"Daniele brought her," he says. "I don't know how she found out we were here."
The evening is quiet around us. Below the hill, the water moves against the dock, indifferent and constant.
I understand him a half second before I see her.
"Tomas," I start.
"I told her tomorrow," he says. "The bay accommodation, talk in the morning. She agreed."
I look at the figure coming up the shell path behind him and understand immediately and completely that she agreed to nothing. She said what was necessary to get Tomas moving up the hill ahead of her, and now she is twenty meters away and closing, her dark eyes already on the house, reading it, calculating it, the way she always calculated everything before deciding what to do about it.
Chiara.
I step down off the step.
Surprise, surprise. She said one thing and did another. Some things never change.
"Chiara," I say.
She stops on the path, and I recognize the expression immediately. Rome, five years ago, the night she stood in a hotel corridor and told us she'd found another pack. A better one. One that could give her the kind of attention three men running a business empire apparently couldn't. Not quite defiance. Not quite apology. Sitting in the uncomfortable territory between thetwo, which is where Chiara has always done her most significant damage.
She's dressed for travel, bag over one shoulder, hair down, and she looks tired in the way of someone who has been running on a decision for so long that the decision itself is the only thing still keeping them upright.
"Matteo," she says. "I want to make it work."
"We'll talk tomorrow," I say.
"No." She steps around me. "I'm not happy that I'm in the guest house while you have some omega in there."
"Chiara." My voice drops. "You have been gone for five years."
She's already at the door.
I put my hand flat against it before she reaches it.
She looks at my hand. Then at my face. And I see the exact moment she smells it, the flicker in her expression, the recalibration, the shift from determined to something sharper and considerably less patient.
"She's a guest," I say. "She's unwell and she needed somewhere safe to sleep."
"She's in pre-heat," Chiara says. "So you expect me to step back and let you knot her?"
Is she serious right now?
I look at her and think that she must be, to swan back here after five years and expect open arms. Petite, blonde, blue-eyed, and absolutely certain of herself. Everything Jennifer isn't. Jennifer, who showed up on this island with two bags and a secret and has not asked for a single thing she hasn't earned. The contrast does not work in Chiara's favor.
She pushes the door open and walks in. I let her, because stopping her now will only make this worse, and there is a small, cold part of me that thinks seeing Jennifer might make Chiara understand something words won't convey. Tomas andI follow her in. Her scent spikes sharp, like she's ready to start something. If she tries anything, she'll have both of us to deal with.
The hallway is warm and lit low, the smell of dinner Carmen arranged earlier still faint in the air. Jennifer's strawberry scent is there underneath everything, soft and sleeping. The scent of someone who has finally let their guard down and is resting properly for the first time in what I suspect is a very long time.
Chiara stops in the hallway.
Jennifer is not in the guest room.
She is in the doorway of it, wrapped in the oversized shirt she apparently sleeps in, hair loose, one hand on the doorframe and the other pressed flat against her stomach, the look of someone who has just woken up, assessed the situation in approximately four seconds, and is already forming an opinion about it.
She looks at Chiara.
Chiara looks at her.