CHAPTER NINETEEN

Xavier’s POV

Lunch was at Seren, Ivanna’s preferred restaurant in the financial district, the kind of place where the menu had no prices and the tables were spaced far enough apart that conversations stayed private by design.

The food arrived without much discussion about it. Ivanna ordered for both of us with the familiarity of someone who had eaten here enough times to have preferences about the kitchen’s consistency, and I let her because the alternative was a negotiation I didn’t have the patience for today.

She waited until the server had moved away before she said the next word.

“She’s pretty,” Ivanna said, lifting her water glass. Her voice was light and conversational, the particular lightness of someone who had decided the best way to handle something was to treat it as though it wasn’t worth handling carefully. “The contractor.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I don’t make a habit of cataloguing the appearance of service staff.”

Ivanna smiled. “But you were standing in a corridor with her since God knows. You really care about your contractors.” She picks up her cutlery. “Seems our facilities contractor now requires an unusual degree of executive supervision.”

“The contract was just expanded,” I said. “I was only ensuring the transition was smooth.”

She looked at me for a moment, that particular look she had. The one that peeled back whatever surface you had presented and examined what was underneath it with the clinical patience of someone who had been studying you long enough to know the difference between your truths and your management.

She held my gaze. “I’m not stupid, Xavier.”

“I never said you were,” I said.

“Then don’t speak to me like I am.” Her voice stayed even, never rising, which was always more effective than volume would have been. “I walked out of that elevator and you were standing in a corridor with a woman in a work uniform talking about nothing like the nothing is actually something.”

I picked up my water glass. “You’re reading into a professional interaction.”

“I’m reading you,” she said. “Which I’ve had considerable practice at.” She adjusted her fork slightly on the table. “All I want is your honesty.”

I looked at her across the table.

Ivanna was not a woman who made scenes. She had been raised in the same circles I had, by a father who understood that visible emotion was a form of leverage you handed to your opponents.

What sat on her face now was not jealousy in its rawest form. It was the controlled version she had decided was acceptable to show.

But underneath it, in the set of her jaw and the stillness of her hands, was something tighter.

“There is nothing happening,” I said. And then, because I owed her at least the precision her intelligence deserved: “Not in the way you mean.”

“Is that it?”

I didn’t answer.

The meal came and we ate in silence. The restaurant moved around us with its usual discreet efficiency. We made other conversations, shifted and deliberate on her part, to the dinner Kingsley wanted to schedule, the engagement timeline, the upcoming charity gala where our appearance together would carry its own specific message to the public.

I listened and responded where responses were required. I was only present in the external way.

*********

She left after lunch with a kiss on my cheek that was performed for the public view and both of us knew it. I watched her car pull away from the curb, I stood on the pavement for a moment longer than necessary before getting into my own.

The drive back to Beaumont Group took about twenty minutes.

I spent half of the drive in silence, the quietness of a man who had just sat across from his fiancée and felt, throughout the entire meal, the persistent, inconvenient awareness of his relationship.

I had been watching Aria Ashford navigate the edges of a building that was beneath her capability since the first visit, assembling life from scraps with the competence of someone who had simply never been given the right room to work in.

I could give her the right room.

The Beaumont Group’s internal accounts team had a vacancy that had been unfilled for four months now because I hadn’t found anyone worthy of the position.

I had spent worth of conversation discovering that Aria Ashford’s intellectual property was considerably better than most candidates I had formally interviewed.

The rest of it… the part that lived underneath the straightforward part. I set aside for now.

I parked, took the elevator to my floor and called Daniel.

“The Greenfield contractor,” I said. “Aria Ashford. I need her direct contact details. And I need you to draft a formal letter of offer for the junior accounts position, the one we’ve had open since March.” I paused. “Mark it urgent.”

“Of course, sir,” Daniel said. “Should I copy HR?”

“Yes,” I said. “Keep it standard and professional.”

I ended the call and turned back to my desk.

“Professional.” I repeated the words out loudly to myself, testing its weight, checking whether it still fit the situation the way I was asking it to.