Chapter Four
NINE FIFTEEN.
Paul stared at the contract on his desk without seeing a single word.
She should be here by now.
The December morning had frosted the floor-to-ceiling windows of his corner office, and beyond them, San Antonio sprawled in miniature—highways threading between clusters of buildings, the River Walk a dark ribbon cutting through downtown, and somewhere out there, past the city limits, the gates of Tranquil Acres.
Where she was.
Without him.
Joyce’s flight to Monte Carlo had departed at six this morning. He knew because he’d made it his business to know. Which meant the girl had been alone in that mansion for over three hours now, and any moment, his receptionist would buzz to announce—
Nothing.
The intercom stayed silent.
Paul turned his attention back to the contract. Mitropoulos Tech was acquiring a struggling biotech firm, and the deal required his full concentration. Hundreds of jobs hung in the balance. Millions of dollars. The kind of stakes that usually sharpened his mind to a razor’s edge.
He read the same paragraph four times.
Fuck.
But he still had no idea what it said.
His coffee had gone cold in its cup. He hadn’t touched the breakfast his assistant had left on the credenza—some arrangement of eggs and fruit that probably cost more than most people’s weekly groceries.
Outside his window, a plane cut a white line across the winter-pale sky, heading somewhere warm, somewhere that wasn’t here.
Somewhere that wasn’t this desk, this office, this excruciating silence.
Ten forty-five.
He’d moved to the conference room for a meeting with his legal team. Six attorneys sat around the polished mahogany table, their tablets and legal pads arranged with military precision, debating liability clauses and indemnification language. Paul contributed nothing.
His phone sat face-up beside his coffee.
No messages.
No calls.
He hadn’t given her his number, he realized. A deliberate choice at the time—he’d wanted her to come to him, to seek him out, to prove that she wanted this as much as he did.
Now it felt like a tactical error, with him handing her all the power while keeping none for himself.
“Mr. Mitropoulos?”
He looked up to find six pairs of eyes watching him expectantly. Harrison, his lead counsel, had paused mid-sentence, pen hovering over a yellow legal pad covered in neat handwriting.
“Your thoughts on the non-compete provision?”
He didn’t have any.
“Table it,” he said. “We’ll revisit tomorrow.”
The attorneys exchanged glances but knew better than to argue. They gathered their materials in that particular way people moved when they sensed a storm brewing—quickly, quietly, without drawing attention. The door clicked shut behind the last of them, and Paul was alone again.
Alone with the silence.
Alone with the phone that refused to light up.
Alone with the memory of her face when she’d shattered in his arms, that soft broken cry that had nearly undone him entirely.
They went away.
And he eventually came to a decision.
Enough.
Paul canceled his afternoon meetings, ignored his assistant’s barely concealed surprise, and had Butch bring the car around.
“Where to, sir?”
“The Bernard estate.”
If she would not come to him, he would go to her.
And then he would make her understand exactly what happened to women who made Paul Mitropoulos wait.
The drive to Tranquil Acres took forty minutes in midday traffic. December had dressed San Antonio in its holiday finest—wreaths on lampposts, lights strung between buildings, and a massive tree visible through the windows of the Rivercenter Mall.
But Paul noticed none of this, with his gaze fixed on the partition separating him from Butch, his fingers drumming an impatient rhythm against his thigh.
The Bernard mansion rose behind its iron gates like a widow in mourning, all that grandeur somehow diminished without Joyce’s theatrical presence to animate it. The garlands on the gate looked wilted. The white lights that had twinkled so prettily two nights ago were dark, waiting for evening.
He didn’t wait for Butch to open his door.
Except—
“She’s not here, Mr. Mitropoulos.”
Paul’s disbelief warred with outrage as Joyce’s new cook nervously relayed to him about Andromeda leaving shortly after breakfast on foot, with a packed lunch she had prepared for herself.
“Did she say where she was going?”
“No, sir.”
Paul curtly thanked the older woman for her time and considered his next move. Since she had gone out on foot with a packed lunch, she had to be somewhere nearby.
Right?
It took a while, but Paul eventually found Andromeda at a small public park beyond the walls of her aunt’s gated community.
It was he kind of place that existed in every suburb across America—a few acres of grass, a duck pond, a playground with swings and a slide, wooden benches scattered along winding paths.
The winty air had driven most people indoors, but a handful of mothers huddled near the playground, watching bundled toddlers navigate the equipment with the exaggerated caution of astronauts on a foreign planet.
And there, on a bench facing the pond, sat the girl that had been living in his mind rent-free since his first taste of her lips.
Damn her.
Paul found himself gritting his teeth as he observed how relaxed she looked, seated on that wooden bench while eating her sandwich.
She’d made herself a picnic.
An actual picnic, complete with what appeared to be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich wrapped in wax paper, an apple, and a thermos that she periodically raised to her lips.
Beside her on the bench sat a paperback book—something with a colorful cover he couldn’t quite make out from this distance—its pages ruffling gently in the breeze.
She looked like a painting. Like someone had captured the essence of simple contentment and given it human form.
Damn her.
She was all he could think about since morning. But here she was, looking like she hadn’t a care in the world...even though they both fucking knew Joyce had to have ordered her to keep him entertained.
His badly dented ego was adamant that he should just fucking walk away and forget that she even existed.
But...instead he ended up observing her like a lovesick fool...or stalking her like someone with a crazy obsession.
He stayed in the car. Told himself it was strategy—that he was gathering intelligence, learning her patterns, waiting for the right moment to approach. Told himself all the lies a man tells himself when he’s doing something he knows he shouldn’t.
The hours ticked by.
She finished her sandwich with the same unself-conscious pleasure she’d brought to the Four Seasons brunch, licking a smear of jelly from her thumb in a way that made his grip tighten on the door handle.
Then she opened her book—a high fantasy one by the looks of its cover—and proceeded to lose herself entirely.
Her expressions as she read were...
Fuck.
He couldn’t look away.
She smiled at some parts, her whole face softening.
Frowned at others, her brow furrowing in that way he’d noticed when she was processing something that didn’t sit right.
At one point, she actually gasped out loud, her free hand flying to her chest, and Paul found himself leaning forward as if he could somehow divine what plot twist had provoked such a reaction.
This was insane.
He was Paul Mitropoulos. He had a company to run. Deals to close. A life that did not include sitting in parked cars watching women read romance novels in public parks.
And yet.
She finished her book around two o’clock. Closed it with a satisfied sigh he could almost hear through the window, then tucked it into her bag and rose from the bench with a stretch that pulled her sweater tight across her chest.
He should approach her now.
He didn’t.
Instead, he watched as she wandered to the edge of the pond, pulling a small bag from her purse. Breadcrumbs, he realized. She’d brought breadcrumbs for the ducks.
Of course she had.
The ducks swarmed her immediately, a chaotic flotilla of green heads and orange bills, quacking their demands with the entitlement of creatures who’d learned that humans were soft touches.
His throat tightened as he watched her laugh—he could see it even from this distance, the way her shoulders shook, the way she crouched down to offer crumbs to a smaller duck that kept getting pushed aside by its larger companions.
Something twisted in his chest.
Something he refused to name.
By three o’clock, she’d migrated to the playground area.
Not to use the equipment—though he almost wished she would, just to see what she’d do—but to chat with the mothers who’d gathered there.
They accepted her into their circle with an ease that spoke volumes, making room on their bench, laughing at something she said.
She talked with her hands, he noticed. Animated gestures that punctuated whatever story she was telling. The mothers leaned in, engaged, charmed.
Everyone she met seemed to end up charmed.
Everyone except him.
He was not charmed. He was frustrated. Obsessed. Driven slowly out of his mind by a woman who apparently found ducks and playground mothers more worthy of her attention than a billionaire who’d offered her everything she could possibly want.
Four o’clock came and went.
The mothers packed up their children and departed in a parade of minivans and SUVs. Andie waved goodbye to each of them, that same open friendliness she’d shown to Joyce’s staff, to the servers at the Four Seasons, to every single person she encountered except him.
With him, she was wary.
Nervous.
Aroused, yes—he’d felt the evidence of that last night, hot and slick against his fingers—but guarded in a way she wasn’t with anyone else.
Good.
She should be guarded.
He was not a safe man to want.
Five o’clock.