The bakery glows from within, golden light spilling onto the darkening sidewalk. The line still stretches outside despite the late hour. Through the window, I catch a glimpse of her—moving with efficient grace behind the counter, smiling at a customer, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear with that unconscious gesture that has become painfully familiar.
For one insane moment, I consider ordering the car to stop. Consider walking into that bakery as if our last interaction didn't end with her ordering me out of her life. Consider crossing the distance between us and pulling her into my arms regardless of witnesses or consequences.
The intensity of the impulse terrifies me. I've built my success on calculated decisions, on emotional control, on never wanting anything or anyone badly enough to compromise my judgment.
Yet here I am, palm pressed against the window like a lovesick teenager, physically aching at the sight of a woman who wants nothing to do with me.
"Keep driving," I force myself to say. The words taste like ash.
We circle the block. Twice. Each pass allowing me a brief glimpse of her through the window—a punishment and reward simultaneously. By the third circuit, my driver's eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror, concern evident despite his professional detachment.
"Home," I instruct finally, the single word nearly choking me.
Back in the penthouse, I stand before the wall of windows, the city spread before me like a kingdom I no longer want. My phone burns in my pocket—her number memorized, the urge to call her, to hear her voice even if only to have her hang up on me, nearly overwhelming.
This isn't sustainable. This hollowness in my chest, this constant awareness of her absence, this pathetic circling of her bakery like a moth around flame—it's beneath me. Beneath the control and calculation that define me.
Yet I cannot stop.
I've never wanted anything I couldn't eventually acquire—through persistence, strategy, or sheer force of will. But Clara isn't a company to be purchased or a deal to be closed. She's a woman who has explicitly rejected my help, my influence, my presence in her life.
Respecting that should be the honorable choice. The right choice.
But tomorrow, I know with absolute certainty, I will find myself driving past Sweet Haven again. And the day after. And the day after that.
Until something breaks—her resolve or my control.
At this point, I no longer care which.
Rain hammers against the windshield, transforming the city into a blurry impressionist painting of streaked lights and indistinct shapes. I've been sitting here for twenty-three minutes, engine off, watching the CLOSED sign in Clara's bakerywindow like it might suddenly change its mind if I stare hard enough. The rational part of my brain—the part responsible for building an empire, for strategic decisions that altered markets, for the calculated control that defines me—is screaming that this is madness. The rest of me doesn't care.
Through the downpour, I can see movement inside—Clara's silhouette moving between counters, wiping down surfaces, performing the closing ritual I've memorized from Garrett's reports. In seven minutes, she'll check the front door lock, turn off the main lights, and disappear upstairs to her apartment. My window of opportunity is closing faster than multibillion-dollar acquisitions.
I should leave. She made her position clear: get out of her bakery, her business, her life. Three separate domains, all explicitly off-limits. Yet here I sit, watching her through rain and darkness like a stalker, like a man who's lost the rigid self-control that's defined him for decades.
Perhaps I have.
Without allowing myself further deliberation, I exit the car. Rain immediately soaks through my suit—a bespoke Italian creation now clinging to my shoulders like a second skin. Water streams down my face, into my eyes, plastering my hair to my forehead. I probably look deranged. I certainly feel it.
The distance to her door has never seemed longer. Each step gives my rational mind another opportunity to reassert control, to remind me of the humiliation of showing up uninvited, unwanted. To recall the fury in her eyes when she ordered me out of her life. To calculate the professional reputation damage if word spreads that Alexander Devereux stood in the rain outside a bakery like a lovesick teenager.
I ignore it all, driven by something more primal than reason, more essential than pride.
The lights inside flicker as she moves toward the back. Three minutes before she locks up. I rap on the glass sharply, the sound nearly drowned out by the drumming rain. For a moment, I think she hasn't heard. Then she emerges from behind the counter, frowning at the unexpected interruption.
When she sees me—soaked, disheveled, standing in a deluge like a man who's lost his mind—her expression transforms from annoyance to shock. She freezes midstep, one hand clutching a cleaning rag, the other rising unconsciously to her throat.
Neither of us moves for what feels like an eternity. Rain continues its relentless assault, pooling around my Italian leather shoes that cost more than some people's monthly rent. I make no effort to seek shelter, to appear anything other than what I am in this moment—a man stripped of pretense, of armor, of the careful calculation that's guided my every interaction.
Finally, she approaches the door. I expect her to gesture me away, to mouth "we're closed" through the glass, to draw the blinds against the sight of me. Instead, she turns the lock with a decisive click and pulls the door open just wide enough to speak.
"What are you doing here?" Her voice carries neither welcome nor warmth, but she hasn't slammed the door in my face. I count it as progress.
"I needed to see you." The simplicity of the statement belies the complexity of emotions behind it.
"We're closed." Her eyes sweep over me, taking in my drenched appearance. Something flickers in her expression—concern, perhaps, or simple bewilderment at the sight of Alexander Devereux looking like he just climbed out of a swimming pool fully clothed.
"I know." Water drips from my hair, my chin, my fingertips. I make no move to wipe it away. "Let me in, Clara. Please."
