31. CHAPTER 28 #2
“Good morning, Madame Kade,” she said, smiling when she saw me. “You’re up early.”
Flour dusted her apron, as she rolled out a pastry, the counters already lined with silver trays.
“I woke up hungry,” I lied. My stomach was twisted in knots.
If anyone knew what had happened yesterday, it’d be her. She knows everything.
“Best reason to be in a kitchen,” she replied, turning back to the dough. “I’m trying a new batch of palmiers. I know you love those,” she smiled and I returned it.
“And also some soup, the nutritionist said we should keep the house stocked with light options for Monsieur Kade senior.” She turned the dough over. “His personal chef took a day off today.”
Good thing she brought this up. I wasn’t sure how I was going to start the conversation without sounding like I was overstepping.
I stepped closer. “Mrs Lewis… what happened last night? Why did Dr Gérard ask to see Orion?”
She paused for a second as she reached for the sugar bowl.
“I’m not entirely sure, dear,” she said at last. “I went over to the east wing before dawn to check on things. The night nurse said they’d adjusted some of your father-in-law’s medications.”
“Adjusted?” A pressure formed in my chest. “Why?”
Her expression eased. “The nutritionist mentioned something about ‘patient health decline.’ Their words, not mine.”
Health decline.
The phrase landed heavy, and brutal, all at once.
“What does that even mean?” I asked, more to myself than to her.
“That the doctors are… concerned,” she said gently. “But you know how they are. They speak in codes and doctor language. We’ll know more when they choose to explain it.”
Emotion lodged in my throat.
She must have seen something in my face, because she wiped her hands on her apron and nudged a mixing bowl toward me.
“Come dear,” she said briskly, pouring flour into the bowl
“My mother always said, if we’re going to worry, we might as well do it kneading flour and sugar.”
The softness of her voice was a wordless invitation I didn't have the heart to refuse.
“I’ll teach you that pastry we serve on Sundays. The one you said tastes like holidays at your grandmother’s”
Despite the weight in my chest, my mouth twitched. Mrs Lewis remembers everything.
I’d mentioned my childhood and the visits to my grandmother’s house once, months ago. The variety of pastries were always a delight, especially for the twins and me. We looked forward to the holidays all year round just to visit her. Those were simpler times.
“Bribing me with recipes?” I asked wryly.
“Distracting you,” she corrected. “That’s a very different thing.”
I smiled, tied on an apron, and moved to her side.
As she talked me through folding the dough and brushing on the butter, my mind stayed in two places at once—on the measurements and the oven temperature, and upstairs, in a room with a closed door and a man whose grief I’d seen for the first time.
The palms of my hands pressed into the dough, stretching and folding, over and over, trying to smooth the dough, when in truth, it was something inside me that refused to lie flat.
Two hours later and I still couldn’t shake the sound from last night.
Orion’s stifled sobs had stayed with me. Muffled, strangled, and raw in a way that didn't belong to a man everyone thought didn't have a heart.
I kept seeing myself standing outside his door, frozen, doing nothing. The image fed a persistent guilt I wasn’t sure I was supposed to be nursing. But it was there anyway, open and alive, eating me up.
He’d missed breakfast, which was unusual. No curt “good morning”, no coffee cup set down with his usual deliberateness. Mrs Lewis said he’d gone straight to his office and hadn’t stepped out since.
The guilt gripped tighter, and underneath it, a need to offer something small and warm without demanding answers he wasn’t ready to give.
We didn’t exist in that type of space yet.
We were still getting used to being around each other.
We negotiated. We argued. We kissed like we were trying to survive it.
We did not sit and say, Tell me why you cried last night.
Some words were safer left sheathed.
So I did what I could.
In the kitchen, I put together a tray myself—scrambled eggs, warm toast, sliced fruit, and black coffee the way he liked it. Mrs Lewis tried to take it from me, but I held on.
“I’ve got it,” I said with a smile. “You’ve done enough this morning.”
She gave me a look that said she knew I was up to something, but let it go.
While Isabella fetched a jug of water, my phone buzzed. An email from the fabric supplier. Céleste and I had been waiting on updates regarding a shipment we’d ordered over a month ago. I scanned through it and my heart sank.
Delays on the fabrics for the House of Vassier collaboration. Re: Shipping issues. Revising the dates would blow the entire production window to hell. More excuses dressed up as logistics issues.
Céleste and I had spent weeks building that line.
For the first time, we were going to collaborate.
It was supposed to be my debut in something that felt wholly mine, not just the safe little capsules I’d hidden behind for years.
I was no longer under my father’s roof, and his consistent ‘no’ to my dreams no longer held any weight.
I was no longer obligated to look to the family business as my only option to thrive.
Now, I had the chance to be who I really wanted to be. The girl who was passionate about fashion and unafraid to claim her own light.
But prospering career-wise and things going as you planned doesn’t always go hand in hand. Last week it was a tussle with quality control, this week its a delay in fabric shipment.
Is there a universe where something runs smoothly for once?
I swallowed the frustration and slid the phone into my pocket. One disaster at a time.
Isabella returned with the water. “I’ll take the tray, Madame Kade.”
“No,” I said in a terse tone that made her press her lips nervously. I softened it with another smile. “I’m going up anyway.”
She nodded and stepped aside.
The walk to his office felt longer than usual. The door at the end of the hallway looked bigger today, darker, like a barrier set between his world and everyone else’s.
I knocked gently, balancing the tray on one hip.
“Come in,” he called in a rough voice.
I pushed the door open, and peeped through before stepping inside.
The late morning light washed across the books lining the walls, the massive desk at the centre, and the papers spread in careful stacks.
Orion sat behind it, shirt sleeves rolled to his forearms, no tie, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. Subtle bags under his eyes signaling he hadn’t slept properly in days.
His gaze lifted to mine, and for a fleeting second, a flare of surprise lit his eyes, smoothing the weary tension from his face until he looked almost...vulnerable.
“Morning,” I said, crossing to the low side table and setting the tray down. “You missed downstairs.”
He leaned back in his chair, watching me with that contained intensity that always made my skin feel too tight. His eyes swept once over the tray, then over my face—catching quickly on the nervous twist of my fingers.
“What’s wrong?” The question came out as a command.
Not What is this? Or Why are you here? He headed straight for the fracture.
I could have said, I heard you last night. I could have asked if his father was worse, if that was why Dr Gérard had requested to see him. I could have told him about the sound I heard from his room last night that had lodged in my chest and refused to ease out.
Instead, my mouth chose a different path.
“Fabric supplier issue,” I said, forcing a breath. “They’ve delayed the fabrics for the fall line Céleste and I are working on.”
Amusement flickered across his face. “Is that it?”
He stood, moving around the desk with the same unhurried, predatory grace that always made me too aware of his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and the way he took up space.
The familiar scent of his cologne filled the space between us as he stopped in front of me.
Holding me gently by the elbow, he pulled me closer.
“There’s a deadline,” I said, the words spilling faster now that he was looking at me like that. “If the fabrics don’t arrive by the end of the week, we can’t pivot. Everything is built around their arrival. It means production and everything else going forward would have to be delayed.”
“I'll handle it,” he said immediately. The words were flat, stripped of any doubt, as though he'd already decreed it.
“You can’t solve all my problems for me,” I protested, even as a traitorous part of me felt relieved.
His mouth tilted, not quite a smile. “Yes, I can.”
“Orion—”
“Come here.”
He turned his back on me and walked toward his chair, but didn’t sit. Instead, he patted the glossy surface of the desk in front of him with two fingers. A deliberate tap. Summoning me.
I looked from his hand to the desk, then back up at him.
“Are you serious?”
He tapped again, his eyes never leaving mine.
Heat climbed my throat, and my pulse kicked hard. I stepped forward anyway.
His hands caught my waist before I could overthink it.
His large and warm, fingers spanning more than they had any right to.
He lifted me like I weighed nothing, placing me on the edge of the desk where he brokers power and breaks competitors with a stroke of his pen.
My skirt rode up, the cool wood kissing the backs of my thighs; his body between my knees was a stark, burning contrast.
He braced me in place—one hand planted on the desk beside my thigh, the other resting firmly at my hip.
“Thank you for breakfast,” he rasped, his voice lower now, his breath brushing my lips.
“You haven’t even tasted it yet,” I managed. My heart was pounding so loud I was certain he could hear it.
That slow, wicked hint of a smile finally appeared. “I’m starting with dessert.”
My pulse stuttered. “Which is?”
“You.”