Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Lucas
The sound of Sienna’s laugh cuts through my concentration like a blade.
She laughs, and my pen stops moving.
It is a lively, warm, thoroughly unguarded sound, the laugh of a woman having a good time. One of her assistants—both of whom are men, maddeningly— says something in a voice pitched for her alone. She laughs again, and my grip on the pen tightens until the metal creaks.
It’s been a week.
One week since she walked out of that library with her mouth still bruised from mine. Since the lake the next morning. Seven days of watching her move through my house like she belongs in it, warm with everyone except me. Cool and professional and utterly unaffected when we run into each other.
“I don’t like my men weak, Lucas” has been rattling around in my skull every time I try to sleep.
Another laugh. Male this time. A low murmur I can’t quite catch. She says something back in that same warm, interested tone, and my wolf stands up inside me with its hackles raised.
I set the pen down before I snap it.
I try to concentrate on the file in front of me.
Her merger plan. I have been over it three times this week, and I will be damned before I admit to anyone, including myself, that I keep opening it hoping to find something wrong.
Some incompetence. Some reason to send her back to Moonvale where she belongs, where she cannot spend her mornings laughing at things other men say to her.
There is nothing wrong.
Her framework is, if anything, better than what I’d put together with my own people last month.
She has restructured the assessment phase to cut three weeks off the timeline without losing a single security checkpoint.
Her cross-employment proposal, with pack members rotating temporarily between territories during phase one and with paired mentors on each side, appears simple on paper but is actually so well-designed that it makes my chest ache.
It would solve half a dozen integration problems that haven’t even surfaced yet.
I had assumed that she’d spend her days here focusing her energies on me and that I would find a reason to send her packing. Instead, she has redesigned three of my systems in a week and walks past me in corridors like I’m not even there.
I push the file away.
Through the open window, I hear her voice, clear and precise now as she says something about timelines.
She is not laughing anymore; she is working.
Vance’s deeper voice answers her. Cole’s drier one follows.
The three of them settle back into their discussion with the easy rhythm of people who have found a good groove.
My jaw is so tight, it hurts.
Let her have her groove, I tell myself as I close my eyes. This is what you wanted. Stay on your side of the estate. Do the merger. Let the strategic advisor from Moonvale be a strategic advisor. Stop eavesdropping.
My hand, of its own volition, comes up and smooths the knot of my tie.
I don’t even register doing it until I feel the fabric under my fingers.
I look down. Today it is a soft green, the color of new leaves in early spring.
I picked it out this morning with the same dishonest care I have been using to pick ties out of my closet for six straight days.
Every morning, I put on some version of the same lie: that I am a grown man who can wear whatever colors he pleases, that I am simply branching out, that it does not mean anything. None of it is true.
My wolf makes a sound inside me that is somewhere between a growl and a whimper.
I drop my hand.
“Okay,” I hear her say through the window, voice lifting slightly. “I want to take a break and stretch my legs. Let’s reconvene in an hour.”
I stand up without meaning to.
The gardens at the back of the estate are the one part of the grounds my mother loved.
My father kept them for her after she died, and I have kept them for him since he followed her.
They run long and green from the west wing down to the tree line, low stone walls dividing the herb beds from the lawn, a single old oak standing sentry in the middle like a green cathedral.
I watch from my office window as Sienna steps out into the courtyard below.
Her dark hair is up in a loose twist. She’s wearing a cream blazer, charcoal trousers that fit her too well, and low heels that she kicks off the moment her feet hit the grass. She carries them dangling from two fingers like a girl sneaking out of a boring party.
Something in my chest does a slow, stupid roll.
She walks toward the oak tree, head tilted back to catch the sun.
Her shoulders drop an inch as she breathes out, and it occurs to me that she has not had a single waking moment to herself since Lydia set up her office.
She is always working, always on. The version of Sienna I’m watching now, barefoot and squinting at the light with the professional armor falling off her in pieces, is the one I am not supposed to see.
She reaches the tree and flops down against the trunk as if she has done it a thousand times. Knees up. Head back. Then, she digs into the pocket of her blazer and pulls out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper.
I frown. A sandwich. Stuffed into a pocket for lunchtime, like a kid at school.
I know, without having to ask anyone, that she didn’t eat breakfast today.
I was in the dining room at seven. She didn’t come down.
I would have seen her. I would have felt her.
There was more coffee in the pot than usual when I left, and Lydia said something about Miss Carter being an early riser who has decided to work through breakfast from now on.
She skips other meals, too—lunch one day, dinner the next. I noticed it this past week and told myself to stop noticing. It is not my business what and when the strategic advisor of another pack eats.
My wolf disagrees. My wolf has very firm opinions about whether my mate eats her breakfast.
I am out my office door before I can talk myself out of it. Halfway down the back staircase, I see Lydia crossing the path below at an oblique angle, a tablet in her hand.
She sees me before I can change course, and her face lifts into a warm smile. “Lucas.”
“Lydia.” I slow down, but I don’t stop. I keep my voice low, casual, as if what I am about to say is a passing thought. “A word.”
She falls into step beside me at an inobtrusive distance. The oak tree is far enough across the lawn that Sienna will not see or hear us.
“Miss Carter is skipping meals,” I say.
Lydia’s stylus pauses over her tablet. “I’ve noticed the same thing,” she says carefully. “She’s been very focused on the—”
“Make sure food is sent up to her office. Every day. If she doesn’t come down to the dining room at meal times, the kitchen should have a tray on her desk within fifteen minutes. Breakfast, lunch, whatever she’s missed. I don’t care if she waves them off. I want the food in front of her.”
Lydia stops walking. I look back at her, and for a split second, the mask slips.
I see the question on her face before she has the discipline to bury it.
Concern, maybe. Caution. A sharp edge underneath it, whatever it is.
The mask returns quickly, and she is the household coordinator again: composed, attentive, professional.
“Of course.” She waits a beat before asking, “Is everything alright?”
I hear the question underneath the question. A week of seeing me wear colorful ties—along with every careful, measured thing she has not said aloud since the library—sits in the air between us.
I lie.
“Miss Carter is the liaison for the merger,” I say, my voice flat. “She’s doing work that matters to this pack, and she’s doing it well. I’m not having our guest faint at a meeting because our household didn’t feed her. That would reflect poorly on me. Make sure the food gets delivered.”
Lydia watches my face for one second too long. “Absolutely. I’ll see to it right away.”
She makes a note on her tablet and moves off toward the house. I stand there on the path for a minute or two with the breeze in my hair, telling myself I have not done anything wrong.
I want to turn around and return to my office, but my feet remain rooted to the ground. Taking a deep breath, I head out into the gardens. I’ve been in my office all morning; I just need some fresh air. Never mind that my window was open the whole time.
By the time I reach the tree Sienna is under, her eyes are closed against the sun. She is dozing, or close to it, and it occurs to me that she has probably not been sleeping well, either. I lean against the trunk on the other side, gazing up at the foliage. I can hear her breathing. Slowly, evenly.
The bark is rough against my back as I sink to the ground. I can feel the vibration of her breaths through the wood, or I am imagining I can. Either way, my wolf feels contented at the proximity.
I close my eyes. Just for a minute.
My fingers play with the edge of my tie. The fabric is cool under my fingers, and I think, with the loose, unguarded honesty of a man on the edge of sleep, that I’ve been picking out ties for a woman who made an offhand remark that she likes her men with a little color.
I have been dressing for her. Every morning. Like a little boy with a crush.
What are you doing, Steele? She has walked away from you, I remind myself. She is working diligently with her two handsome assistants in her corner office. She has stopped looking at you across conference tables. This is the point. It’s what you wanted. This is what will keep her alive.
So, why, asks the part of me that never lies, are you sitting on the other side of a tree where she is napping?
I don’t have an answer. All I know is her presence soothes me. It unfurls the knot of tension that has lived within me since I was a child. When I catch her scent, I feel like I can breathe easier.