Chapter Fourteen #2
"No. You are the one fighting a board, a collapsing hotel, and Lenore Hollister's texts."
"I blocked her."
Maren stared. "You blocked Lenore?"
"On my personal phone. Legal can receive her poetry."
The laugh came out of Maren before she could catch it. It was small, tired, and real.
Callum watched her as if he had not expected the sound to matter.
The room shifted.
Not because he moved closer. He did not.
Because neither of them looked away quickly enough.
"Maren," he said.
Her name in his mouth was not a warning. That was the problem.
The air held all the things they had carefully kept in separate folders: her divorce, his authority, the rumors, the work, the way he stepped back from thresholds, the way she noticed every time he did.
Desire did not arrive like it had with Pierce, old and entitled and certain of its route.
This was unfamiliar. It asked at the door.
That made it more dangerous.
Callum set his pen down.
The soft click echoed under Maren's skin like a starting gun.
"If I am misreading this," he said, voice low and controlled, "tell me now."
No man had ever offered her the exit before stepping closer.
That alone sent heat blooming low in her belly. Her nipples tightened against her bra. A slow, liquid ache gathered between her thighs as she watched him - shirtsleeves rolled, forearms strong and veined, eyes dark with want he was still trying to leash.
"You are not misreading it," she said.
He didn't touch her immediately.
He came around the table and stopped an arm's length away. Close enough that she could smell clean soap, coffee, and the warm, masculine scent of his skin. Far enough that she still had the power to say no.
Maren stood.
Her knees felt unsteady, not from weakness but from raw awareness. Her cunt was already slick, pulsing with anticipation.
"This is complicated," she whispered.
"Yes."
"People are already lying about us."
"Yes."
"I still belong to a legal mess."
"You belong to yourself," he said. "The legal mess is loud."
The sentence cracked something open inside her.
She reached for him first.
Her fingers found the inside of his wrist, where his pulse jumped hard and fast beneath warm skin. Callum's breath hitched. He looked down at the point of contact, then back up at her face, eyes burning.
"Maren."
"If you say my name like that again," she breathed, "I'm going to make a very questionable decision."
His mouth curved, dark and hungry. "Then I should stop."
"Probably."
He didn't.
Instead, he lifted his other hand and cupped her cheek with careful reverence, thumb brushing the corner of her mouth.
The touch was so gentle it made her ache.
Maren leaned into it, lips parting. When his thumb pressed lightly against her lower lip, she opened for him and let the tip slip inside, tasting salt and skin.
Callum's eyes darkened to black.
A low, rough sound escaped him as she closed her lips around his thumb and sucked once, slowly. Heat flared between her legs. She was wet enough that she could feel it slicking her thighs.
He stepped closer. The hard length of his erection pressed against her hip through his trousers - thick, heavy, unmistakably aroused. Maren's breath caught. She rolled her hips once, deliberately, rubbing against him. The friction made her clit throb.
Callum's hand slid down to her waist, fingers digging in with barely restrained hunger.
"Fuck," he whispered, voice wrecked. "You have no idea what you do to me."
She had some idea. She could feel how hard he was, how his cock twitched against her when she moved.
The conference-room phone rang.
Once.
Twice.
They both froze, bodies still pressed together, breathing ragged.
Maren stepped back first, cheeks flushed, thighs slick.
Callum let his hands fall immediately, jaw tight, chest rising and falling.
The phone rang a third time.
He answered it without taking his eyes off her, voice rough.
"Roane."
Callum listened for ten seconds, then said, "Send it to me. Now."
He hung up.
"What happened?" Maren asked.
He opened his laptop. An email came in from hotel legal with an attachment.
Willa returned at exactly the wrong moment, saw both their faces, and stopped joking before she began.
"What?"
Callum turned the laptop.
It was a forwarded message from a board member to hotel legal. The subject line:
Concern re: Summit Proposal Integrity / Daws Involvement
The body was anonymous, but the voice was not hard to hear.
The Arden House board should be aware that Maren Daws is using confidential Hollister family donor knowledge and private social information to influence hotel client pitches during an active divorce.
This creates legal exposure for the hotel and potential misuse of privileged family relationship data.
Attached were three screenshots:
Maren at the summit pitch table.
A cropped image of the serious-space proposal.
A page from the prenup.
Clause 14.
Domestic services, social hosting, charitable participation, reputation support...
Maren stared at the screen.
The room they had almost crossed into vanished.
Willa whispered a vicious word.
Callum's voice went very quiet. "Who had the prenup?"
"Pierce," Maren said. Her throat felt scraped. "His lawyer. My lawyer. Me."
"And Sloane?" Willa asked.
Maren looked at the clause again.
Pierce had not answered whether he authorized Sloane to use his name.
Now someone had used a page from a private legal agreement to challenge her work.
Her phone buzzed.
Beatrice:
Call me. Pierce's counsel claims your use of Hollister social knowledge may violate confidentiality provisions. Did someone send the prenup to the hotel?
Maren looked at Callum, then Willa, then the proposal page on the table that had felt, one hour ago, like proof she could build something no one could revoke.
Outside the conference room, the hotel moved on.
Inside, another door closed.
This time, Maren knew exactly who had built it.