"Your work." He turns to face me fully, leaning against the cabin housing. "The anger you've been carrying since you got here, it disappears when you talk about paint and pigments and centuries-old mysteries. You become someone else."
"I become myself." The words slip out before I can stop them. "That's who I am when I'm not being Enzo Mancini's daughter. When I'm not being watched or protected or hidden away. Just Sera. The woman who fixes broken beautiful things."
Silence grows between us. Not uncomfortable but weighted with something I can't name.
"I understand that," Ford says finally. "The need to be something other than what you came from."
"Is that why you're here? On this boat, in this town, living this life?"
"Partly." He moves to the stern, checking some piece of equipment I don't recognize. "After the Teams, after everything that happened, I needed to find out if there was anything left of me that wasn't built for violence. Turns out there was. Not much, but enough to build on."
"And what did you build?"
He looks out over the water, sunlight catching the lines around his eyes. "This. The boat. The charter business. A life small enough that I can hold all of it at once. No classified missions. No orders from people who see soldiers as expendable resources. Just me and the water and whatever fish are biting."
"It sounds lonely."
"It was." His gaze returns to mine. "Until five days ago."
My breath catches. The morning air suddenly feels thicker, warmer, despite the breeze coming off the marsh.
"Ford..."
"I know." His voice is rough. "You're a job. Your father's debt. The complication I didn't ask for and can't afford." He takes a step toward me, then stops himself. "But you're also the first person in four years who's made me want something more than survival."
I stand, my legs unsteady beneath.
"We can't do this."
"I know."
"You're here because you owe my father. I'm here because I had no choice. Whatever this is between us, it's circumstance. Proximity. Adrenaline."
"Is that what you think?" He's closer now. I don't remember him moving.
"It's what has to be true." I hold my ground even as my heart pounds against my ribs. "Because the alternative is that I'm actually feeling something for a man I met five days ago. A man whose only interest in me is paying off a twelve-year-old debt. A man who will hand me off to my father's people and never think about me again."
"You believe that?"
"I have to."
Ford stops close enough that I can see the individual threads of silver in his beard. Close enough that his scent wraps around me, salt and sun and that masculine warmth that's been haunting my sleep.
"And if I told you the debt stopped mattering somewhere around day three?"
"I'd say you're lying. To yourself or to me."
"I don't lie, Sera." His hand comes up, hovers near my jaw without touching. "That's one thing you can count on. Whatever else I am, whatever I've done, I don't lie."
"Then what is this? What are we doing?"
"I don't know." The admission seems to cost him. "I don't know what this is or where it leads or whether we're making the worst mistake of our lives. All I know is that when I look at you, I don't see a job anymore. I see a woman I want to know. A woman I want to..."
He trails off, his hand finally dropping to his side.
"Want to what?"
The question escapes before I can stop it. Before I can remind myself that I don't want to hear the answer. That hearing the answer will make everything more complicated than it already is.
