Chapter 17
Anna
The rain turned into a downpour so heavy it sounded like the sky was being emptied by hand.
Jace checked the weather on his phone three times in ten minutes. The third time, he locked the screen, and set it face down on the counter. "The roads are flooded. You can’t drive back tonight," he said, grim and resigned.
"I can wait it out."
"The forecast says it won’t stop until morning."
We looked at each other. "The guest room is at the end of the hall," he said reluctantly.
The guest room looked like it had been prepared for a hotel inspection.
The bed was made with corners so sharp I half believed he'd used a ruler.
A robe was folded on the pillow, a sealed bottle of water on the nightstand, and beside it, a new toothbrush still in its packaging next to a small tube of toothpaste.
Everything placed, everything considered, everything thought through before I'd even agreed to stay.
I soaked in the warm bath until my fingers pruned and the cold from the drive finally left my bones. Then I put on the robe. White. Soft.
It fell to my knees and the belt tied at the waist.
I followed the sounds coming from the kitchen. He was cooking.
"You can sit down," he said without turning around.
"Staring is optional."
"How did you know I was staring?"
"You breathe differently when you’re watching me."
I had no comeback for that. None. The man had just told me he could identify me by my breathing patterns and I was supposed to form a sentence? I pulled the robe tighter, which was stupid because it was already tied, and sat at the table.
He turned with the pan. His eyes found me, and I watched them travel. My face. The robe. My bare collarbone. My wet hair loose on my shoulders.
Back to my face. The whole trip took two seconds and his demeanor seemed less hostile than before.
Or I imagined it. I was probably imagining it.
He served dinner. Salmon with a herb crust, roasted vegetables. He set the plate in front of me and sat across the table and we ate.
The food was so delicious, it made you want to close your eyes on the first bite because your mouth needs a moment. I looked at him across the table.
"This is incredible," I said.
He glanced at me over his glass. "You sound surprised."
"I am surprised. You won’t touch a door handle but you can make salmon that tastes like this?"
"Cooking is controlled. Every variable is measurable. Temperature, timing, ratios." He cut into his fish. "It’s the one domestic task that makes sense to me."
"So you’re telling me that calculating everything made you a better cook."
"I’m telling you that precision has applications beyond hygiene."
"Where did you learn to cook like this?"
He was quiet for a moment, then took a sip of water. "My grandmother. In London. She had a theory that any man who couldn't feed himself was only half a man."
His tone loosened. Something in his shoulders did too.
"I could only eat food that I participated in making, that way I could ensure it's clean. I was nine. She gave me a stool to reach the counter and a wooden spoon and told me we were making shepherd's pie and if I got it wrong she'd make me eat it anyway."
I smiled. "Did you get it wrong?"
"Catastrophically. The mashed potato was the consistency of wallpaper paste and I burned the mince.
" He turned the glass slowly in his hand.
"She ate every bite and told me it was the finest shepherd's pie in London.
" A pause. His voice went quieter. "It wasn't. It was genuinely terrible. But she ate it. All of it."
His eyes had gone soft in a way I hadn't seen before. Tender and far away, like he was looking at something only he could still see.
"She sounds wonderful," I said.
"She was." Past tense. I noted it but didn’t push.
We ate in comfortable silence for a while, the rain steady on the roof, wind pressing against the windows, and the warmth of the food and the cabin pulling everything closer until I noticed I'd stopped sitting up straight and my shoulder was almost touching his.
I didn't fix it. Something about the quiet had loosened my guard without asking permission, and by the time I noticed, I didn't want it back.
"I dated someone," I said. The words came out before I’d fully decided to say them. "Back in Charlotte. An actor. Famous enough that you’d know his name if I said it."
He set his fork down, giving me his full attention. Those gray eyes without the glasses made me feel like he would understand.
"It was a secret, because that’s how he wanted it. I thought it was romantic at first. Private. Special." I laughed. Short and bitter. "It wasn’t. It was control."
I turned my water glass in my hands because they needed something to hold as it got to the parts that felt too heavy for me.
"He hit someone. A woman crossing a street on a weeknight. And his family made it disappear. The police report, the medical records, the woman’s name.
All of it buried under lawyers and money.
" I looked at Jace. His jaw had gone tight.
"I found out and I told him I was going to the police.
And he took everything from me." I let out a long exhale.
"My career. My clients. I had to give up everything I built. He didn’t just end things, Jace. He erased me. Like I’d never been there at all."
I took another breath and let go, "That’s why the photo scares me. It’s not embarrassment. If my face is out there, he can make trouble again. He has the money and the motivation. I came to Miami because nobody here knew my name. And now it’s on every gossip site next to yours."
He was quiet for a long time. His fists on the table, knuckles white. He uncurled them slowly, finger by finger, like he was making himself let go of something.
"I won’t let him do anything to you." He spoke through his teeth. Furious. On my behalf.
The protectiveness in his gaze caught me off guard.
"I can protect myself."
"I know you can. That doesn’t mean you have to." He held my gaze.
"I understand running," he said. His voice was lower than before. "I understand building something new because the old thing was taken from you and you had no say in the loss of it. I’m sorry you have to feel exposed because of me."
"What was taken from you, Jace?"
The question changed the air. One second we were two people having dinner in a cabin, and the next his whole body went still.
He pushed his chair back and stood. The scrape of wood on wood was loud enough to make me flinch. He picked up his plate, and walked to the sink without a word.
I followed him. "The cabin. The gloves. The sanitizer. The way you can’t be in a room with too many people. Is it connected to what happened when you were eight?"
He turned. The edge in his eyes was new. "Where did you hear about that?"
"There was an article. Online. It mentioned a kidnapping."
"Online." He turned the tap on. Started washing his plate. "Is that where you found the orchid information as well? The same reliable source that told you I’m fond of flowers, when in reality I can’t be within ten feet of one without my throat closing shut?" The sarcasm was razor-sharp.
"Perhaps you should stop researching me on the internet, Ms. Wilson. You’d get better results from a horoscope."
"I wasn’t prying. I was trying to understand you."
"I didn’t ask to be understood." He scrubbed the plate harder than it needed.
"Why not?"
His hands stilled on the dish. The water ran over his fingers. "Because I don’t want to burden you with my past. You have enough weight without carrying mine."
He went back to washing. The conversation was over.
I stood beside him for a moment. Then I went to the cabinet where I’d seen him pull gloves from earlier, took out a pair, and put them on. They were too big for my hands, loose around the fingers, and I held them up for him to see.
"Move over," I said. "I’ll dry."
We did the dishes together. He washed each dish thoroughly. Handed them to me without looking. I dried them and stacked them in the cabinet.
When the dishes were done, he dried his hands, removed the gloves, and folded the dish towel into a perfect square. I removed my pair and set them on the counter.
"Thank you," he said. "For helping."
"Thank you for dinner. And for the room. And for not leaving me on the porch."
"I considered it."
"I know you did."
He nodded. Stiff. But his eyes. His eyes weren’t cold. They were moving over my face in the light, tracing something.
"You should get some rest," he said. But he didn’t step back. His body stayed exactly where it was, three feet from mine.
"You too."
Neither of us moved.
He took a step forward. Then another. My breath held as the distance between us shrank, his eyes on mine, gray and intense.
My pulse spiked, my tongue darted out, my stomach tightening as his eyes followed the movement. His nostrils flaring.
"Do you have any idea," his voice dropped low and rough, barely a breath between us, "what I want to do to your mouth right now?"
The words went through me like a current. I couldn’t move. He was close enough that I could feel the heat of him and his breath was warm on my face, his eyes were on my lips and I forgot my own name for a second.
"Jace…" I whispered the name. He blinked, and the trance broke. He stepped back.
"Goodnight," he said.
He turned to leave but halted, his back to me. "You should leave tomorrow morning. You’re driving me absolutely mad and I am running out of ways to manage it."
He started walking again. I don’t know what made me say it.
"Or what?" I challenged.
He stopped.
"Or what?" he repeated. He turned back. Slowly. Took a step toward me. Then another. His jaw had gone tight, his breathing uneven, and every measured thing about him was unraveling with each step he closed between us.
"You really want to know?" Barely a whisper.
"Yes."
He leaned in, his mouth near my ear. "I'm going to kiss you. And I'm not going to stop. Not until neither of us can think or breathe or remember why we were pretending this wasn't happening."
I wet my lips again. Instinct. Nerves. Both.
He groaned. Low. Coming deep in his chest. "Don’t do that."
"Do what?"
"That. Your lips. Don’t."
"Or what?"
His eyes closed. When they opened, the look in them made my stomach drop. Hunger. He looked at my mouth like he was deciding exactly how he’d take it apart.
"You’re doing this on purpose." His voice was sharper now.
"Doing what?"
"Existing." He breathed. "In that robe. In this hallway. Asking me or what like you don’t already know the answer. Like you haven’t known since the fitting room."
He swore and stepped back again, much to my disappointment.
"Go to sleep, Anna. Leave in the morning. Please."
He turned and walked down the hallway. I watched him go. Bare feet on the wooden floor, back straight, hands clenched at his sides. He didn't look back.
I went into the guest room, closed the door, and leaned against it. My pulse was everywhere. My face was hot. My lips were tingling from a kiss that didn’t happen and the ghost of his breath was still on my skin. I was in so much trouble it wasn’t even funny.
I was impressed by his control. I was also furious about it.
The man had stood inches from my face and told me he wanted to do unspeakable things to my mouth and then said goodnight and walked away like he had somewhere better to be.
Who does that? Who says that and then leaves?
It was infuriating and attractive, and the combination was making me want to scream into his expensive pillow.
I tossed and turned and punched the pillow into a different shape that didn't help. Turned again. Stared at the rain streaking down the window, then the ceiling, then the window again like either one was going to offer me a solution.
I was going to combust. I was going to lie in this bed and think about Jace Hunter until I literally caught fire and they’d find my ashes in the morning and the cause of death would be listed as acute sexual frustration and it would be his fault.
Sometime past midnight, I heard the piano.
Muffled through walls and distance, a melody I didn’t recognize. Slow. Aching.
I lay in the dark and listened.
I didn’t know the song. It didn’t matter. I knew what it sounded like. It sounded like want and restraint and the space between two people who kept finding each other in hallways and not closing the distance.
It sounded like us.
I closed my eyes.
I fell asleep to the sound of his hands on the keys.