Chapter three

Nobody had warned me about the silence.

I pressed my face closer to the car window as the vehicle wound deeper into the island's interior, watching the landscape roll past in shades of green so vivid they looked almost artificial—dense jungle pressing against both sides of the narrow road, interrupted occasionally by flashes of blue ocean between the trees. It was beautiful in the way that places completely indifferent to human presence tend to be beautiful. Untouched. Unbothered. Utterly, oppressively quiet.

I had expected remote. I had not expected this specific brand of stillness that made the inside of my own head feel loud.

I leaned back against the seat and crossed my arms. This was fine. Six months in paradise with the man I intended to completely dismantle. There were worse assignments.

The car pulled up in front of a structure that was less what I'd imagined as a research facility and more a sprawling, low-built complex of connected buildings that managed to look both functional and quietly impressive—all clean lines and large windows, designed to belong to the landscape rather than impose on it. I was still taking it in when the car door opened and a figure appeared beside it.

Young. Tall. Dark-haired and wearing a short-sleeved shirt that was doing absolutely nothing to hide the fact that he had the kind of arms that belonged in a fitness advertisement.

"You must be Ivy Laurent," he said, reaching for my bags before I had fully stepped out. "We've been expecting you. I'm Caleb—I handle logistics and security for the facility."

I let him take the bags and looked at him with genuine appreciation. "Caleb." I tilted my head. "You know, I was fully prepared to be miserable for the next six months. You have single-handedly improved my outlook."

He laughed—a surprised, genuine laugh—and said absolutely nothing, which meant he was both attractive and professionally disciplined. An interesting combination.

"If all the staff here look like you," I said pleasantly, falling into step beside him as we moved toward the entrance, "I may actually survive this."

"I'll take that as a compliment," he said, still smiling, and held the door open.

I stepped inside—and stopped.

He was standing at the far end of the main room with a tablet in one hand and a frown already in place, like he had arranged himself specifically to be the first thing I encountered and had chosen disapproval as his opening statement. Matthias Thorne. Forty years old, dressed in a plain dark shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, looking like the kind of man who had never wasted a single day of his life and was quietly contemptuous of anyone who had.

The years had been outrageously, unfairly good to him.

I was aware of this in a way that moved through my entire body before I had given it permission to. The lines of him were sharper somehow—broader through the shoulders, more defined, like whatever grueling work schedule he kept had been doing him considerable physical favors. I found myself wondering, with a warmth that had absolutely no business being as immediate as it was, what it would feel like to have those arms wrapped around me.

Focus, Ivy.

I grinned, and I let every volt of it reach my face.

"Matthias!" His name came out with all the warmth of someone greeting their favorite person in the world, which was not entirely a performance. I crossed the room in quick strides and threw my arms around him before he had any reasonable opportunity to step back.

His entire body went rigid the instant I made contact—a full, immediate tension that ran through him like a current and told me, far more clearly than words ever could, that he was not nearly as indifferent to me as he intended to appear.

I held on for a deliberately long moment before pulling back just enough to look at his face, keeping my hands on his arms.

"I missed you," I said. "It's been two years, Matthias. Two whole years."

Before he could assemble a response, I reached up and cupped his jaw in both hands and pressed a firm, loud kiss to his cheek—close enough to the corner of his mouth to register. Then I leaned back and looked at him with my head tilted, making absolutely no effort to be subtle about what I was doing.

"Have you been working out?" I asked. "Because I genuinely cannot tell if it's the lighting in here or if you've gotten even better looking, and either way it should probably be illegal." I let my eyes travel over him once, slowly and without apology. "I am getting embarrassingly warm just standing here."

Someone behind me cleared their throat.

Matthias's jaw tightened. The frown, if anything, deepened.

"Welcome to Meridian," he said, and his voice was so carefully controlled it was practically architectural. "But let me be direct with you right now, Ivy—whatever this is, whatever you think you're doing, I will not be tolerating it. Not here. Not in front of my team. Not at all."

I pressed my lips together and let my eyes go wide with mock severity. "Ooooh." I tilted my head further. "Are you going to punish me if I'm a bad girl?"

The muscle in his jaw flickered.

"Caleb," he said, without taking his eyes off me, "please show Miss Laurent to her room."

I blew him a kiss over my shoulder as I followed Caleb out of the room, and I didn't need to look back to know that Matthias was watching me go.

My room was larger than I'd expected and significantly nicer—clean and simply furnished, with a wide window that looked out over a stretch of jungle giving way to a glint of ocean in the far distance. I dropped onto the bed, spread my arms wide, and stared at the ceiling.

This was it.

New island. New environment. New chapter—and I intended to write every word of it on my own terms.

After a moment I pushed myself up, reached into my carry-on, and found what I always found first when I arrived anywhere new. A small wooden frame. Inside it, my mother was laughing at whoever had taken the picture—head thrown back, eyes creased, completely unguarded and radiant in the way she always had been when she forgot to be anything other than herself.

I ran my thumb slowly across the glass.

"Life hasn't been worth much without you, Momma," I said quietly, to the room and to her and to no one. "But I promised I'd be strong now. So I'm trying."

I set the frame carefully on the nightstand where I could see it from the bed, pulled out my phone, and typed a brief text to my father: I'm here. Don't worry.

I put the phone face-down without waiting for a response, lay back, and was asleep before I had finished deciding to be.

The knock at my door came at a time I couldn't identify—the light through the window had shifted to something softer and warmer, which meant hours had passed without my noticing. I dragged myself upright, crossed the room, and opened the door.

A woman stood in the hallway holding a tray, watching me with a calm, warm smile. Late thirties, I guessed. Dark-haired and composed, with the easy self-possession of someone who knew exactly where they stood in every room they entered.

"Ivy," she said. "I'm Violet. I brought you some lunch."

I took the tray and thanked her, already turning back into the room when she added, "Your uncle wanted me to let you know—take today to rest and get settled. Starting tomorrow, you'll need your strength. There's work to do."

I stopped walking.

"Work," I repeated.

"Yes, of course work." The voice came from behind Violet, and I looked up to find Matthias stepping into the doorway with his arms crossed, frown fully operational. "Did you think you were coming here to be waited on? That everyone on this island was going to rearrange themselves around your schedule while you recovered from the extraordinary effort it took to get yourself expelled?"

I glanced between him and Violet.

There was something in the half-second look Violet cut toward him before she dropped her gaze—quick and private and practiced—that landed in my stomach like a stone. I recognized that look. I had seen it before, on women who knew someone's bedroom the way you only learn it by spending real time there.

Something tightened in my chest that I refused to identify as jealousy.

Violet turned quietly and pulled the door partially closed behind her as she left.

I set the tray down on the desk, folded my arms, and looked at Matthias with my chin level. "I said I'd show up tomorrow and do the work," I said evenly. "I have no complaints about that."

"Good," he said. "Because I doubt you'll last a week before—"

"Before what?" My voice sharpened. "Go ahead and finish that sentence. Tell me exactly what you think I'm capable of, since you've clearly already decided."

"Your track record speaks loudly enough," he said. "Expelled three times, arrested once, and handed every opportunity anyone could want—all of it destroyed by your own choices. So forgive me if I'm not holding my breath waiting for you to suddenly become someone who takes things seriously."

The words hit harder than I wanted them to, and I felt the familiar, specific anger of someone being reduced to their worst moments by a person who had never bothered to look for anything else.

I took a slow breath.

Then I walked toward him, deliberately closing the distance between us until I could see the exact moment his eyes changed—that almost imperceptible tightening around them that he would never in a million years admit to.

"Is that really what's bothering you?" I asked, keeping my voice low and even. "My track record?" I tilted my head. "Or is it the fact that I'm here, and you don't quite know what to do about that?"

His expression didn't move. "Don't."

"Are you sleeping with Violet?"

The silence that followed was sharp and immediate.

"Who I am or am not involved with," he said, with a control in his voice that sounded like it was costing him something, "is none of your business. Stay in your lane, Ivy."

I held his gaze for a long moment, then let a slow smile move across my face. "I'm planning to make it my business," I said simply. "Because I want to be very clear with you, Matthias—I came here with one intention, and that intention involves the two of us ending up in bed together before these six months are done." I watched the muscle in his jaw jump. "And I don't share."

"You're out of your mind," he said. The control in his voice had developed a hairline fracture. "You are completely out of your mind if you think for one second that I would ever—"

"Goodnight, Matthias," I said pleasantly.

He turned and walked out.

"You'll be the one begging," I called after him, and I was smiling when I closed the door.