‘Um…’ He looked down to the next flight of steps. ‘Yeah. Definitely.’

‘And my bagel?’ Her accent was Australian, he thought. It was warm and resonant, with a tremor behind it. From shock? From pain?

But she was worried about her bagel. He smiled at that, albeit weakly. If she was worried about her bagel, chances were that she wasn’t suffering injuries that were life-threatening.

‘I’d imagine your bagel is at ground level,’ he told her. ‘It’ll have turned into a lethal missile by now.’

‘Oh, great.’ She closed her eyes again and his impression of exhaustion deepened. ‘I can see the headlines. Australian drops New Yorker with jelly-loaded bagel. I’ll probably get sent to prison-for-terrorists on the first flight out of here.’

‘Hey.’ It was too much. Marcus Benson, who seldom-well, never, in fact-let himself get involved, put his hand on her cheek in a gesture of comfort. Good grief. He’d blasted her down a flight of stairs. He’d ruined her lunch. He’d hurt her-and she was trying to turn it into a joke.

‘Australian Braining New Yorker with Bagel is the least of our legal worries,’ he told her. ‘How about Corporate Idiot Shoves Australian Downstairs?’

She opened one eye and looked up at him. Cautiously. ‘You mean I can sue?’

‘For at least the cost of a bagel,’ he told her, and his words produced a smile.

It was a great smile. A killer smile. Her eyes were deeply green and they twinkled, as if it was their permanent state. Maybe she wasn’t twenty, he thought. Maybe she was older. With a smile like that… Well, a smile like that took practice.

He’d never seen a smile like it.

But he couldn’t stop and think about a woman’s smile. Or he shouldn’t. He was in a rush. The reason he’d used the fire stairs was that he was in a hurry. The lift had jammed at just the wrong time. His assistant would be waiting at street level, checking her watch. He had a deal to close.