All Chapters of Only Her Touch : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The chandelier above the ballroom was too bright tonight. Alicia noticed that first, before she noticed anything else. She observed the way the light caught every crystal and threw it back in small, hard flashes, like the room itself was getting ready to applaud something. She smoothed the front of her gown and told herself she was imagining things. Three hundred guests filled the Vasquez Foundation's spring gala, and Alicia Fabian had planned nearly every detail of it herself. From the seating charts,to the string quartet, the exact shade of blush roses on each table, because pale pink photographed better than white under gold light. She knew this room. She had built her whole life inside rooms exactly like it."You look tense," said a voice at her elbow.Alicia turned to find her mother watching her. Not Alicia's mother by blood, never that, but the only mother she had ever known. Mrs. Vasquez wore sapphires at her throat and an expression that gave away nothing at all. "I'm fine,"

Alicia stared at the message until the words stopped looking like words and started looking like a dare.‘I know what happened to you tonight. And I know exactly who's responsible. If you want them to pay for it, Miss Alicia, I suggest you don't go to sleep just yet.’Every instinct she'd spent sixteen years sharpening told her to be careful. A stranger. A number with no name attached. A man half the city whispered about and none of them seemed to actually know. Calling him back was reckless in a way Alicia Fabian simply wasn't supposed to be. She had built her entire life on never being reckless, on always knowing exactly where the exits were before she walked into a room. But the room she'd walked into tonight hadn't had an exit. They'd taken that from her too. She pressed call before she could talk herself into caution. It rang twice. She counted, because counting was easier than noticing how fast her heart was going."You're braver than I expected," Roberto said, by way of hello.

For a long moment, Alicia said nothing at all. The words hung in the glass room between them “ marry me, not for love, not yet” and she found herself doing the thing she always did when the ground shifted too fast beneath her: she went still, and she watched, and she let her mind do the work her heart wasn't ready for yet. Roberto didn't fill the silence. He simply stood there, hands loose at his sides, letting her look at him for as long as she needed to, as if he understood that a woman who had just lost her name, her home, and her family's protection in the span of six hours deserved the dignity of taking her time before answering something this large."You don't know me," Alicia said finally. "I know enough." "You know I held a stranger's wrist to stop a fight. That's not a foundation for a marriage, Mr. Alvarez. That's an afternoon of good instincts." "It's more than most people bring to a marriage," Roberto said, and there was no humor in it, only a kind of tired honesty that to

The diner Ferreira chose was the kind of place that didn't belong anywhere near the world Alicia had grown up in. A narrow, fluorescent-lit room a few blocks from the harbor, with cracked vinyl booths and a coffee machine that hissed every few minutes like it was tired of being useful. Roberto had wanted her to stay behind. Alicia had made it very clear, in a tone that left no room for negotiation, that she hadn't agreed to be his fiancée in order to be left in a tower while decisions were made about her future without her in the room. He hadn't argued for long. She suspected, already, that he wasn't a man who enjoyed losing arguments, but that he recognized when one wasn't worth the energy of fighting. Ferreira was already seated in the back booth when they arrived, a folder pressed flat beneath both hands like he was afraid it might try to leave without him. He was older than Alicia expected. Sixty, maybe older, with the kind of tired, careful eyes that belonged to a man who had sp

The moment the car doors opened, the world became noisy. Camera flashes stuttered white against the dark street, a wall of shouted questions colliding into each other until none of them were separate words anymore, just a single pressing wave of sound. Alicia had spent years standing beside the Vasquez family at events exactly like this one, always a careful step behind, always positioned to be useful rather than seen. She had never once been the reason the cameras were here. She was tonight. "Stay close," Roberto murmured, close to her ear, his hand finding the small of her back. Not gripping, just present, a steady point of contact she found herself grateful for despite every instinct that told her she shouldn't need it. "Let them look. Don't let them see you flinch.""I don't flinch," Alicia said, and meant it, though her pulse was hammering hard enough that she could feel it in her throat. They'd barely cleared the first line of photographers when Mrs. Vasquez stepped out from