Grace Holloway had exactly four minutes to make it back to Sterling Tower, and she was eleven blocks away.

She clutched the pale pink shopping bag against her chest and ran. Her sensible flats slapped the pavement in a rhythm that matched the panic hammering in her ribs. The lunch crowd on Broadway parted around her -- a short, round bowling ball in a shapeless gray suit with a shopping bag full of lace underwear she absolutely did not need.

Three hundred and twelve dollars. She'd spent three hundred and twelve dollars on lingerie she would never wear for anyone, because there was no one to wear it for, and because she was an idiot who couldn't walk past a sale sign without losing her mind and her debit card.

She dodged a food cart, nearly clipped a woman pushing a stroller, and mumbled apologies over her shoulder without slowing down. The glasses on her face bounced with every step. Her hair, yanked into its usual severe bun that morning, was coming loose in sweaty strands around her temples.

Two blocks. She could see Sterling Tower now, that obscene needle of black glass and steel rising forty-two stories above the SoHo streetscape. The autumn sun hit its surface and threw light back at the city in sharp blades.

One block. Her lungs burned. Her thighs burned more. She hadn't run this hard since the Brooklyn Half Marathon three years ago, and she hadn't finished that either.

She hit the plaza at a dead sprint, weaving between the smokers loitering near the entrance, and threw herself at the revolving door.

The door was already moving. Someone was coming out from the other side.

Grace slammed into the glass partition at full speed. The impact knocked the shopping bag from her arms. The bag hit the chrome divider, tipped, and spilled its contents into the narrow wedge of the revolving door compartment -- directly onto the man who was trying to exit from the other side.

Time did not slow down. That was a lie people told about embarrassing moments. Time kept moving at exactly its normal speed, which meant Grace had to experience every second of what happened next in full, agonizing real-time.

An emerald green lace bralette -- the one with the scalloped edges she'd held up to the light in the fitting room and thought, yes, this is the one, this is the bralette of a woman who has her life together -- landed on the man's left shoulder. It draped there like an epaulette, one strap dangling down the lapel of what was clearly a very expensive suit.

A pair of burgundy silk underwear hit his chest and slid down to catch on his vest button.

A sheer teddy -- the splurge, the ridiculous, impractical, backless teddy she'd grabbed at the last second because it was seventy percent off and she was already in too deep to stop -- landed directly on his right shoe.

The revolving door kept turning. Grace stumbled forward into his compartment, pressed up against a wall of charcoal wool and the faint scent of something expensive. Cedar, maybe. Something clean and dark.

She looked up.

The man was tall. Absurdly tall, the kind of tall that made her five-foot-three frame feel like a footnote. Dark hair cut close, sharp jaw, cheekbones that could have been drafted by an architect. His eyes were gray -- not blue-gray or green-gray but actual gray, the color of winter sky before snow. They looked down at her with an expression she couldn't read. Not anger, exactly. Not amusement. Something colder than both.

He was wearing a three-piece suit. Not a department store three-piece suit, either. The fabric had that dull, rich sheen that meant it had been cut by someone who charged more per hour than Grace earned in a week. The vest was buttoned with small silver buttons. The tie was dark navy, knotted perfectly. Every line of him was precise and deliberate, from the French cuffs at his wrists to the polished shoes on his feet -- one of which was currently wearing her teddy like a satin ankle bracelet.

"I -- oh God -- I'm so --" Grace grabbed for the bralette on his shoulder. Her fingers brushed the wool of his lapel and she flinched back as if she'd touched a stove. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She snatched the bralette and shoved it into the bag. The burgundy underwear next -- she had to unpick it from his vest button, which required leaning close enough to see the weave of his shirt fabric through the gap in his vest. Her face was so hot she was surprised the silk didn't melt in her hands.

"Those are mine," she said stupidly, because apparently her brain had decided that what this situation needed was clarification. "Obviously. Obviously they're mine. I just -- I was shopping -- there was a sale --"

The man said nothing. He stood perfectly still while she crouched down to retrieve the teddy from his shoe. Up close, the shoes were handmade. She could see the fine stitching. She'd draped a sheer backless teddy across a pair of shoes that probably cost more than her rent.

"Sale," she repeated, as if that explained anything. She stuffed the teddy into the bag and stood up, clutching the pink shopping bag to her chest like a shield. "At -- at the place. The lingerie place. In SoHo. They were having a --" She forced herself to stop talking. "I'm sorry."

The man looked at her for one more second. His gray eyes moved from her face to the shopping bag to the strand of hair plastered to her sweaty forehead, and something shifted in his expression -- a micro-movement at the corner of his mouth that could have been contempt or could have been nothing at all.

Then he stepped around her and walked out through the revolving door without a word.

Grace stood in the door compartment, breathing hard, her face burning, the shopping bag crushed against her chest. Through the glass, she watched him cross the plaza toward a black car idling at the curb. A driver in a dark suit opened the rear door for him. He got in without looking back.

She became aware that the revolving door was still turning, pushing gently against her back. She stumbled forward into the lobby, nearly tripping on the marble threshold.

The lobby of Sterling Tower was all polished stone and cold light. A security guard at the desk looked up at her with the weary expression of a man who had seen a thousand people run through his lobby and been impressed by none of them.

Grace walked to the elevator bank on legs that felt like they were made of wet rope. She pressed the call button and stared at her reflection in the brushed steel doors.

Gray suit, boxy and shapeless. Thick-framed glasses slightly crooked on her face. Hair escaping its bun in frizzy tendrils. Cheeks still flushed red. Pink shopping bag dangling from one hand.

She looked exactly like what she was: a junior assistant in the financial analysis department who had spent her lunch break buying underwear she couldn't afford and was now four minutes late getting back to her desk.