings and all sorts of sketches.

They all three looked frazzled. And none of them looked happy to see me.

“What are you doing here?” Evan said.

I swallowed, feeling like I’d been tossed into the middle of the school play, but no one had told me my lines. This wasn’t the way I’d imagined this. In the story in my head, I’d gone to him, confessed that he was right, and then folded myself into his arms.

Now I wondered if he’d even missed me at all.

Now I wondered about Ivy.

“I made a mistake,” I said, forcing the word out past the tears in my throat. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”

I caught a flash of worry in his eyes, but I didn’t have time to think about it. I turned and ran toward the back door, then pushed through it and out into the bright afternoon sun.

Immediately, I knew I’d screwed up. The building was huge, and if I was going to get to the street, I had to go all the way around it. “Shit,” I snapped, even though I was the only one to hear it. I dug into my purse for my phone as I started to circle the building. I’d call a taxi. I’d call Peterson. I’d do something to get the fuck out of there, because I couldn’t stay. But I also couldn’t really move, because the tears had started to flow, and the world was blurry, and all I wanted to do was sit down on the asphalt and cry until everything stopped hurting.

“Baby.”

Evan’s arms went around me, strong and firm, and though I wanted to shake them off, I let him hold me as I made my way down to the curb where the sidewalk met the parking lot.

“Sweetheart, what are you doing here?”

I pulled away from him, but then I had to hug myself, because as soon as his arms were no longer around me, I felt lost again.

“Lina? Jesus, Angie, talk to me. You’re starting to scare me.”

I sucked in a deep, stuttering breath, pushed my hair off my face, and turned to face him. “Who is she?” I demanded, forcing my voice to stay steady. “Who is Ivy?”

His eyes widened, and he said very slowly and very carefully—as if I was a bomb that might go off at any moment—“Why do you want to know?”

I told myself I wasn’t going to scream. That I was going to be rational. That I trusted him and I wasn’t going to be one of those women who flew off the handle in a fit of jealous rage.

I told myself that, but I was having one hell of a hard time implementing it.

I reached out and touched his arm. It was hidden by his shirt sleeve, but I almost felt as if I could feel the tattoo burning into me. “I need to know that you weren’t just playing me, Evan. I mean—I guess if you were then it was my own damn fault. I’m the one who said I wanted this to be temporary, right? I’m the one who said three weeks.”

I pushed up off the curb and turned to look at him. I felt the tears trickle down my face, but I wasn’t sobbing anymore. I was a wreck, but at least I was a wreck with some semblance of control.

“But then you asked if I was staying, and I guess I thought—I mean, maybe I hoped—”

“What?” he asked.

It was just one word, but he said it with such soft hope that it gave me courage.

“I came here because you’re right. Because I’m not being true to myself. I want art, not politics. Beauty, not bills and bartering. And so I came here to tell you that. Because, because—” I shook my head, not yet ready to put everything into words. “But maybe I presumed too much. Because I didn’t know about her. I didn’t know about—”

“Ivy,” he said, and I had to close my eyes to block the pain of that one simple word.

His hands closed over my shoulders. “Look at me,” he said.

I hesitated, then slowly opened my eyes. I saw warmth in his face. Warmth and desire and what looked remarkably like happiness. I think I may have even seen love.

And then, without warning or pretense, he leaned in and kissed me so gently it almost made me cry again.

“Come on,” he said after he pulled away. He twined his fingers in mine and started to walk toward his car.

“Where are we going?”

“I have a few things to tell you,” he said. “I think we’ll start with Ivy.”

The car ride was quiet, primarily because Evan wasn’t saying a damn thing and neither was I. He seemed content to wait. I was afraid to break the silence in case I was wrong and it hadn’t been happiness I’d seen in his eyes. And if he was taking me to meet the girlfriend he had secreted away in a tower, then I didn’t want to know about it until the last possible second.

Mostly, though, I was willing to just surrender. I’d worked myself into a frenzy over something I was beginning to believe was a misunderstanding. And I’d twisted my own life and future around because of guilt and fear. I needed to learn to step back—and Evan was the only one I trusted.

I hoped like hell I wasn’t wrong.

But when we reached Evanston, I couldn’t stand it any longer. “How much farther?”

“Five minutes.”

I swallowed, then nodded. “Okay,” I said, and was irritated by the way my voice broke. I glanced sideways at him. “Don’t break my heart.”