Page 48 of His Vow

Hugh stepped into the corridor behind him. His gaze swept the floor. Found me through the glass. The warmth returned. Seamless. Instant. The machinery covered over like snow falling on a grave.

"Nolan." He opened my door. "Walk with me."

We walked. The corridor was empty. His stride was unhurried, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Harrison," he said, shaking his head. "The boy doesn't understand loyalty. I gave him the Pemberton account. Gave him latitude. And he takes a meeting with a competitor without telling me." He glanced at me. "What would you do?"

"Sometimes people need to understand the standard."

The words tasted like metal on my tongue.

Hugh nodded. "Exactly. That's what I like about you, Nolan. You understand how things work."

A door opened at the end of the corridor. Rhys appeared. His hair was pushed back, his jaw freshly shaved, the surface polished to a shine that made the darkness underneath more visible, not less. His eyes were wrong. Red-rimmed. Glassy in a way that could have been exhaustion or could have been the scotch I could smell from 6 ft away.

He saw me and stopped.

The reaction moved across his face in layers — recognition first, then a discomfort that lived below the social reflexes.

The last time we'd spoken was the birthday dinner. The toast. You don't know what's in this house. His eyes held that same unsteady quality now, the look of a man standing on a floor he no longer trusted.

"Reeves." He extended his hand. The grip was looser than the dinner. His smile didn't hold — it arrived, flickered, and died before it reached his eyes. "Working late?"

"Portfolio review."

"Ah." He looked at Hugh. Looked at me. His jaw worked. "Well. Don't let the old man keep you too long." The laugh was wrong. Thin. A performance staged for an audience of two. He clapped my shoulder and walked away.

Hugh watched him go. His hand found Rhys's shoulder as he passed — a touch that lasted exactly one second, the pressure ambiguous. Steadying or warning. Impossible to tell.

"He's been burning the candle," Hugh said. "The Meridian acquisition. I worry about him."

He turned back to me. The warm father. The concerned patriarch. The man who had just dismantled a junior executive without raising his voice and was now performing worry for the son he'd trained to carry secrets.

"Goodnight, Nolan. Don't work too hard."

I went to her because the day had cracked something open, and she was the only place it didn't bleed.

She opened the door in a loose silk top the color of champagne, her curls down, her feet bare on the hardwood. The fabric draped across her collarbones, the neckline wide enough to show the line of her throat and the hollow beneath it. She looked at my face, read whatever was written there, and didn't ask.

"Come in," she said.

She made coffee.

It was terrible — too much water, the grounds floating on the surface like sediment in a river. She handed me the mug. I took a sip and kept my expression flat.

She put on music — low and acoustic — and moved through her apartment barefoot, straightening a stack of books, watering the rosemary, pulling a blanket from the back of the couch, and folding it for no reason.

I watched her from the kitchen. My shoulder against the doorframe. The mug in my hand. She moved, touching things, adjusting, and making the space around her more alive by existing in it. The watching wasn't strategic.

She passed me on her way to the sink. I caught her waist. She stopped. My fingers pressed into the curve above her hip, the silk warm beneath my palm. She leaned back against the counter, and she was rewriting it with her body in the space.

My mouth found her neck. She tilted her head back. My lips traced the line of her throat, the spot where her pulse jumped, the hollow between her collarbones where the champagne silk parted. Her hands came up to my chest and worked the buttons of my shirt. One by one. Slow. Her fingers brushing skin with each one she freed.

The coffee went cold on the counter. The music played to an empty kitchen because we weren't in it anymore.

Her bedroom. The paintings turned against the walls, the afternoon light replaced by the amber glow of a lamp she'd left on. She pulled me down onto her bed and I went — willingly, gratefully, the weight of the day falling away with each layer of clothing she removed. My shirt. Her silk top, pulled over her head, her curls falling across her bare shoulders. My belt. Her hands on my waist, my stomach, the muscles clenching under her touch.

I needed this. Not strategically. Desperately. After Hugh's voice through the wall, after the junior executive's pale face, after "sometimes people need to understand the standard" and the metal taste it left on my tongue — I needed her hands on me and her mouth on mine.