“And Daniel?” I continued before she could deflect. “He’s a fool who threw away something valuable because he was too stupid to recognize what he had.”
Her eyes went bright with unshed tears. I wanted to reach across the space between us, pull her into my lap, and tell her every way Daniel had been wrong about her.
I stayed in my seat.
“Don’t cry,” I said. “You’ll ruin your makeup.”
She laughed, watery but real. “That’s what you’re worried about? My makeup?”
“I’m worried about many things.” I was being more honest than I had intended to be. “Your makeup seems manageable.”
“What else are you worried about?”
“Everything. Kurt Wilder retaliating. Daniel escalating. Henri’s strange reaction to you.” I didn’t speak all my thoughts about how someone had tried to kill her three days ago, and we still didn’t know who. That I was sitting in a private jet with an employee who pretended our conversation was about marketing research, even though we both knew it wasn’t.
The silence stretched between us, heavy with things neither of us were saying.
“You shouldn’t worry about me,” she said quietly.
I looked at her—really looked at her—and felt seventeen years of careful control slip another notch.
“It may seem this is about you,” I said. “But it isn’t. You know we’ve had our problems with the hotel.”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’m trying to figure out how to fix things without making a mess of everything we’ve built.”
“What if it ends up making a mess anyway?”
“Then I’ll handle it.” I held her gaze.
The words hung in the air. She didn’t look away, and neither did I. The jet hummed around us, carrying us toward the canyon, and every second that passed felt like standing on the edge of something I couldn’t see the bottom of.
She turned back to the window, but I caught the small smile on her lips. I noticed a slight relaxation in her shoulders, as if we had received an answer without needing to directly ask the question.
We flew in silence for a while. A comforting silence that somehow felt more intimate than talking.
We landed at Grand Canyon West Airport as the sun started its descent toward the horizon. A helicopter waited on the tarmac—white, sleek, and painted with the Olympus Royale name and logo—exactly what I’d arranged.
“You’re kidding,” Tashi said when she saw it.
“I never kid about marketing research.” I helped her out of the jet, my hand on her waist longer than strictly necessary. The warmth of her body, felt through the thin fabric of her dress, made my mind race. “Come on.”
Martinez, the pilot I’d used before for VIP tours, nodded as we approached. He was professional enough not to mention that I had never brought a woman here before.
We buckled in, put on our headsets, and the helicopter lifted off.
The Grand Canyon from above was impressive—bands of color carved by millions of years of erosion and an incomprehensible scale until you were inside it.
Then we descended below the rim.
The helicopter dropped into the canyon, and suddenly we were flying through layers of geological history. The walls rose around us in impossible verticality, striations of red, gold, and purple telling stories that predated human civilization by epochs.
Tashi’s hand found mine and squeezed tight.
I didn’t let go.
“This is insane,” she said through the headset.
