The List Read Free Page B

penny to drop. When it did, the emotion that drifted through her was so unfamiliar it took a moment to identify it as disappointment. He’d not come out to get to know her, but rather to get on Lady Matilda’s list.
    She provided a quiet, discreet function for people she knew, friends of friends: an introductions service. Despite the presence of a global communications infrastructure in every cell phone, people still longed for and yet were increasingly unprepared for face-to-face connections. The human brain still responded to things like eye contact, a smile, a stance, a laugh. If you wanted to meet a specific kind of person, one with similar tastes and interests, she would help connect you. Sometimes people wanted to meet someone to discuss the classics, in Latin. Sometimes the desires were more elaborate, more secretive, more sexual. She didn’t filter, didn’t judge, and more important, she didn’t advertise. The service was for friends, and friends of friends, intimate, discreet, exclusive, and effective. Couture stationery was her labor of love, but connecting people with unusual desires was her passion, her specialty. Given enough time, she managed to match most people who ended up on her list.
    Finding a place on her list wasn’t without work, however. You must own what you wanted and lacked, write it down in your own hand, on paper, and put it in the mail. There was no immediate gratification of email, or worse, a text; no Dutch courage, only clear-eyed desire faced willingly. She set aside her disappointment and considered him. He certainly didn’t lack courage, and his eyes were confident, unclouded.
    Whatever he wanted, whatever he’d ask for, she had no doubt she had a name on her list for him. “There’s a process—” She cocked her head. “I don’t know your name.”
    “Daniel.”
    “Daniel, there’s a process. I give you a card with a post-office box address on it. When you’re ready, you mail me a handwritten letter explaining what you want. I do my best to match you with an individual with like needs. Sometimes a need cannot be met. Sometimes writing out what you long for is enough to satisfy the longing. The process can take hours, or months, but I will succeed. Would you like my card?”
    “Yes,” he said. No hesitation, no doubt. “Now can we get off this ledge?”
    The thrill she’d felt only minutes before was gone, or perhaps had changed, gotten wrapped up in Daniel’s voice, the heat steaming from his body to hers. “Yes,” she said, and ruthlessly stamped down the lingering edge of disappointment. The people on her list belonged to each other. She didn’t poach from them.
    In seconds his feet were back on the terra firma of the rooftop garden. Then he extended his hand to her. She pulled her feet under her hips and stood, leaning back to counterbalance over the very precipice.
    His grip around her waist was like iron, like he’d hooked her out of the sky, and for a long moment the length of her body pressed against his. The velvet lapels under her hands felt as delicious as she’d anticipated. His fingers flexed against her waist, and he exhaled slowly, releasing the tension only when she was safe. She walked over to her purse, resting on Louise’s cafe table, pulled a card from the pocket, and offered it to him. He took it, skimmed the words, turned it over, and then slid it into his back pocket.
    “Thanks.”
    “Don’t thank me yet. I haven’t done anything for you.” But she would. She was good at it, a small victory won each time two like-minded people found a soul mate in the electronic chaos of the twenty-first century.
    He tipped his head toward the ledge. “I was thanking you for the most exciting thing I’ve done in weeks.”
    “I find that hard to believe. You’re a police officer.”
    “Believe it,” he said, and flashed her a smile. “I work white-collar crime with the FBI.”
    Somehow knowing that made it easier to ignore the disappointment. Her