"Anything else?" she asks.
I should say no. I should let her leave, sign the contracts, and maintain the professional distance that keeps this transaction clean and my hands steady and my mind where it belongs — on the war, on Viktor, on the empire that doesn't run itself.
Instead, I stand. Move around the desk. She tracks me — not with fear but with the hyperawareness of someone who catalogs exits and angles the same way I do. I stop two feet from her chair. Close enough to see the pulse in her throat, hammering despite the voice that hasn't wavered once.
"You're not afraid of me."
"Should I be?"
"Most people are."
"I'm not most people."
"No." I reach out. Slowly — giving her time, giving her the option to pull back. My fingers find a strand of hair that's fallen across her cheekbone. I tuck it behind her ear. Her skin is warm. Warmer than I expected, and the shock of it travels from my fingertips to my wrist to somewhere behind my sternum that I thought I'd sealed shut fifteen years ago. She holds perfectly still, and I can feel the effort it costs her, the deliberate choice not to flinch, not to lean in. Both instincts pulling at once. "You're not."
I step back. My hand drops. We're both breathing harder than the moment warrants, and we both know it.
"We have a deal, Miss O'Brien."
"Siobhan."
"Siobhan," I repeat. The syllables feel different in my mouth than any name I've said before. She feels it, too. I see it in the way her shoulders shift, the micro-movement of someone absorbing an impact they didn't expect.
"Two days," she says, standing. "Then I marry a stranger."
"Friday. Yes."
"Then you'd better not be a stranger by Friday." She walks toward the door. Stops. Looks back over her shoulder — the first time she's done that. "For the record? I'm not afraid of you. But I'm not stupid either. If you break your word on any of this, I won't need my brothers to handle it."
She leaves. The door clicks shut.
I stand in the middle of my office, the room I've controlled every variable in, every angle and shadow and sight line, and realize that for the first time in fifteen years, I've just negotiated with someone who might be better at it than I am.
My hand still feels warm where I touched her skin.
I go back to my desk. Pull up the alliance contracts. The words blur. I read the same clause three times and retain nothing.
All I can think about is the way she saiduntil I decide otherwise…like she already knew the door between their bedrooms wouldn't stay closed forever. Like she was already deciding.
I stare at the chair she sat in. It still holds the impression of her — a dip in the leather, a faint trace of something that might be her shampoo or might be my imagination.
In two days I marry Siobhan O'Brien. In two days, she moves into my home, sleeps behind a door I won't open, and begins a life I designed as strategy.
Except my hands are still unsteady. And the room still smells like her. And the chair she sat in without invitation feels, for the first time, like it belongs to someone.
Strategy. Nothing more.
I'm lying again.
Chapter 4
Siobhan
The Dress
* * *
The bridal boutique smells like gardenias and money, and I hate both equally.