جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 120

My father’s best friend.Rolf~Eva held my gaze without flinching. She did not look down, or offer the small nod of acceptance that pack discipline required. The silence between us extended while she stood there and refused to agree. That refusal shook me harder than any argument she could have spoken. I kept my expression blank, but something in my chest tightened at the proof that every boundary I set only made her more determined. The corridor remained empty. The warning hung between us, unanswered, and the unsettled feeling it left behind stayed with me after I stepped aside and let her pass.Night had fully taken over the resort when the knock came.Rosemary did not wait for permission. She stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and crossed the room with the same elegance she always carried. The dress she wore was already half-undone at the shoulder. She reached me before I could speak, mouthed against my neck, and pushed my jacket off in one motion.“I told you I would hav

My father’s best friend.Eva~My stomach contracted. “We argued,” I told him, smoothing my palms over my dress. “It’s over.”“It didn’t seem over from where I was standing,” my father replied, and the patience in his tone warned me that he already knew I was withholding more. “You’ve been different since we arrived. You disappear, and also avoid Mac. You barely speak to anyone unless you have to.”I lowered my eyes. “Mac keeps asking what he did wrong.”My father paused.“And what did he do wrong?”“Nothing.” The answer came too fast and I bit my tongue.My father studied me more carefully. “Then what happened?”For one crazy second, I considered telling him part of the truth. But not Rolf’s name. Could Never be that. Maybe I could tell him there was someone else, and maybe that would be enough.But what if he asked me who the new man was?I imagined lying again. I imagined the moment he eventually discovered that the man occupying his daughter’s thoughts was the friend he trusted more

My father’s best friend.Eva~Rosemary’s fingers moved along Rolf’s arm again while his attention remained on my wrist, and the contradiction challenged every explanation I had been building since I left the restroom. I had spent the afternoon questioning whether desire had made me read too much into his reactions, but now, with another woman beside him and half the summit gathered around us, his attention had gone directly to the place his fingers had marked. He remembered what happened, and that knowledge should have comforted me, but remembering was not the same as choosing. Rolf could stare at my wrist all evening and still leave the hall beside Rosemary, just as he could remember how close we had been, remember the question he had almost answered, and continue keeping me away whenever other people were watching.Rosemary touched him again, and when he finally faced the speaker at the front, resentment moved through me before I could stop it because the anger was never truly abo

My father’s best friend.Eva~My father said Rolf’s name, and the secret I had been protecting was suddenly one answer away from becoming his problem too. His eyes moved toward the head of the table, where Rolf was speaking with another Alpha, and I understood that if I allowed him to leave his chair now, whatever happened next the entire room would be aware.“Dad, please don’t do this here,” I begged. “If you want answers from me, ask me, but don’t make a scene before you even know what happened.”He looked at me again, and disappointment had replaced the concern he had shown earlier in the summit. “Then tell me everything so I don’t have to walk over there and ask him myself.”There was no answer that would satisfy him without exposing more than Rolf had ever admitted. “Nothing physical has happened between us,” I said. “He hasn’t kissed me, he hasn’t made promises, and he hasn’t tried to start anything behind your back.”My father gazed at me while the muscles near his cheek shifte

My father’s best friend.Rolf~Rosemary was waiting outside the main room, and after one look at me, she moved toward a section of the corridor where guests would not overhear us.“I watched Eva leave dinner with you, then Petrova followed, and she came back alone while you stayed inside with him,” she said. “Whatever is happening is becoming visible, and I need to know whether I am standing beside a man who is preparing to replace me with her.”“Our arrangement has never promised either of us permanence, Rosemary, and if what exists between us no longer works for you, then you have every right to end it.”“That is not the only problem, because my leaving affects more than the two of us.”I knew where the conversation was going before she explained it, although I let her continue because I wanted to hear exactly how far she intended to push.“The coastal contacts supporting these negotiations came through me, and some of the northern trade houses agreed to meet because I put my name b