“I told you, the merger team is still locked in the Madison Avenue conference room,” he said.

A chair scraped faintly against a hardwood floor in the background, followed by the muffled hum of a hotel hallway ice machine.

“We’re working through the tax indemnities before six tomorrow morning.”

“You said you’d be home by midnight to help with the medicine,” she said.

“Do you hear yourself, Lauren?” Cole cut in, his voice dropping into a tight, hard edge.

“I’m holding together an eighty-million-dollar deal so you can live in an Upper East Side penthouse, and you’re cross-examining me over sixty minutes.”