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a schedule if you want, so we don’t have to see each other at all. Your father paid me a year’s rent in advance, so I think you should stay here. Besides, I’ve already spent the rent money on that pile of metal downstairs, so I wouldn’t be able to refund your money.”
    She wasn’t sure what to answer, whether to say she’d stay or not. Of course she shouldn’t stay, not after the way they’d met, but right now she could feel her father’s presence more strongly than she could remember this man’s touches. Maybe she shouldn’t stay here with him, but could she leave the second home her father had created? She had lost her home in Louisville with all those memories and all those ghosts, but here she could feel the beginning of new memories.
    Reluctantly, she put the photo of her mother down and started walking down the stairs, all the way to the ground floor where the kitchen was. For all that this man said he knew nothing about cooking, someone did, for the pretty, spacious, blue and white kitchen looked to be well equipped and highly usable.
    She started to ask questions, but then she looked toward the end of the kitchen across a charming little breakfast room and saw the double glass doors leading into the garden. Turning away from him, leaving the kitchen behind, she went out the doors and into the garden. As backyards go, the space wasn’t very large, but it was surrounded by an eight-foot-tall solid wooden fence, so the yard was private and secluded. Upon closer inspection, she could see that the garden was prettier than it had seemed from the fourth-floor balcony, with pink climbing roses just budding, growing over the fence. They were the old-fashioned full-blown fragrant roses that she had always loved, not the modern tight scentless roses.
    Turning, she smiled at Mike. “You have done a beautiful job.”
    â€œThank you,” he said, seeming to be truly pleased by her praise.
    As she inhaled the fragrance of the roses and thought about the rooms upstairs—her father’s rooms—she whispered, “I’ll stay.”
    â€œGood. Maybe tomorrow I could show you a few places to buy furniture. I’m sure you’ll want to change the rooms, since they’re not exactly what a female would want. My sister is an interior designer, and I can get things wholesale through her so—”
    Turning toward him, her face was stern. “Mr. Taggert, thank you so much for your offer, but I want to make myself clear from the start. I am not looking for a friend, a lover, or a tour guide. I have a job to do in this city and when it’s finished I’m leaving, and between now and then I have no desire to…start anything. Do you understand?”
    Looking at her with one eyebrow raised, he let her know he did indeed understand. “I understand perfectly. You don’t want anything to do with me. Fine. Your keys are on the kitchen countertop, one for the front door, another for the deadbolts inside your apartment. Your father wanted the locks in his apartment keyed alike so he’d have only one key to bother with.”
    â€œThank you,” she said, walking past him toward the kitchen.
    â€œSamantha,” he said as she passed him. “I have a request.”
    She didn’t turn around. “What is it?” she asked, bracing herself.
    â€œWe’re going to be seeing each other now and then in passing, especially in the kitchen, and I’d like to ask you…” His voiced lowered. “If you should come downstairs at night or early in the morning, don’t wear one of those white lacy things. You know, the kind that floats around you. Red or black is okay, I can handle red or black, and blue would be easy, but I could not deal with white lace.”
    Without a backward glance, Samantha ran into the house, grabbed the keys and ran up the stairs.

3
    O n her first night in New York, Samantha slept in a