The air was cold and smelled like wet pavement, taxi exhaust, and the faint mineral scent that rises from stone after a storm. Somewhere farther down the block, a siren pulsed and faded. Maya stood very still while a valet ran for the car.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.
Taylor looked at her. Rain had dotted his hairline. “Why?”
“Because now they’ll talk more.”
“Let them.”
“You made a scene.”
“Yes.”
“That kind of thing matters to you.”
He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Apparently not as much as I thought.”
Maya searched his face. In the hotel he had looked furious. Out here, under the softened streetlight and the shine of rainwater on black asphalt, he looked something stranger than angry. Off balance, maybe. Or wounded in a place pride usually covered too quickly to see.
She said, more quietly, “You didn’t have to claim me like that.”
