She doesn’t say anything further. The silence stretches between us uncomfortably. I expect her to argue. To defend herself with that sharp tongue of hers. To push back at my accusations with the same fire she’d shown me last night.
But she doesn’t.
She just sits there, staring at me with those dark eyes. The silence is more unsettling to me than her arguing would have been, and I’m momentarily caught off guard.
“Is that all?” She finally asks, her voice perfectly polite, perfectly in control. “Because if it is, I would like to get dressed and join Emmanuel downstairs.”
“Chloe —”
“I understand perfectly, Mr. Cierro.” She slides from the bed with careful poise. “You have made your position very clear. I’m a threat until proven otherwise. And my job is to care for Emmanuel as I wanted to do in the first place. Got it.”
Yes, but you’re missing the part where I can’t stop thinking about kissing you again. Where the idea of you being exactly what I fear you to be is at war within me. How watching you with my son makes me feel things I have no business feeling.
But I don’t say a word of any of what I am thinking because none of that matters.
“No,” I say instead, standing as well. “That covers it. I’m glad we understand each other.”
“Wonderful.” She heads toward the bathroom, her spine straight, her shoulders back, and head held high. “I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”
The bathroom door closes behind her with a firm click, and I hear the lock being engaged from within. The conjunction of sounds is somehow louder than a slam would have been.
I sit back down on the corner of the bed, staring at the closed door, running a hand through my hair in frustration.
What the hell just happened?
Chloe’s reaction was nothing like what I’d expected.
Why?
Instead, she’d given me silence. Compliance. A blank mask where there should have been a raging fire. Her refusal to fight feels more like a defeat than a victory. It feels wrong. All of it was wrong, only further confirming my suspicion that she is hiding something from me.
I stand up and head to my bag for a clean shirt and jeans, trying to ignore the uncomfortable feeling settling in my gut. I said what needed to be said. Made my position clear. Set boundaries that I should have established from the beginning.
It was right, a smart move. So why do I have an uncomfortable flutter in my chest telling me that I just made a terrible mistake?
Fifteen minutes later, the bathroom door opens, and Chloe emerges fully dressed — jeans, a dark green sweater that bringsout the warmth in her brown eyes, and her hair pulled up in a practical ponytail.
She looks composed. Professional. And completely unaffected. Moving about on her side of the bed, she gathers her things, refusing to look at me, refusing to acknowledge my presence where I sit at the desk watching her.
“Chloe —” I begin, really not sure what I’m about to say, when she cuts me off.
“Emmanuel will be wondering where we are.” Her tone is pleasant and impersonal. “We should probably get downstairs.”
Then she’s grabbing her things and heading out the door of the hotel room, and I’m left rushing to keep up with her. I run a hand through my hair as I follow her to the elevator, frustration building in my chest. The scent of her shampoo lingering in the air behind her.
Chapter Six
Chloe
“Welcome home, Emmanuel,” Omero says from the driver’s seat as the wrought-iron gates slowly swing open. Revealing a long, well-manicured private driveway, lined with trees on either side that have turned color and half fallen in the autumn cold.
The mansion rises from the landscape like a relic from another time, all stone and iron with perfectly manicured grounds. We’d been driving through increasingly affluent neighborhoods for the past ten minutes, winding through Staten Island’s Tod Hill area. Each estate wall higher than the last.
It is a sharp contrast to the high-rise penthouse I’d grown up in, or the old orphanage I’d called home the last ten years. Sure, I’d guessed that Basili was wealthy, given everything I’d learned. But nothing had prepared me for this.
Home.That single word echoes in my mind as I take in everything around me. This is Emmanuel’s home. Basili’s home.
That thought causes my stomach to do a flip.Basili… that kiss…
