Romances de Dillion2

POV: EmilyI moved faster than I had ever moved in my life. The test went into my robe pocket in one motion. I stood up from the floor and turned on the tap and splashed cold water on my face just as Alexander stepped fully into the bathroom doorway."What are you doing on the floor?" he asked."I slipped." I reached for the hand towel and pressed it to my face. "The tiles are wet."A pause. I felt his eyes on my back."You didn't eat today," he said again."I wasn't hungry." I folded the towel and hung it back carefully. My hands had stopped shaking, which surprised me. "I'll eat something now."Another pause. Longer this time."Fine," he said. And he left.I gripped the edge of the sink and looked at myself in the mirror for a long moment. Then I reached into my pocket and closed my fist around the test and walked to my room and pushed it to the very back of my underwear drawer beneath a folded scarf.I stood in the middle of my room and breathed.++++++Three days passed. I watched

POV: EmilyThe nausea hit me first in the elevator. I had been standing there, coffee in hand, on my way down to meet Alexander's driver for a scheduled appearance at some charity luncheon. The elevator started moving and my stomach turned so violently I had to press my free hand flat against the wall.I made it through the luncheon by drinking water and rearranging food on my plate and smiling at the right moments. Nobody noticed. I had gotten very good at performing fine.That was three weeks after the night I had decided not to think about.+++++++By the second week of feeling wrong, I started paying attention. Not to the nausea alone. To the tiredness that sat behind my eyes no matter how much I slept. To the way certain smells hit me like something physical. Clara had made fish one evening and I had walked out of the kitchen so fast she called after me asking if I was alright."Just a headache," I said.I said that a lot now.At night I lay in bed and counted backwards and then

POV: EmilyThe penthouse didn't feel like anyone lived there. That was the first thing I noticed when the elevator opened directly into the living room. Everything was grey and white and glass. Clean lines, no clutter, no photographs on the walls. A large window ran the full length of one side, showing the city below like a painting someone had hung there purely for aesthetic value. Beautiful. Distant. Untouchable.A woman named Clara, who introduced herself as the housekeeper, showed me to my room. It was large, well-furnished, and had its own bathroom stocked with things in my size that I had never asked for. Someone had done their homework.I sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the silence.++++++++Alexander found me in the kitchen an hour later. I was making tea, mostly because I needed something to do with my hands. He walked in, loosened his tie, and stopped when he saw me standing at the stove."Clara handles meals," he said."I'm not making a meal. I'm making tea."He

POV: EmilyThe dress cost more than my father's first car. I knew because the stylist told me, cheerfully, while tightening the corset at the back. I stood in front of the mirror and looked at a woman I didn't recognize. White lace, fitted waist, hair pinned up with small pearls threaded through it. Beautiful, in the way that things purchased with money tend to be.Outside the church doors, I could already hear them. Cameras. Voices. The low roar of a crowd that had gathered because Alexander Kane was getting married and that was apparently news worth standing in the cold for."Sixty seconds," someone said near the door.I picked up my bouquet. White roses. No one had asked what I liked.The doors opened. The noise hit me first. Camera shutters firing like rainfall, voices rising, a blur of faces pressed against barriers lining the path. I walked, because that was the only option. I kept my chin level and my shoulders back and I thought about my father, who was home this morning, safe

POV: Emily"Miss Carter, Mr. Kane will see you now."I didn't move at first. My dress was soaked through, my hair plastered to my neck, and my hands wouldn't stop shaking. The receptionist looked at me the way people look at something they'd rather not touch. I stood up anyway.The elevator ride to the thirty-second floor felt like ascending to a sentencing. I watched my reflection in the polished steel doors. Red eyes. Pale face. A woman who had run out of options three days ago and was only now admitting it.The doors opened. The office was enormous and cold. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed a city drowning in rain, and the man behind the desk looked like he belonged to it. Alexander Kane didn't look up when I walked in. He was reading something, pen in hand, jacket perfectly pressed like the storm outside was a personal insult he had chosen to ignore.I stopped a few feet from his desk. He still didn't look up."Sit down," he said. His voice was low. Not unkind. Just empty of anythi