جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 20

“Maya,” she said brightly, “this is Rhysand. Rhys, this is Maya de Cruz. Founder and creative director of Cruz Atelier. I told you, didn’t I? She’s a genius.”I wanted to laugh. Because if there was one thing worse than being forced to meet the man you once left before sunrise, it was being praised in front of him by his very beautiful, very innocent fiancée.I stood. My smile appeared automatically. “Mr. Bernadi,” I said, holding out my hand. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”Finally.The word sat on my tongue in a fake dress.Rhysand looked at my hand first.Then my face.He did not take it yet.One second.Two.Then Rhysand took my hand.His skin was warm.Damn him.Five years, one child, one business, and thousands of vendor emails later, my body still recognized that man’s touch like an old password I had never changed.To anyone watching, the handshake was brief.But his fingers squeezed mine lightly.Just lightly.Enough that Gracie would not notice. Enough to make my breat

Rhysand stayed silent.I remained standing beside the table, one hand on top of a stack of documents, the other holding a pen. A tiny, utterly useless weapon if a man as tall as Rhysand Bernadi decided to stand too close and breathe in a way that threatened economic stability.He slid one hand into his trouser pocket. “Security access,” he said at last. “For this wedding, every key vendor has to go through a background check before the final contract.”I looked at him like he had just said something that did not make the skin at the back of my neck painfully aware he still remembered the shape of my name without an honorific.“Yes,” I said, opening the security folder with a movement that was far too calm. “We’re used to working with vendor screenings. Florists, catering, production crew, lighting, transportation, all of them can be put on the vetting list.”“Not can. Will.”I gave him a thin smile. “I love it when men come into my office to explain verbs to me.”His eyes did not chang

A little after noon, my house smelled like garlic, butter, tomatoes surrendering elegantly in a pan, and one kid who should have changed clothes two hours ago but was still roaming around in his preschool uniform.“AIDEN.”“VROOOOOM!”“Aiden de Cruz, if those bike wheels touch my wall again, I’m going to send you to preschool alone in an Uber with an apology note for the driver.”He shot past the kitchen island on his little red bike, his chubby legs pedaling fast, his black fringe falling over his forehead, his preschool tie already crooked . God help me, his face looked far too handsome for a boy who had just nearly crashed into a barstool that cost as much as a sane person’s electric bill.“Mami, I’m a professional racer!”“You’re a professional at raising my blood pressure.”“That’s a sport too!”“He told me earlier that the hallway was Monaco.” Elma, sitting on the sofa while folding a pile of Aiden’s clothes fresh from the dryer, lifted a tiny pair of dinosaur-print pants.“Monac

Aiden was still chattering about his secret garage. Elma was still breathing with the peaceful ease of a woman who had not read the words off-site in a work message.But something inside my chest closed a drawer.Slowly.Click.Gracie.No doubt Rhysand had not written his name in big letters across the invitation to war. No. The man was not stupid. The man did not need to drag me there with his own hands when he could make the path look like work.Gracie was asking.Gracie trusted me.Gracie with her gardenia perfume and warm smile, Gracie who had laughed when I told her swans bite, Gracie who had hugged me as if I were not the woman who had once woken up in her fiancé’s bed five years ago and escaped before sunrise.I stared at the message until the letters began to look too neat.Santa Barbara estate.Private walkthrough.This afternoon.Rhysand will be there.I set my phone down on the countertop, then picked it up again because leaving the thing too far from my hand felt like leavi

Dinner unfolded the way every de Cruz family dinner did, which meant it was never really dinner. It was more like a talk show with food and emotional threats. Mama gave instructions from the iPad on how to cut an avocado. Papa asked whether my home security system had been updated. Javier complained about a meeting in Bogotá with mining people who, according to him, still believed email was witchcraft. Saba told us about a Stanford professor who wore ugly sandals while explaining energy geopolitics, as if his feet were not actively destroying his academic credibility.Elma, who had started the night trying to be polite, eventually reached for her third maduro and stopped pretending she was not part of this family.I sat in the middle of it all, feeding Aiden, feeding myself, laughing at the right moments, throwing in comments when necessary, dodging Saba’s questions with the kind of diplomatic skill that deserved its own line on my résumé.I took a breath and gave Aiden another bite be