Page 93 of Falling for the Enemy

He pulled his cell from his pocket and checked his notifications.

Nothing from Jocelyn yet.

He expected her to call or text by now. After such a groundbreaking weekend, he was sure she’d reach out. Maybe he was being impatient. She was probably writing and catching up on emails. He’d give her more time, deciding she’d come around at her own pace.

Her silence didn’t rattle him. They left on excellent terms, and she expected to see him later tonight. She was likely just busy. Unlike him, having an entire staff at his beck and call, she ran her entire career herself, relying only on her agent and publicist to help her pull things together.

The woman wrote like a fiend, all hours of the day and night. The fact that he’d stolen thirty-six uninterrupted hours from her was a miracle. She was probably catching up on work or sleep.

She’d reach out eventually. Now that she had his number, she had no excuse.

“Hold my calls,” Soren said, stealing a rare few minutes for himself to enjoy his morning and ground himself as he thought over future plans.

He moved to the window.

The harbor continued its work below. Boats waited. Businesses hummed. And for once, his thoughts weren’t shielded by his father’s looming shadow. He could finally see his objectives with clear, unhindered vision.

Sipping his morning greens, Soren once again indulged in replaying moments from the weekend in his mind.

Jocelyn Collins was a force of nature, moving through the world with the certainty of a woman who needed no one’s permission or approval. She wasn’t refined or polished, which only added to her allure. She had such a raw, unmatched beauty. It was utterly rare and one of a kind.

She spoke without filter, laughed brashly, and challenged him constantly with brutal honesty most people would never dream of throwing at him. Not only did she question his decisions, she pushed back, unimpressed by his money, position, or authority. She was, without a doubt, the realest person he’d ever met.

To the casual observer, she was indestructible. A woman incapable of insecurity. But he knew better.

He held her trembling, naked body when she came apart in his arms, saw her fight to hide behind her defenses as he persistently stripped them away. He found her hidden tenderness behind her aggression. And he saw her in a way very few ever had.

She might retreat to sarcasm and deflection with others, but he was one of the few who could read the vulnerability underneath. All that noise, all that bravado and cutting wit, it guarded something fragile, something she’d spent her whole life protecting from outsiders. But now, she could rest. She could finally let down her guard and relax, trusting him to handle the rest.

He wanted to take care of her. Some scar from her past must have made her afraid to depend on others. But he’d show her she could depend on him.

This weekend, he watched her barriers crumble, saw the precise moment she realized his patience would always outlast her resistance, and then she gave in. Beautifully. Completely. Surrendering not just her body but those secret pieces of her heart she kept guarded.

She finally admitted she was his.

Even now, that awareness struck his chest like a fist closing around his heart. He was the first person she’d ever truly trusted. It went beyond sex. This weekend, he discovered the real Jocelyn, the truly unfiltered version of herself she’d fiercely tried to hide.

Soft. Vulnerable. Needy in all the right ways. Hungry for his touch. Responsive. Gorgeous. His.

Swallowing down the last drop of juice, he set the empty glass aside. Now that he had her, he could finally start envisioning a real future. Where there had been a faceless figure, there now stood the woman of his dreams. Sure, she wasn’t what he’d initially pictured, but maybe this was better.

So what if she didn’t fit the cookie-cutter wife mold? She was too damn sexy for that sort of role anyway. She was far better than any agreeable option out there. And now that he’d convinced himself this was the right move, he didn’t give a damn what anyone else might have to say on the matter.

Who would stop him anyway? His greatest critic was gone. It was time to stop trying to fill his father’s shoes and step forward in his own. Time to get out from under that oppressive shadow and allow himself to finally be happy.

Hawthorne Fishery was his responsibility now. Every decision was his. And it was damn near time he owned his authority and called the shots he knew needed to be called.

Soren returned to his desk and pulled up the Poland expansion file with three keystrokes. The system—a custom-built interface that fed real-time data from every port, vessel, and transaction across Hawthorne’s global network—loaded instantly.

The expansion proposal had been sitting in digital limbo for months, a chance to establish a direct distribution center in Warsaw that would cut shipping time to Eastern Europe by half. It required capital investment, board approval, and the kind of strategic vision that separated thriving companies from stagnant ones.

He’d drafted the preliminary analysis himself. Three hundred pages of market research, tariff projections, and infrastructure assessments. Work that should have been divided among three brothers, delegated across capable shoulders, and distributed through the family legacy.

Instead, it lived on his screen, and his alone.

The numbers were solid, the opportunity to change the game more than anything had in the last decade. The only thing holding them back was that such a decision required the entire board’s backing.

Warren Aldrich’s vote would be the deciding factor, but he wouldn’t move without assurance that the Aldrich Shipping partnership not only stayed intact, but expanded with Hawthorne Fishery.