I swing my legs over the side of the bed, feet touching the cool floor, and pull on my boxer briefs scattered there. My body aches—in the best way—from every mark we left on each other, from last night’s hunger and tender vows. From downstairs comes that familiar chorus: Parker’s laughter, Jace’s dry commentary, Cal’s baritone retort. The music of family, of home, of something I never believed I’d deserve.
I take a deep breath and head for the stairs, letting myself believe that maybe—I might just be worth keeping too.
31
PARKER
The conference room smells like expensive leather and old money—mahogany panels that have absorbed decades of cigar smoke and quiet power plays, air conditioning that’s always slightly too cold. I sit at the long table with Charles at the head, Jace beside me to my right, his presence warm and solid. Ryan Matthews sits directly across from me, flanked by Tom and another administrator whose name I can never remember.
Jace’s hand rests on my thigh under the table—casual, possessive, hidden from view by the polished mahogany. His thumb traces lazy circles against the fabric of my skirt, a constant reminder of what we are to each other even as we sit here pretending to be nothing more than colleagues.
It’s been a week since everything changed. A week since I stopped running. A week of waking up tangled in their arms, learning what it means to be loved by three men who see all of me—the broken parts, the scared parts, the parts I’ve kept hidden even from myself.
Friday night I stayed at their place. Saturday too. The boys were having so much fun with their cousins—Mom teachingthem card tricks while Lottie painted her and Sienna’s nails in sparkly blue, Jimmy showing my boys how to throw a proper punch (which Charles was less thrilled about), Noah and Liam engaging them in epic Nerf wars—that I couldn’t bring myself to call them home early. Sunday we’d all had dinner together—me, Jace, Cal, Silas, Charles, Sienna, and all the kids—and it felt like family. Like belonging. Like maybe this impossible thing could actually work. Hopefully. We’d have to be honest about our relationship and the reactions could go either way.
But right now, sitting in this conference room with Jace’s hand on my thigh and Ryan’s eyes tracking my every movement, reality feels sharply different.
“Before we get into new business,” Charles says, glancing between me and Jace, “let’s review where we are with our key partnerships. Parker, Jace—you’ve both been meeting with the Dents, Ramirezes, and McCoys over the past week. What’s the temperature?”
I pull up my notes on my tablet, grateful for something concrete to focus on. Jace’s fingers still against my thigh, but he doesn’t move his hand. Just holds. Grounds.
“The Dents are stable,” I begin. “Their restaurant group continues to perform well—five establishments, all showing legitimate profit margins that make them useful for our purposes.” I don’t say laundering out loud, even though everyone in this room knows what I mean. “Robert Dent is professional, reasonable. His son Marcus is eager to prove himself but needs supervision. The relationship is solid.”
“Agreed,” Jace adds, his voice steady. “They’re invested in maintaining the partnership. No red flags from a security perspective.”
“The Ramirezes?” Charles prompts.
“Maria Ramirez is sharp,” I say, and there’s genuine respect in my voice. “Her luxury car dealership network is performing above projections, and her political connections are exactly as valuable as advertised. She’s got three city council members, a state senator, and a federal judge in her pocket—all cultivated over years of careful relationship building.”
I flip to another screen on my tablet. “During our meeting, I observed that she’s protective of her territory but open to collaboration if the terms are right. She doesn’t waste time on posturing. She knows her worth and expects others to recognize it. I recommended we bring her in on the waterfront development deal. Her connections could smooth the permitting process significantly.”
Ryan’s eyes aren’t on my tablet. They’re on my mouth as I speak, watching my lips form words with an attention that feels too intimate for a business meeting. When I glance his way, he doesn’t look away immediately—just holds my gaze for a beat too long before dropping his attention back to his own tablet with a slight smile.
Jace’s hand tightens fractionally on my thigh. He noticed.
“However,” I continue, forcing my attention back to my notes, “there was something during the Ramirez meeting that caught my attention. Their head accountant—Marcus Chen’s counterpart on their side—presented clean numbers, professional demeanor, but there were tells.”
Charles leans forward slightly. “What kind of tells?”
“Repetitive phrasing when discussing quarterly projections. ‘As I mentioned’ used four times in a ten-minute presentation.Unnecessary hedging language—’I believe,’ ‘it appears,’ ‘from what I can see’—when presenting hard data that should be definitive.” I pull up my behavioral notes. “He also had a consistent physical tick—smoothing his tie knot every time Maria asked him a direct question about cash flow. And his breathing pattern changed when we discussed the clubs specifically. Faster, shallower. Not enough to be obvious, but enough to register.”
“You think he’s hiding something?” Tom asks.
“I think he’s nervous about something,” I correct. “Whether that’s embezzlement, creative accounting, or just general anxiety about presenting to us, I can’t say without more information. But my read is that there’s something in those numbers that doesn’t add up, and he knows it.”
Ryan looks up from his tablet again, and this time his gaze travels from my face down to my throat, lingering at the open collar of my blouse before returning to meet my eyes. His tongue touches his bottom lip briefly—thoughtful, maybe, or something else. Then his thumb smooths over his own bottom lip as a slight smirk plays at the corners of his mouth.
The look is calculated. Flirtatious in a way that’s just subtle enough to have plausible deniability, not so obvious that Charles would notice across the table. But I notice. And based on the way Jace’s fingers have started tracing a slow, deliberate line along my outer thigh—up toward my hip, then back down—he noticed too.
“That’s an excellent observation,” Charles says, pulling my attention back. “And it leads directly into what Ryan’s uncovered. Ryan?”
Ryan straightens slightly, clearly pleased to have Charles’s approval. But when he starts speaking, his eyes keep drifting back to me. Not to my face. To my lips. My throat. The curve of my shoulder.
“There’s been a discrepancy in funds from three Dent establishments over the past two months,” he says, his finger sliding across the tablet screen to highlight columns of numbers. He’s cleaned up since the funeral—fresh haircut, tailored suit, the desperate edge gone from his eyes. “Roughly two hundred thousand total. Small enough to miss in individual audits, but the pattern suggests systematic skimming.”
My earlier warm feelings about the Dents evaporate. Charles leans forward, elbows on the table. “Do we have a suspect?”
“Martin Chen. He manages inventory across all three locations.” Ryan pulls up a personnel file, but his gaze flicks to me as he does it—quick, assessing, like he’s checking to see if I’m impressed by his detective work. “Been with the organization for eight years. No prior issues until recently.”
