The next day, Maeve opted for the stairs when she saw Jane in the elevator, and Jane’s annoyance bubbled over. There was no reason for this sort of cloak-and-dagger nonsense. No matter who her future in-laws were, Jane hadn’t done anything to merit being treated like a pariah. She devised a plan on the way home from work, and vowed to get to the office extra-early the next day.

“Extra-early,” unfortunately, only turned out to be 8:45. Even having sacrificed her peace of mind by accepting a ride from the creepy (but undeniably efficient) Yuri, her multiple stops before work hadn’t left her nearly as much of a time cushion as she would have liked. Nonetheless, she scurried into the office, dumped her Burberry-plaid wool coat unceremoniously on her desk, and made a beeline for the fourth-floor hallway where she’d (literally) run into Maeve on Monday.

It took less than a minute to find the door with M. MONTAGUE printed on its label, and luckily the office was still empty. Jane tiptoed inside. The room was nearly identical to hers, although Jane’s view was much grander than Maeve’s look into the office building next door. Ah, the perks that come with connections, Jane thought with a twinge of bitterness. She’d trade her view for a friend in a heartbeat . . . but she wouldn’t give up Malcolm for anything.

She arranged the venti caramel macchiato she’d bought on the way in, along with a size-zero ivory sweater she’d picked up from Intermix the night before. She propped a note up against the steaming latte: “Monday was all my fault, but I can’t seem to run into you since! Let me know what to do re: photocopying. —J.”

There, she told herself when she was satisfied that the items looked just friendly enough, and tiptoed back out. She had waffled for a while about the last line of the note and, in fact, had a second version in her pocket that left it off entirely. The stack of papers that her coffee had ruined had been considerable, and there was no doubt in Jane’s mind that a sincere effort to replace them was a necessary part of her peace offering. It was deeply unlucky, though, that the decent thing in this case involved the prolonged use of an electronic machine.

Jane heard the rumble of the elevator doors sliding open around the corner and her body sprang into action, launching her across the hallway toward the stairwell door. Worse comes to worst, I drop the papers off at Kinko’s or something. She rushed up the stairs as if someone were chasing her, and arrived in her office breathless, flushed, and feeling more than a little silly.

Time to calm down, Special Agent Boyle.

She pulled her to-do list for the Dorans’ party out of the desk drawer and looked for something mindless that might kill a few hours. Fortunately, all sorts of samples—from swizzle sticks to candles to Venetian half-masks—had come flooding in from potential vendors, and mixing and matching them into appealing combinations was just the sort of activity she was looking for.

Shortly past noon, a familiar set of springy curls appeared shyly around Jane’s door. They were followed swiftly by a white paper bag—larger than Monday’s—which Maeve waved like a flag of truce. “Cream of wild mushroom or Italian wedding?” she asked cautiously, a delicious garlicky smell wafting into the office.

“Mushrooms, please! This right here is a wedding-free zone.” Jane grinned, and Maeve eased herself into the chair on the far side of the desk.

“Seriously?” she inquired, hazel eyes dancing. “I thought every New Yorker our age has been planning her wedding to Malcolm Doran since the tender age of four.”

Jane snorted, fishing around in the bag until she found a plastic spoon. “That would have been a waste of time,” she retorted. “His mother has the whole thing planned out already, down to the brand of water they’ll serve. Acqua Panna, of course.”

The soup was deliciously rich and the container was huge. Jane wondered how Maeve stayed so incredibly tiny on a diet like this. The three-quarter-sleeve top she was wearing today revealed wrists so fragile-looking that Jane thought they might snap under the weight of her spoon. But there was nothing fragile about her eyes, which remained thoughtful and speculative even behind her cheerful grin.

“They can’t make it too easy to ride off into the sunset with the world’s most eligible bachelor, can they?”

Jane sensed a challenge underlying the casual tone, but all she could do was shrug wryly. “I’m not stupid; I could tell he was a catch. But I grew up in France and had never even heard of the Dorans until I met him. How the hell was I supposed to know that everyone here acts like they’re royalty?”

Maeve pitched forward in her chair, clearly stunned. “You really didn’t know about them? You’re not from one of the—” She looked confused to the point of incoherence, and bit her lip hard before apparently deciding how to proceed. “Your families don’t know each other?”

Jane frowned, twisting a purple swizzle stick between her fingers. Maeve looked floored by the idea that Malcolm might have chosen someone the Dorans hadn’t prescreened. Were subtly arranged marriages a thing in Manhattan society? If so, she should cut Lynne a lot of slack from now on. She might be overbearing and controlling, but at least she hadn’t told Malcolm whom to marry.

“Total strangers,” Jane confirmed, shrugging. She considered adding that even though she’d only met Malcolm a short time ago, it felt like they’d known each other forever, but decided it would sound cheesy. Maeve was just barely warming up to her—no need to scare her away so soon.

“Huh.” The tiny redhead slid the plastic spoon back into her soup, pushing meatballs around in the broth. “We go way back with them,” she said thoughtfully. “They have a history of marrying within a certain circle.”

A sobering thought occurred to Jane: had Maeve been interested in Malcolm? She clearly expected him to marry someone more familiar . . . perhaps someone such as herself? “I hope I didn’t disappoint anyone in that circle too much,” she said carefully.

To her relief, Maeve didn’t seem to register her implication in the slightest. “I bet you did,” she replied carelessly, “not to mention every social climber in the city who wants to break into it.” She shrugged, shaking her shoulders restlessly as if she were chasing tension off. “Look, it’s none of my business, but watch your back with that family. You don’t want it to be your closet they’re hiding the bodies in. Or for it to be your body they’re looking to hide.” She smiled, but her eyes stayed serious.

“Oh, they’re not so bad,” Jane said, feeling a twinge of guilt at having complained about Lynne, which was something she had really been trying not to do. Besides, the way that Maeve kept saying “they” made it seem like she was including Malcolm in her assessment of the lot, which didn’t seem fair at all. Even Lynne, for all her faults, didn’t really rate the title of “sinister body-hider.” Maeve had probably just spent too much time gossiping with salesgirls at Barneys. She’ll come around if she gets to know how Malcolm is with me. No one could ask for a kinder, more loyal man.

She ate another spoonful of soup and listened as Maeve moved the conversation to the MoMA, giving her the lowdown on everyone from the security guard to the tour guide who was convinced that he was Leonardo da Vinci reincarnated. “He seriously wanted to sue Dan Brown!” Maeve exclaimed.

Jane laughed as Maeve did the security guard’s impression of the Vitruvian Man, feeling warm and full from the soup—and from the realization that she had just made her first friend in New York.