Two days later, the message came.
Lunch? Before I drive back to Vermont. No entourage this time. Just you.
Abbie stared at the screen for a long while, her thumb hovering above the keyboard. Part of her wanted to say no, to protect the distance she had built so carefully after that night. But another part, the quiet one that still remembered the warmth in his voice and the curve of his smile, didn’t want to.
So she said yes.
They met at a small restaurant tucked away on a quiet street in Old Montreal. It wasn’t the kind of place Keith usually went to. No valet parking, no linen tablecloths, no champagne flutes. Just an open terrace, wrought-iron chairs, ivy climbing the brick walls, and the faint hum of jazz from an old speaker.
He was already there when she arrived, sitting by the wi
