She holds up the sequined jacket again, waving it like a flag.“If we die in here, I want it known that your father once wore this voluntarily.”
Callum’s lips twitch.“Keir wasn’t my father.”
Isla lifts an eyebrow.“Apparently, he had questionable taste.”
Callum snorts, laughter breaking through his grimness for one breath.“God help us, you’re right.”
Isla’s smile fades as quickly as it arrives.
She looks down at the photograph in her hand, at Keir’s face as he stares down at newborn Isla like the world has shifted.
Then she looks at Callum.
The warmth from the kiss is still there, hovering under her skin like a bruise.
“You said that isn’t the look of a man who never wanted to see his daughter again,” she says quietly.
Callum meets her gaze, steady and certain.“It’s not.”
Isla’s voice trembles.“Then someone stole that from me.”
Callum’s jaw tightens.“Yes.”
The room falls silent again.
Not empty silence.
Loaded.
The kind that shifts the air, changes the shape of everything.
Isla presses the photograph to her chest once more and closes her eyes.
She isn’t leaving the castle.
Not now.
Not until she knows exactly who decided her father’s love was not enough.
And why.
Chapter15
The storage room grows quieter the longer they stay in it.
Not empty, never empty, but hushed in the way old places get when they’re listening.The walls hold sound differently here, swallowing words instead of echoing them back, as if the castle itself is deciding which truths are worth repeating.
Callum shifts his weight, careful not to brush against Isla.The proximity is dangerous.Not because of the kiss, though that still burns in his mind, but because of everything that followed it.The quiet.The way neither of them pretended it hadn’t mattered.
That kiss, he felt certain, had scorched his clothing, and he just couldn’t see it yet.
Callum has lived most of his adult life managing distance.Knowing how close to stand.When to pull back.When to stay silent rather than risk the wrong thing slipping out.
This room makes that discipline harder.
Isla kneels at one of the lower shelves, methodical again, her spine straight, shoulders squared.She’s rebuilt herself since the kiss.He recognizes the change now, the way she locks emotion behind precision.Control as armor.Ignoring him and focusing on the mission at hand.
He doesn’t interrupt.
