The waiter appears.
Caleb already has a scotch in front of him. I ordered the same and added sparkling water because a clear head is an asset. And tonight, I don’t trust mine.
Caleb watches the server leave and then studies me the way he studies numbers, without emotion, with intent.
“You asked Rowan for a full report,” he says. "You have been digging into the pretty dancer."
I try to control the urge to growl, a reaction that is foreign to me.
I don’t bother denying it. “I asked Rowan to do his job.”
Caleb’s mouth twitches, the closest he gets to amusement. “And are you continuing to use the information even after she declined?”
I take a slow breath. “When have you known me to walk away from a negotiation?”
“You spooked her.”
“I underestimated her pride,” I say, and my tone is too calm for a statement that should irritate me.
Caleb tips his glass slightly, like he’s acknowledging a point made in a meeting. “You underestimatedher.”
Damn him, but it is true. I saw her at face value, in the details of her file, and I underestimated the person built from those facts, those events. I should feel rejected. That would be simpler. Cleaner. A bruise I could heal and move on from.
Instead, I feel…outplayed?
Not in strategy. Not in intellect.
In something unfamiliar.
In the fact that she walked away without needing to win. Without needing to take anything from me. Without eventryingto negotiate.
It’s the first time in a long time I’ve watched someone refuse a solution they needed.
Which means she didn’t see it as a solution at all.
I don't know what to make of that.
The scotch arrives. I take one sip. The burn steadies me, but it doesn’t erase the image of her eyes, brown with flecks of gold, bright as struck flint when she got angry.
She’d looked… alive. Like, there is a fire within her that has been extinguished for far too long.
The thought is intrusive, out of character for me.
Caleb’s gaze flicks down, then back up. “What’s next?”
I don’t answer immediately. Because there are two answers.
The logical one: revise approach, reduce pressure, rebuild trust, offer terms more gradually.
The other is a sensation I don’t yet have a name for. A tightening, low and possessive, every time I picture her walking away from me and out into the night like she belonged to no one. Like she could belong to someone else.
No one takes care of Lucy Bennett.
And that should not matter to me.
But it does.
Before I can respond, a shadow falls across the table.
