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“Huh. Maybe subconsciously you wanted to call him. Hey, maybe I should try that one night. Think he’d ride out to my rescue too?” At Tess’s eye roll, Nora held up her hands in surrender. “I’m just saying! He seems like a really great guy. Good-looking, smart, charming—and let’s not forget totally into you. I don’t know why you won’t give him a fighting chance.”

Tess had given him a chance. More than one, in fact. And even though the problems she’d had with him seemed to be a thing of the past—he’d vowed time and again that they were—she was wary of becoming involved again beyond anything but friendship. Actually, she was beginning to think she might not be cut out for the whole relationship thing with anyone.

“Ben is a nice guy,” she said finally, picking up his message and stuffing it into the pocket of her khakis under her long white lab coat. “But not everyone is all that they seem.”

With Mrs. Corelli’s check topping off the day’s receipts, Tess stamped it for the bank and started preparing a deposit slip.

“You want me to run that out for you on my way home?” Nora asked.

“No. I’ll do it. Since we’re clear of appointments now, I think I’m going to call it a day.” Tess zipped the deposit slip into the leather receipts envelope. When she looked up, Nora was gaping at her. “What? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my workaholic boss?”

Tess hesitated, sudden guilt about several days’ worth of filing yet to be done making her second-guess the idea of quitting early—or rather, as it actually happened to be, on time.

“I’m kidding!” Nora said, already racing around the desk to herd Tess out into the small lobby. “Go home. Relax. Do something fun, for crissake.”

Tess nodded, so grateful to have someone like Nora in her corner. “Thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Just remember that at my next pay review.”

It took only a couple of minutes for Tess to ditch her lab coat, grab her purse, and shut down the computer in her office. She left the clinic and walked out into the afternoon sunshine, unable to recall the last time she’d been able to quit work and stroll to the T station before dark. Enjoying the sudden freedom—her every sense seeming more alive and attuned than ever before—Tess took her sweet time, making it to the bank just before they were closing and then catching the subway home to the North End.

Her apartment was a tidy but unimpressive one-bedroom, one-bath unit, close enough to the expressway that she’d learned to consider the steady hiss of flowing, high-speed traffic to be her own brand of white noise. Not even the frequent horn blasts of impatient drivers or the squeal of vehicle brakes on the streets below her place ever really bothered her.

Until now.

Tess jogged up the two flights of stairs to her apartment, her head ringing with the din of street noise. She shut herself inside and sagged against the door, dropping her purse and keys onto an antique sewing machine table that she’d bought cheap and reincarnated into a vestibule sideboard. Kicking off her brown leather loafers, Tess padded into the living room to check her voice mail and think about dinner.

She had another message here from Ben. He was going to be in the North End that evening and hoped she wouldn’t mind if he dropped by to check in on her, maybe head out to one of the neighborhood’s pubs for a beer together.

He sounded so hopeful, so harmlessly friendly, that Tess’s finger hovered over the call-back button for a long moment. She didn’t want to encourage him, and it was bad enough she’d promised to be his date for the Boston MFA’s modern-art exhibit.

Which was tomorrow night, she reminded herself again, wondering if there was any way for her to wiggle out of it. She wanted to, but she wouldn’t. Ben had bought the tickets specifically because he knew she loved sculpture, and the works of some of her favorite artists would be on display in limited engagement.

It was a very thoughtful gift, and backing out now would only hurt Ben. She would attend