Chapter 24
Anthony
The last few days have been a quiet kind of ruin.
April in my bed, in my kitchen, in my home, hair in a messy knot, wearing one of my shirts like she owns the place.
April curled against my side on the sofa while the city flickers beyond the glass, my arm around her without thinking, my hand finding the swell that isn’t there yet and still feeling protective like it’s instinct.
I’ve spent forty-eight years perfecting distance, and she’s undone it in less than a week.
I tell myself it’s temporary. I tell myself it’s pragmatic—security, safety, optics, the baby.
But then she’ll laugh at something stupid on the television and lean her head on my shoulder like she belongs there, and the truth is sharp enough to make my chest tighten.
I want her.
Not as an arrangement. Not as a clause. Not as a solution.
As my own.
We ride downtown in the back of the car, the partition up, the city sliding by in silver streaks.
She’s wrapped in a sweater, scarf tucked neatly, hair brushed, glasses on, trying to look like the woman who walks into my office every day and never cracks, but I see the softness under it.
The lingering fragility from the phone call with Aidan Snow.
The quiet watchfulness that says she’s still waiting for the ground to shift under her feet.
“Seatbelt,” I tell her, automatically.
“I know,” she says, and rolls her eyes with just enough bite to remind me who she is. “You’re not my father, Anthony.”
I glance at her, raising one brow. “No. But you’re carrying my child, and I might as well start practicing.”
Her mouth twitches. “We’re in stop and go traffic. There’s practically zero danger.”
“Put it on anyway, princess.”
She clicks it into place with exaggerated annoyance. When she’s done, she turns to me, eyes bright with that smart, defiant humor I’ve been addicted to since the first day she talked back to me in a meeting. “There,” she says. “Satisfied?”
“Immensely.”
It’s a small moment, nothing at all, but it warms something in me that has been cold for a long time. My hand drifts to her knee without thinking, just wanting to hold something, hold her. She looks down at my hand like it surprises her it’s there. But she lets it stay.
A few blocks from the building, I pull my hand back, straighten my cuffs, put my work face on like a mask.
She notices—of course she does. Those light green eyes watch me for half a second before she follows suit.
Her posture changes, shoulders back, expression composed.
A professional woman stepping into a professional world.
We exit the car together and the air bites. The entrance to Voss I don’t run her down; I don’t call security or throw her through a fucking window like I’d like to.
I just stand there. Out of control.
I shouldn’t have let April work from the office today.
No, I should have just told her before today, should have taken out a sliver of the calm we’ve had the last few days and sacrificed it.
April looks at me—eyes glossy, face pale, mouth parted as if she’s trying to force air into her lungs—then turns to me fully.
“What did she mean?” She demands, voice trembling, anger and hurt tangled together. “Anthony—what did she mean you announced our engagement?”
I take a breath. Then another.
I’ve faced hostile takeovers. Courtrooms. Scandals. Men who wanted my head on a platter. A wife who wanted to be with anyone other than me.
None of that feels like this.
“Sit,” I say instinctively.