Chapter 2
Dorian’s eyes stayed on her, steady, unreadable. “You’re not sorry. You’re tired. There’s a difference, and you’re too honest to pretend otherwise.”
Claire set the coffee pot down slowly. “That’s a bold thing to say to a stranger holding a ladle.”
“I’ve been wrong about people before. Rarely.”
“Well, congratulations on your streak.”
Something flickered at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile. He glanced again at the notice taped beside the register.
“Twenty-one days,” he said.
“That’s not your business.”
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”
She busied herself wiping down the counter, unwilling to let him see how close those words landed to something raw.
“The company trying to buy you out,” he said. “Halvorsen Holdings.”
Claire’s hand stilled on the rag. “How do you know that name?”
“Because they’ve tried to buy three other properties on this block in the last year. All small businesses. All struggling. All approached the same way — legal pressure dressed up as a generous offer.”
“You know a lot about my neighborhood for a man who just got stranded here by accident.”
“I know a lot about patterns,” Dorian said. “This one isn’t subtle.”
Petra appeared at his shoulder with a fresh pot of tea, setting it down without being asked. “He does this,” she said to Claire. “Notices things. It’s unsettling until you get used to it.”
“I don’t plan on getting used to it,” Claire said. “You’ll all be gone by morning, once the roads clear.”
“Perhaps,” Dorian said.
Toby, still stacking bowls with more enthusiasm than skill, called over from the sink. “Boss, the soup was genuinely the best thing I’ve eaten in weeks. I’m not exaggerating.”
“You’re always exaggerating,” Bull said, wringing out his cleaning rag.
“Not about food. Never about food.”
Claire found herself smiling despite everything, the strange, sudden warmth of the room at odds with the fear that had gripped her when sixteen strangers first appeared out of the storm.
“Why did you let us in?” Dorian asked quietly, once the others had drifted back into their own conversations. “You clearly knew who I might be, or at least suspected.”
Claire considered the question honestly. “Because there was a little girl inside your convoy’s headlights when the SUVs stopped. Maddie saw her through the window before I did. She said, ‘Mommy, they look cold.’ I couldn’t exactly explain to a seven-year-old why that shouldn’t matter.”
Something shifted behind Dorian’s careful composure, subtle but unmistakable.
“Your daughter,” he said. “Maddie.”
“She’s asleep in the back.”
“How old?”
“Seven. Why does that matter to you?”
Dorian didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he looked toward the back room, toward the small shape visible through the half-open door, curled beneath a winter coat.
“It matters,” he said finally, “because I think I recognize this cafe.”
