Stop letting her touch you!

Amara didn't sleep. She stared at the photograph until the candlelight on Daniel's glass blurred to gold.

Celeste and Daniel. At dinner.

It meant nothing, probably. Celeste dined with half of Lisbon, and Daniel never turned down a free meal. Two people who knew the same man could share a table without plotting anything. She laughed at herself in the dark. Next she'd be seeing conspiracies in the bread.

At six, she called Tessa, who offered to bring a bat.

"It's nothing," Amara said. "Someone's trying to scare me."

"Is it working?"

"A little."

She hung up before Tessa could say tell Julian. She wasn't ready to, because something else was nagging at her: the way he'd walked away yesterday with Celeste on his arm, head bent to listen, her hand resting on his sleeve the whole way down the street.

He walked her back. People do that. It's manners.

She had told the ceiling that eleven times.

-------

Julian's knock came at eight. He stood in the corridor with two paper cups and a flat white box tied with string.

Amara opened the door, looked at the cups, and went back to her suitcase.

"Good morning to you too," he said, stepping inside.

"Morning."

"I brought breakfast."

"I see that."

"And a delivery."

"How kind." She folded a sweater with great precision. "Surely Celeste needs breakfast more than I do. She might faint in the street, and you'd have to carry her."

He paused. "Ah."

"What?"

"You're upset about yesterday."

"I'm not upset. I'm packing."

"You've folded that sweater four times."

She threw it into the suitcase. "She had her hand on your arm for six blocks, Julian. Six. I counted. You let her tell you about her feelings while I trailed behind like a porter."

"You said you were fine."

"I say 'fine' when I'm not fine! It's a language. Learn it."

The corner of his mouth twitched, and she glared. He set the cups on the dresser very carefully, the way a man approaches a wild animal.

"I couldn't shake her off without a scene," he said. "Margaret's watching, and the Hallorans were right behind us. If I'd pulled away, she'd have cried, and the headline would read 'CEO humiliates heiress.'" He stepped closer. "I hated every block. I kept thinking, this is the wrong arm."

She said nothing. Her ears had gone warm.

"Tell me what to do," he said, catching her hand. She let him, which annoyed her. "I'll do it."

"Stop letting her touch you."

"Done."

"Stop telling me she's harmless."

"Done."

"And stop being so reasonable when I'm being unreasonable."

"That one I can't promise," he said gravely. "But I'll make it hurt less."

She tried to stay stern. She really did. Then he kissed each of her knuckles, one by one, and the glare cracked into a reluctant laugh.

"I hate you."

"Noted." He nudged the white box toward her. "Open it."

Inside the tissue lay a gown of deep emerald silk, cut low at the back. A card sat on top in his careful handwriting.

You wore green the night I met you. Wear it for the night I tell the world I'm yours.

Her anger dissolved, completely and irritatingly.

"The gala is a performance," he said quietly. "I'll stand beside Celeste and smile for the cameras. But when you walk in wearing this, I'll know. Only I will."

-------

The ballroom was all glass, strung with a thousand tiny lights above the Tagus. Amara stood at the entrance in emerald silk, trying to remember how lungs worked.

Across the room, Julian turned. His polite smile for an elderly investor stopped. His eyes traveled slowly from her shoulders to her hem and back, and something in them went dark and still. She felt it across forty feet of marble like a hand at her back.

Beside him, in ivory satin, Celeste followed his gaze.

"Amara!" She floated over, arms out, voice sugar-bright for the cameras. "You look stunning." Her arm looped through Amara's, and her fingers dug in like claws. "Tonight, darling, I'm announcing my engagement. Daddy's arranged everything. Julian doesn't know yet, but he'll say yes. There's a camera on him, and he's never once humiliated me."

Amara's heart stopped. "You're lying."

"Watch."

Celeste glided toward the dais, where the quartet fell silent and Richard Halloran tapped a glass. The crowd hushed. Cameras rose.

"Friends," Richard said warmly, "before the presentations, I have happy news about my daughter."

Celeste turned to Julian, eyes shining, hand outstretched.

Across the ballroom, Amara saw him understand. His lips shaped her name.

Then every light in the glass ballroom went out.