He standsbefore me like something washed up by the storm—drenched, disheveled, stripped of his usual perfect composure. Water drips steadily from his clothes onto my clean floor, forming a spreading puddle around his expensive ruined shoes. I've never seen Alexander Devereux looking anything less than immaculate, his appearance as controlled as everything else in his life. This version—hair plastered to his forehead, suit clinging to his frame, eyes raw with an emotion I'm afraid to name—terrifies me more than his usual calculated perfection.
"Five minutes are up," I whisper again, but make no move to enforce the deadline.
The word "love" still hangs in the air between us, impossible to unhear or dismiss. My first instinct was to reject it—how could he love me when he barely knows me? But then he recited details about my life that no one should know, intimate habits and routines that revealed a level of observation far beyond casual interest. It should feel invasive, creepy, a violation of privacy that proves everything my friends warned me about.
Instead, I find myself unsettled by the emotion behind his surveillance—not calculation but genuine interest in who I amwhen no one is watching. Not just the parts I choose to show, but the small vulnerabilities I keep hidden. The Sunday night bank balance checks. The herbs I grow despite my fear of heights. The monthly visits to my mother that I've never mentioned to him.
A violent shiver runs through him, breaking my paralysis.
"You're freezing," I say, stating the obvious. "Wait here."
I disappear into the back room, returning with the emergency clothes I keep for when baking disasters require a midday change—an oversized sweatshirt and worn pants—both of which where my father’s. I thrust them at him wordlessly.
"Bathroom's through there," I say, pointing. "Change before you catch pneumonia. I'll make coffee."
He takes the clothes without comment, though something like relief flickers in his eyes at not being immediately ejected back into the storm. The simple domesticity of the moment—offering dry clothes, making coffee—creates an intimacy I'm not prepared for. This isn't Alexander Devereux, billionaire tycoon with boundary issues. This is just a man, soaking wet and vulnerable, standing in my bakery looking at me like I hold his fate in my hands.
Maybe I do.
While he changes, I prepare coffee with mechanical precision, grateful for the familiar routine that requires no emotional processing. The rain continues its assault on the windows, transforming the world outside into a watery blur that seems to isolate us in our own private universe. The coffee machine hisses and bubbles, filling the silence with comforting white noise.
When he emerges from the bathroom, I nearly laugh despite myself. The sweatshirt stretches across his shoulders, the sleeves ending well above his wrists. The pants hit mid-calf, creating the impression of a giant who accidentally shrunk his laundry.
"I look absurd," he says, accurately assessing the situation.
"You do." I hand him a mug of coffee, our fingers brushing briefly in the exchange. "But marginally better than a drowned rat in Brioni."
A ghost of a smile touches his lips at the callback to our earlier exchange. He cradles the mug between his palms like it's offering warmth beyond the physical, eyes never leaving my face.
"You should have told me you were having me watched," I say, cutting through the growing tension. "All those details about my life—they're not yours to collect without my knowledge."
He doesn't deny it or defend himself. "You're right."
The simple acknowledgment catches me off guard. I'd prepared for justification, for the same confident certainty that his actions were for my benefit regardless of my feelings. This immediate acceptance of wrongdoing is new territory.
"Why did you?" I press, needing to understand.
He considers the question, steam from the coffee rising between us. "At first, it was standard due diligence. I don't enter any relationship—business or personal—without complete information."
"And later?"
"Later..." He looks down at the coffee, as if gathering courage. "Later it became something else. A way to know you when you wouldn't let me close. A connection, even if one-sided."
"That's..." I struggle to find the right word. "Complicated."
"I'm not defending it," he says quietly. "Just explaining it. I've never—" He stops, frustration crossing his features. "I'm not accustomed to wanting someone beyond my reach. To caring about someone's thoughts, habits, preferences with no strategic purpose."
I take a sip of my own coffee, buying time as I process his words. The surveillance still feels like a violation, but themotivation behind it is more complex than simple control. There's a loneliness in his explanation that catches at something in my chest—the image of Alexander Devereux, alone in his penthouse, reading reports about my herb garden and Sunday night worries because he couldn't experience them directly.
"Why come tonight?" I ask. "Why now?"
"Because I couldn't stay away anymore." The simple honesty in his voice strips away my defenses more effectively than any calculated charm. "Because seeing your picture in the paper, driving past the bakery without entering—it was becoming unbearable."
I study him over the rim of my mug—this version of Alex I've never seen before. His hair is drying in unruly waves, so different from the perfect control he usually maintains. The oversized sweatshirt softens his usual intimidating presence. But it's his eyes that truly undo me—storm-gray and unguarded, watching me with a naked need he's not bothering to disguise or manage.
"I don't know what to do with you," I admit, the words escaping before I can censor them.
"You don't have to do anything," he says. "Just…don't send me away. Not yet. Not tonight."
