Chapter 41
Bea
I haven’t been able to focus since what happened in Noah’s office this morning. Every time I think about it, my skin starts buzzing, recalling his touch. When he passed my desk with Ezra earlier, their footsteps perfectly in sync, he caught my eye and winked.
I’m hurrying past the copy room when the desk phone lights up with an unknown number. I should probably ignore it and let them leave a message since my brain is still mush from our “meeting,” but some instinct makes me pause to answer.
“Hello?”
“Hi.” A woman’s voice, breathy and trembly, washes through the line. My stomach drops straight through my heels. Somehow, I know it’s not a person calling about business. “Who is this?”
“This is Beatrice,” I say, perhaps too briskly because panic makes me efficient. “Mr. King’s assistant.”
“Oh.” A shaky inhale. “Oh, I—I didn’t mean to call this time. Noah told me to never call his work. But… I just—I fell, and I can’t get up. Stupid. Bathroom rug. I’ve been sitting here a while, and Noah’s not picking up, and I don’t—” Her words wobble. “Could you… would you tell him I need a hand?”
Every molecule in me freezes, then sprints. Jealousy flares ugly and fast. A woman without a name calling him because she fell in her bathroom, and he’s the person she picks to help her.
“Where are you?” I ask, already grabbing my bag from my desk drawer.
“At my apartment.”
“Let me call you back.”
I jot down the number and hang up. Then I immediately open Noah’s contact.
My hands are a little shaky, which is stupid.
I shouldn’t care—I’m just the messenger—but the memory of his head between my legs is still on my skin, and now there’s a mystery woman calling “his work” for help, like he’s her designated knight.
I type with more force than necessary:
A woman called the office. She’s at her apartment and needs your help. Where are you?
I stare at the screen, waiting for the typing bubbles to appear, feeling fear gripping my gut. I want him to answer, but I’m scared of it at the same time.
Instead of an answer, I get “Delivered.” That’s it. I stand in the hallway with my heart pounding, not knowing where to move from here.
After a full minute of no response, I take off toward Martin’s. He’s hunched over two monitors, lips pursed. He doesn’t look up until I hover over his desk like a ghost.
“Did you need something, Beatrice?” My full name—looks like someone is still offended.
“Do you know where Noah is right now? It’s important.”
Martin blinks. “They both just left for the site. That old turtle Wilson called and said he needs an urgent adjustment, and he wants to see it now.”
“Dang it.” My brain is stuttering, trying to come up with the right way to ask if Martin knows something. The need to keep Noah’s secrets Noah’s even when a woman calls his work to help her in a bath is very annoying. Where is this loyalty coming from?
Martin leans in, lowering his voice. “Are you okay? You look a little rattled.”
“It’s fine,” I reply quickly. “Can you call Ezra?”
Martin dials his phone number. “Went straight to voicemail.”
“Great,” I mumble under my nose, then to him louder, “Tell them to call me as soon as you can reach them.”
“Will do.” Martin nods as he already starts dialing the phone again.
I put the digits into my phone and dial. “I can’t find Noah. What’s your address?”
She gives me the address of the very same building that Noah lives in. I recognize it because I’ve sent a lot of laundry service that way.
“I’m on my way,” I say as I head down the hallway.
“I’m fine, I just can’t… I can’t get off the floor by myself.”
“I’m coming,” I say, hearing how determined I sound. “Stay on the line with me if you can.”
I text Ezra with fingers that barely feel attached to my body:
911. Make Noah call me. Now.
Nothing.
Then I send another message to Noah’s phone.
Since I can’t reach you, I’m going to help her.
Giving up on the idea of reaching him at this moment, I rely on Martin to keep on task. As soon as Ezra or Noah answer, he’ll let me know.
“Are you bleeding?” I ask the woman, jogging to the elevator. “Dizzy? Did you hit your head?”
“No blood. I’m fine,” she says after a pause. “Just embarrassed. And my ankle is cross with me.”
“Okay. I’m on my way,” I say, shoving myself into a packed elevator while pushing people out and stabbing the lobby button. “If you get dizzy, you tell me, and I’m calling nine-one-one.”
“Don’t you dare,” she says primly, then laughs at herself and breaks on a tiny sob. “Sorry. I hate hospitals.”
It takes eighteen minutes, three yellow lights, and one taxi driver who is now traumatized, to make it to her building. The foyer smells like lemon oil and old money, a scent I recognize too well.
By the time I’m outside her apartment, which is not Noah’s penthouse, my heart is about to rip its way out of my ribcage. I knock. “Hello? It’s Bea. From King Developers.”
A thin voice calls from inside. “Door’s open.”
I step into a tidy, sunlit apartment, and I’m met with too many books for the shelves and fresh peonies on a table in a chipped glass pitcher.
The bathroom door is open off a narrow hallway.
She’s on the tiles with one leg kinked awkwardly and a hand braced against the side of the tub.
Her silver hair is tied in a neat bob. A fluffy blue cardigan covers her small frame.
She has that kind of delicate bone structure that would look severe if not for the soft, warm brown eyes that stop my heart.
Noah’s eyes. Smaller, feminine, but the same deep brown, the same shape. And her mouth—his mouth. My jealousy trips over itself, cracks an ankle, and dies in shame.
“Hi,” I breathe, dropping to a crouch. “I’m here.”
“You’re not my Noah,” she says, and somehow, it’s apologetic.
I bark out a laugh that sounds hysterical even to me. “I’m definitely not your Noah.” My hands hover. “May I?”
“Yes, please. I’m so embarrassed.” She rolls her eyes at herself. “I slid like a cartoon character. One shoe flew. Don’t tell anyone about the shoe.”
I catalog the scene the way I catalog a crisis meeting—no blood, no visible head bump, her ankle is puffy but not grotesque, pulse quick but steady.
“We’re gonna get you up. Ready?”
“How will you do that? You are tiny.”
“But I’m mighty. C’mon.” The old ballet training I hated when I was a kid and those three years of Krav Maga finally pay off—I shift my stance, brace, and get my shoulder under her arm. “On three. One… two… three.”
We get her up with only one small gasp from both of us.
She’s light but her dignity is heavy, and I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m carrying.
I steer her to the toilet lid for a quick break for my back, then to the hallway where a sturdy antique chair sits patiently, probably waiting decades for this exact job.
“There we go,” I breathe, easing her down. “I’m Bea by the way, Noah’s assistant.”
“Oh.” Her expression warms in a way that undoes me. “You are the one who managed to slow him down.”
I bark out a laugh. “I don’t know about that. I don’t think there’s slowing Noah King.”
“There’s not.” Her voice fills with warmth. “My boys are very strong-willed.”
Right. Boys. Ezra is her son too, but I’ve never heard Maeve even mention them having a mom. How come she never told me?
“I’m going to get ice. Don’t move.” I don’t go far—just the pretty galley kitchen, where I raid a drawer for a dish towel and fill it with ice cubes.
The apartment is quiet but not lonely. There are framed photos on a sideboard—two boys with sunburnt noses on a dock, one taller, one grinning too hard.
A younger woman holding them both like she can keep the world from touching them, and I feel envious of those boys. There’s a man absent from every frame.
A knot forms under my breastbone.
Back in the hall, I kneel and wrap the ice just snug enough. “Any dizziness?”
“Only from your shoes,” she says dryly, and I like her more. “They are loud, girl. Beatrice, was it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, Beatrice, you tell me the truth. Did I sprain it, or does it just want attention?”
“Maybe a bit of both.” I smile despite my pulse. “RICE for now—rest, ice, compression, elevate. And if it gets worse, I’m calling a car and we’re getting you checked.”
She smiles at my acronym like it’s a private joke we’re sharing.
“You’re very capable,” she says, and it’s so close to proud that something in my chest wobbles.
Keys rattle. A door bangs open hard enough to make the peonies across the room tremble. Heavy, fast steps head our way, and the temperature in the hallway drops three degrees before he even rounds the corner.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Noah fills the narrow hall like a storm front—with his jaw locked tight, eyes dark, and shoulders squared. The bruising on his face hasn’t finished fading, but his fury has no limp. His rage hits me first, then skids to his mother and softens for a single heartbeat.
“Mom.” His voice goes gentle. “You okay?”
“I fell off the rug like a cartoon character,” she says, sounding less mortified than she was when I came here. “Your assistant rescued me.”
His gaze slices back to me. “Outside. Now.”
“Excuse me?” I say, still holding the ice to his mother’s ankle. “She’s not elevated yet—”
“Outside,” he repeats in that commanding tone that has no room for negotiation.
“Noah Ezekiel King,” his mother starts sharply, “use your manners. The ones I taught you.”
I fix the towel over her ankle with careful firmness. “You’re fine for a minute,” I promise her. “Don’t put weight on it.”
Then I stand and follow him to the tiny foyer because I don’t want this poor lady to hear us, but the first words out of him ricochet down the hall anyway, letting the whole building know what he thinks.
“You don’t come here. Ever. Do you understand?”