Chapter 4: Fragile Smiles

The city sky had grown dark to a mellow gray, the kind that swathed everything in gentleness—buildings, trees, people. Rain still lingered in the air, shrouding the windows of **Chapter & Soul** in a soft mist. Inside, the world progressed more slowly, more softly. It was perfumed with old books, chamomile tea, and something sweet that Lena had baked and not labeled.

It was toward the end of the afternoon when Aria returned, skipping into the shop with a butterfly clip in her hair and a stack of drawings clutched tightly in her hand. She arrived alone, at least temporarily—Leo had brought her, but promised her father would come to fetch her later again. "He's trying," Leo had said, as if it were something to be observed.

Lena opened the door with a warm smile and a chocolate chip cookie ready on a napkin.

"For the artist," she said, holding out the cookie as if it were an award from the gods.

Aria grinned. "I made a whole story today. With dragons and treasure and a sad knight!"

Lena tilted her head in curiosity. "Why was the knight sad?

"Lost someone. So he keeps fighting battles, but he doesn't smile anymore. Not real smiles. Just the kind people do when they pretend to be okay."

Lena blinked, her chest hurting at Aria's flip way of describing something most grown-ups wouldn't even touch.

"That is a lot to say," Lena said gently, dropping down beside her. "Why did you write that?

Aria shrugged, bouncing her legs as she perched on the tiny bench along the side of the children's corner. "My dad makes that smile from time to time. The sad one."

Lena said nothing.

Julian Blackwood.

The man who'd lingered in her store like a storm waiting to unleash. Every aspect of him had appeared controlled, wound, on-the-verge-of-blowing—like a man who'd learned to contain his feelings, not to come too close too quickly. His presence had stirred something within her. curiosity, maybe. Or a hunger.

"Your sad knight?" Lena asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

Aria smiled. "He doesn't wear armor, but he's always fighting things. Work and meetings. And he doesn't talk much unless he absolutely has to. But sometimes, when I draw something really well, he looks at me like he remembers how to smile. Just a little."

Lena's heart pulled gently.

"Your dad loves you a lot, you know," she said.

"True." Aria bit into her cookie. "He forgets how to say it sometimes. Or it might hurt him."

Lena had swallowed the glob in her throat and moved toward Aria, pushing a straying lock behind her ear. "You are very wise beyond your years."

"I read books," Aria said matter-of-factly.

Lena grinned, and the two of them leaned into the moment—two hearts offering kindness in the silence of the bookstore.

Outside, parked with its nose against the street, Julian Blackwood occupied the backseat of his car with the gas running low. The rain had started once more, a soft patter battering the windshield. He hadn't come in yet. He could have. But he didn't.

Instead, he waited.

Behind the misted glass, he saw her—*Lena.*

She dropped to the floor beside his daughter as if it was second nature. No sweet, artificial smiles. No saccharine sweetness. Only kind, caring, genuine affection. Her head tilted to one side as she listened. Her hand smoothing a strand of hair from Aria's face. Her lips curving into a soft, gentle smile that made her appear impossibly soft.

Julian's jaw tightened.

He wasn't used to sitting and watching anything. He was a man of action, of command. But this—this slow, easy beat between them—made him uncomfortable. He didn't know what to do with it.

His eyes followed the way Aria lit up when Lena leaned in to say something funny. The way the girl's whole body seemed to unwind in her presence. That kind of tranquility… it wasn't something Julian knew how to offer. Not anymore.

He closed his eyes for a second, reclining back into the headrest.

*"My dad smiles like that sometimes."*

He recalled Aria's voice in his mind. She'd told him that once, without even thinking about it. Something careless he hadn't registered. But now, here she was, alive and stunned in a place that seemed like magic stitched into wood and ink—it wound something deep within him.

What was he that his own daughter loved the embrace of a book better than his own?

Lena rose from the bench and approached the counter, humming to herself. Aria trailed behind her, books held gently in her arms as if she were gathering treasure. Julian's gaze did not waver from Lena.

Her actions were fluid as if she had no concept that she was being stared at.

Unassuming. Unpolished.

Beautiful, a way that hadn't been intended to be weaponized.

Not the type of woman he generally surrounded himself with.

Not the type of woman he would ever permit himself to desire.

He ripped his attention away and fixed his eyes down the road ahead, fists contracted in his lap.

This did not mean a thing.

He had glanced. So what?

She was gentle with his daughter. That is all.

And yet, as he stepped out of the car and crossed the road to the bookstore, his step hesitated just a fraction when he came to the window. Enough to notice the look of Lena looking up and smiling softly at Aria, brushing something off her sweater with the kind of care that made his throat hurt.

She hadn't seen him yet.

She didn't know what power he held.

And in that moment—standing there, gazing through the glass, watching her in her own little universe of ink and joy and soft smiles—he hated the way he had to step across that line.

Not as CEO Julian Blackwood.

Not as Aria's father.

But as a man who hadn't felt what it was to want something *real*.