Chapter 19
TOMAS
I'm standing at the study window when the doctor's boat disappears around the headland, and I stay there a moment longer than necessary because the alternative is turning around and dealing with everything that just happened in this room.
Jennifer is in the guest room. Santos has planted himself outside her door and hasn't moved in forty minutes, which tells me more about his state of mind than anything he's said all day.
I find Matteo at his desk, jacket still on, the Nakamura folders open in front of him like he's been staring at them rather than reading them. He looks up when I walk in and gets there before I say a word.
"Say it," he says.
"The Nakamura deal," Matteo says. "No they won't," I say, dropping into the chair across from him.
"Restructure the offer. Better terms, full week rescheduled, upgraded hospitality across the board. They'll come back angrier and settle faster because the numbers will be better and men like Nakamura-san always follow the numbers." I hold his gaze.
"Jennifer needs looking after. Some bastard alpha got her pregnant and walked out. Left her with nothing. She got on a boat in the middle of the night, and the last thing we did when we saw her was hand her five thousand dollars and send her home alone."
I sit forward. "Canceling a meeting is the least we can do, Matteo."
He looks at the folders, then closes them.
"I'll call Nakamura's office now," Matteo says, already reaching for his phone. "Santos should stay with her while we sort this."
"He's already on the floor outside her door," I say. "Hasn't moved since she went in."
Matteo pauses with his phone in his hand. "Go," he says quietly. "I'll handle everything here."
I stand, pull up Diego on my phone, and lift my jacket from the hook in the corridor on my way out.
He picks up on the second ring.
"Ferretti," Diego says.
"There was a taco truck," I say, walking toward the bay path.
"Virginia, possibly registered in Vegas or the surrounding area.
Owner surname Sullivan, first name Jennifer.
The previous co-owner walked out. I want everything.
What happened to the business, what she was owed, who walked, and anything still outstanding. "
"Timeline?" Diego asks.
"Yesterday would have been ideal."
A short pause. "Tonight," he says.
"This one is personal, Diego. Be thorough with it."
I end the call and keep walking.
Some bastard alpha knocked her up and then dumped her. I wonder if it's the same one who stole her truck. It's none of our business, but I want to do right by her. I feel as if I need to do it after everything she has been through.
I want to find him more than I want the Nakamura deal.
The anger sits low in my chest, the specific kind that doesn't spike and doesn't shout. It just settles in and stays there, quiet and certain, the kind that means a decision has already been made and is simply waiting on information.
As soon as Jennifer went into pre-heat, Matteo called Carmen and told her to contact Daniel. A day, maybe two. No renegotiation. The guests still need feeding and Jennifer needs to rest without the service collapsing around her. It was the right call. It still sits badly.
I'm nearly at the dock when the unfamiliar boat stops me cold.
Daniel is sitting on the supply crates with the loose-limbed ease of a man who has not yet understood the nature of his error. He watches me come down the path like he half expected it.
I stop at the base and look at him.
He opens his mouth.
He doesn't get there.
Because the figure stepping out from behind the supply shed hits me somewhere below conscious thought, and my body reacts the way it always did. Hands going still at my sides. Everything in me going very quiet and very focused all at once.
Chiara.
Three years. She looks exactly the same and I am apparently not as done with that fact as I thought I was.
She walks toward me with those dark eyes steady and carrying something she has clearly committed to saying regardless of how this lands. One meter. Then less.
"Tomas," she says.
"Chiara." I glance at Daniel briefly, and he finds something extremely compelling in the dock planks. "What are you doing here?”
"I needed to see you," she says, and there's no softening in it, no approach from the side. That was always her. Straight at the center of a thing before you'd decided whether to let her near it. "I've been trying to get onto the island for two weeks."
"And he brought you," I say, nodding toward Daniel.
"He owed me a favor." She steps closer. "I'm here now. That's what matters." Her voice drops slightly. "You miss me. As much as I miss you."
The water moves against the dock. A rope creaks somewhere in the afternoon heat. Daniel becomes one with the dock furniture.
"Chiara," I say.
"I shouldn't have left." Another step, close enough now that I can smell her, familiar in the way of something stored rather than something present.
"I've known that for two years. Pride takes time and I'm here now and I'm saying it.
I want it to work. The pack. All of us. I made a mistake and I'm standing here owning it. "
"Not today," I tell her, and move past her toward the crates.
"Tomas," she says, turning to follow me.
"I mean it." I check the first crate and lift it. "Today is not the day. I have somewhere I need to be and someone who actually needs me there."
"I came all this way," she says.
"Stay in the bay accommodation tonight," I say, reaching for the second crate. "Carmen will sort the room. We talk tomorrow, all three of us, properly. I mean that."
"There is an omega in your house," Chiara says.
I stop.
"I can smell her from here." Her voice has gone careful over something that isn't quite under control underneath it. "That is not my scent, Tomas."
I put the crates down and turn around.
She's watching me with the expression that always meant she had already worked out the answer and was deciding what to do with it. Not fury. Something older than fury and harder to argue with.
"She's our chef," I say. "She's unwell and she needed somewhere to rest."
"She's in pre-heat," Chiara says.
"She's pregnant," I say. "And alone. Whoever the alpha was who knocked her up." I stop myself. Why am I explaining this to her? She doesn't get an explanation. "Stay in the bay accommodation. We talk tomorrow."
Chiara says nothing. Something in her face shifts and settles.
Daniel has apparently found religion in the grain of the dock wood.
"I didn't want one omega," I say, to the bay, to the afternoon, to the specific absurdity of standing here with both. "Somehow we've got two."
I pick up the crates and start back up the hill.
"Tomorrow, Chiara," I call back without turning. "I'll find you tomorrow."
The path is steeper going up and the crates are heavier than they looked and the sun is not interested in making any of this easier.
Somewhere up that hill, in a guest room in my own house, Jennifer Sullivan is finally going to have to let someone else carry something for her.
Every instinct I have tells me she is going to make that as difficult as possible.
Good.
I need something to focus on that isn't Chiara's face or the name of the bastard who knocked Jennifer up and left her to figure it out alone.
I go back up the hill.