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their heads.
    As I reentered the lobby, my iPhone vibrated in my pocket.
    The screen showed Violet’s number.
    “Where are you?” I asked.
    “Waiting,” she said, and I detected that same playfulness in her tone as before. “You called.”
    “Where?” I surveyed the lobby – it really was not all that complicated; there were less than two places to hide here – and I couldn’t find her in any of them.
    “Upstairs, Carter. In your loft.”
    “Bullshit.” I shook my head and hit the call button for the elevator, but when the doors didn’t open immediately, I opted for the stairs instead. At the third floor, I raced down the hall and, once I reached my unit’s door, I wondered if she really had let herself inside.
    I wanted to believe she had, wanted to believe in the kind of magic she practiced. Reaching out, I turned the knob.
    Locked.
    “Is that you?” she asked.
    Before I could reach for my keys, the door flung open and Violet leaned against the frame, holding her phone and wearing the biggest smile I had ever seen on a grown woman’s lips.
    My own phone nearly slipped out of my grip. Even though I had seen those same hazel eyes a few seconds ago, the sight and closeness of her made me weak, just like it had earlier today at the trendy conference center and restaurant.
    “Forget common sense,” she said. “I’m a magician and you better not forget that, Carter Borden.”
    “How…?” I stepped into my loft, and she carefully closed the door behind me. I noticed my keys on the table and realized she must have lifted them out of my pocket, probably when she shoved me through the door from the parking garage to the lobby. That had been the distraction, why I hadn’t noticed. And at some point while I rode the elevator down to the lobby to chase after her, she had hurried back up to the third floor through the stairwell, completely undetected, and then let herself in. Yes, that made sense why those men smoking outside the building’s lobby hadn’t seen her.
    Maybe not magic, but definitely genius. I smiled at her cleverness and stepped toward her, but she turned and walked deeper into the loft, to the living room.
    “So what about you?” she asked, dropping onto the leather sofa and crossing one long leg over the other. “If I’m a magician, then what are you?”
    I rubbed my face, pulling my hands down my cheeks. She spoke so quickly, I could barely keep up. “Investments,” I said. “I work for an investment firm.”
    That piqued her interest and she sat straighter, as if interested all of a sudden. Patting the space on the sofa next to her, she said, “That doesn’t sound very interesting, but I want to hear all about it!”
     
     
     
    Violet was right, working at a small, private investment firm had the same sex appeal as shopping for a minivan. But that hadn’t stopped us from cracking open a bottle of Northern Michigan Riesling and finishing it off between the two of us. At one point, either her stomach or mine rumbled, so I ordered Chinese from a place called Dynasty Chinese Food. Neither of us could drive after the wine, but that didn’t matter; Violet said her driver would fetch it.
    “I hope the food’s good,” she said, narrowing her eyes into threatening slits.
    I slid off the sofa and walked to the balcony doors. “I hope so, too,” I mumbled, staring past the building across the street, across the freeway and the MGM Grand’s parking garage. Dynasty was mostly good, but like any popular restaurant, it could be hit and miss at times.
    I hadn’t expected Violet to sneak up behind me, but she had. I sensed her hand on my lower back, just faintly and while I considered myself one of those tense individuals who punched calculator keys instead of pumping weights, it surprised me that I didn’t jump at her stealthy arrival.
    “Actually, I don’t really care how great it is,” she admitted, her voice low.
    I turned around and noticed, for the first time, just how short she