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Chapter 1
Chapter One: The Rooftop Reveal
The rooftop bar atop the Lydian Hotel did everything it could to distract you—twinkling string lights, potted palms, a four-piece jazz band flirting with a bossa nova rhythm. The view helped, too: Ashbourne Bay spread out in curves of glass and water, yachts blinking like distant constellations. Imogen Carlisle stood at the edge of it all with a lemon martini and the sinking feeling you get when your life’s headline writes itself.
Where is she?
Briony said she was at a “donor mixer,” which was exactly the kind of phrase Briony loved. Imogen had arrived by sheer instinct—hurt’s version of a homing pigeon. She told herself she was being ridiculous. Then she saw the back of a familiar silk blazer by the glass railing, and every thought in her mind narrowed to a point.
The blazer turned. Briony Carter’s mouth curved in that polished, camera-ready smile. And then someone else leaned into the frame, the slick cuff of a navy suit brushing Briony’s arm, and Briony’s smile deepened, the kiss quick, practiced, secretive, obvious.
Imogen forgot the martini. It tilted, sloshed, became a small, sophisticated tragedy on the patio stones.
“Easy,” said a voice at her shoulder, steady and warm. “The drinks aren’t the enemy.”
She turned. The man had the kind of face that photographs well but looks better in motion. Dark hair, sharp suit, a slight squint like his eyes were adjusting to new information. He was studying the same scene. His jaw tightened once, a muscle moving under the skin.
“Lucas Whitman,” he said after a beat, as if the name were a bitter pill he refused to swallow whole. “My ex—no, partner. Ex partner. I’m deciding.”
Imogen followed his gaze, watched Lucas’s hand skate over Briony’s waist. The strangers’ words clicked into their short, precise arrangement.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Imogen said. “That’s my girlfriend.”
“Of course it is,” the man said. He put out a hand like a detente flag. “Dante Moreau.”
“Imogen Carlisle,” she replied, shaking the hand anyway, because she was civilized and because her knees wobbled in a way she refused to show to anyone else.
They both looked back out at the nightmare. Briony and Lucas laughed into each other. A breeze lifted Briony’s hair. The jazz band slid into something sweet and old.
Imogen heard her own voice come out too calm. “I should go over there and personally redecorate that blazer with my martini.”
“Tempting,” Dante said. “But I vote for something with more staying power than citrus and regret.”
Imogen took a breath, tasted the salt of the bay on the air. “You propose we collaborate?”
He tilted his head. “Enemies in common make excellent partners, Ms. Carlisle.”
She looked at him, at the careful control in his stance and the strain around his eyes. He seemed like the kind of person who chose words like chess moves. She was the kind of person who did things first and made speeches later. They shook hands again, a truce forged under a string of lights while their hearts hammered loud enough to make the band stutter.
“Fine,” she said. “Let’s make them wish they’d taken up knitting instead.”
