Chapter 4

Ariana’s POV

By Wednesday I'd learned Damien Ashford's calendar the way people learn scripture by repetition, under duress. Seven a.m. briefings. Calls with a legal team in Geneva. A standing lunch he never ate, just pushed around a plate while reading contracts I wasn't cleared to see.

He hadn't mentioned Saturday again, he hadn't mentioned Ethan either, though I caught him once, during midweek, watching the hallway a beat too long after Ethan's voice carried past his office door.

Everything about that man got filed away, sorted into some drawer I wasn't allowed to open.

I don't know why it was hurting maybe I just needed to know how he felt about it, maybe deep down I just needed a shoulder…..well a day would have passed if I considered all the maybes in my head

Fine. Two can play at pretending nothing happened.

I was almost good at it, too, until Thursday, when he called me into his office at six-forty and didn't look up from his monitor.

"Close the door."

I closed it. My pulse did something stupid and immediate, the way it always did now whenever he used that low, voice that could mean absolutely anything.

"The Whitmore deal falls apart at the gala tomorrow if their board doesn't leave charmed," he said, finally glancing up. "You're seating half these people. I need someone who can read a room faster than my events team can, and apparently that's you."

"Apparently," I echoed, unsure whether that was a compliment or a complaint.

“Miss Hayes” he warned, annoyed and I sighed quietly.

“I'm sorry sir” I said and meant it and his eyes found mine then they softened.

"You put my aunt next to Senator Colby at the last spring gala and diffused an argument about tariffs before I even noticed one was happening." He said it like a fact, not exactly a praise, but something in the way his eyes stayed on mine a second too long made it land like one anyway. "I need that tomorrow. I need Whitmore's wife nowhere near Victoria."

Victoria.

The name landed in my chest like a shocker and I hated how much it landed at all.

Why do you care who this Victoria person is, Ariana. You know exactly why. Shut up.

"Victoria Sinclair," I said carefully, testing how much I was allowed to know. "She'll be there?"

"She's always there." Something tightened around his jaw, brief and gone. "Our families have been merging companies since before either of us could talk. Everyone assumes it'll merge us too, eventually. It's easier to let them assume."

Easier for who?

"Right," I said instead, because that was the safe word, the professional word, the one that didn't ask do you love her, do you want her? Why was this any of my business at all?

"Ariana."

My name, not Miss Hayes, and it felt different in this charged air, like he'd forgotten the rule he'd set on day one.

"Yes?"

He studied me for a long moment, his eyes unreadable and calculating in a way that felt less like business now and more like a man arguing with himself. "Nothing. Get me the seating chart by nine."

I left his office with my heart doing something reckless and stupid, and I spent the walk back to my desk furious at myself for it.

———————————————

The gala Friday night was every bit what I'd expected — ballroom chandeliers, string quartet, more diamonds in one room than I'd seen in a lifetime.

I kept to the edges the way good staff do, watching and adjusting, making sure Whitmore's wife stayed three seats from anyone who might mention tariffs.

Then Victoria Sinclair found me anyway.

She was beautiful in the specific, engineered way old money produces not a hair out of place, a smile that never once reached her eyes.

"You're the new assistant," she said, that didn't sound like a question. She slid up beside me at the edge of the dance floor like she'd been waiting all night for the chance. "Damien's been distracted this week. I wonder why."

She knows. Or she suspects. Everyone in this family seems to specialize in suspecting.

"I couldn't say," I said, keeping my voice pleasant, and professional, a small smile plastered on my face.

"No," Victoria said, tilting her head, studying me the way you'd study something that had wandered onto your property uninvited. "I don't suppose you could." She smiled wider, and it was somehow colder than no smile at all.

“Well a word of advice, since you're new. Ashford men confuse novelty for feeling. It never lasts. It never survives the family." She wriggled her finger at me and blew me a kiss as if it made anything better.

She drifted away before I could answer, leaving me standing there with my pulse hammering and my hands curled into fists at my sides.

Don't let her get to you. She doesn't know anything. She's guessing.

Except she wasn't guessing, not really, and some ugly, honest part of me knew it.

It took me twenty minutes to find Damien. He stood near the terrace doors, half in the shadows, watching the room. He caught sight of me and his posture eased, just slightly, just for a second.

"Seating's holding," I said. "Whitmore's wife is three seats from anyone who'd mention tariffs, and two away from your aunt, who apparently likes her."

"Good." He didn't look away from me. "I saw Victoria talked to you."

It wasn't a question either. Everything this family said sounded like a verdict already reached.

"Ahhh yes she gave me advice," I said. "About novelty."

Something dark crossed his face. "She's wrong."

"Is she?" I asked.

He didn't answer right away, and the silence between us stretched out long enough to feel dangerous, long enough that the string quartet and the clinking glasses and all two hundred guests seemed to fall away somewhere very far behind us.

He was very smart obviously because he sure must have noticed the hurt on my face even though I did all I could to hide it.

"Ariana," he said finally, quiet, rough at the edges in a way I'd never heard from him in that glass office.

"Look, I don't know what this is yet. The tension I mean….I don't want to hurt you”

There it is. The thing neither of us was supposed to say out loud.

“Well you Ashford men can't seem to avoid that it's in the blood right?” I blurted out then cursed myself gosh was it so hard to rein in my lips. His expression was unreadable all the way from down where I stood staring up at his face.

“I'm sorry” I said after a heartbeat and he sighed but didn't deny it or respond either he just stood there watching people mingle about close enough to feel the heat off him, and said nothing at all which, in its own quiet way, was its own kind of answer.