Page 29 of Accidental Alliance

Her face is turned away, angled slightly toward the traffic below, but I can still make out the soft line of her cheek and the delicate slope of her shoulder, the impossible familiarity of the way she holds herself, confident even in an unfamiliar place like this one.

Relief hits first so suddenly, it nearly buckles my knees.

My lungs unlock in one ragged pull of air, my vision blurring for a heartbeat.

I actually sway where I stand and catch myself with one hand brushing the wall beside the entryway to keep myself upright. She is here.

She’s alive.

Real and breathing and close enough to touch.

Why is she here?

She should have known better than to come back to me.

I know what I am. Men like me do not get softness without punishment.

We do not get to lose ourselves in bright, fearless girls with clever mouths and believe for even one second that the darkness trailing behind us will stop at the bedroom door.

Yet here she is, back inside the lion’s den.

I take a step forward anyway, careful, as though one wrong movement might shatter the fragile reality of her standing in my home.

My shoes make almost no sound on the hardwood, but she stiffens all the same. It is small, the tightening through her shoulders barely there, but I catch it all the same as if she had flinched.

Every part of me is suddenly too aware of the exhaustion dragging at my limbs and the cold dampness still clinging to my coat from the rain outside.

My eyes adjust the closer I get to her, filling in what shadows had first concealed.

She is wearing all black—a simple dark blouse and fitted slacks, elegant in that effortless way that always makes her look impeccable. Her hair falls down her back in loose chestnut waves, half obscuring the line of her neck.

Both arms are wrapped around her midsection, tugging tighter around her frame when I finally stop behind her.

My chest tightens until it hurts. The instinct to go to her is primitive in how hard it tugs at me to close the distance between us and pull her away from the glass and into me.

To feel the proof of her beneath my hands and press my mouth to her temple, neck, anywhere I can reach, and tell her the one truth that actually matters—that for some impossible reason, the world has handed me something I do not deserve and would kill to keep.

“Isabella,” I murmur.

She closes her eyes. I know she does even before she turns because I see the slight dip of her lashes against her cheek in her profile and the way her mouth tightens right after. Slowly, she turns to face me.

She is beautiful still, that much is inevitable. Grief cannot rob her of that. But there is something altered in her now, an invisible thread pulled too tight.

Her face is pale beneath the city glow, her eyes shadowed, the skin beneath them faintly dark as if sleep has become a stranger just like it has for me.

Her mouth, that clever mouth I know too well, is set in a line that looks composed until I notice the strain of it around the edges of her lips.

For a long moment, neither of us speaks.

My voice feels strained when I finally manage, “You shouldn’t be here.”

The words come out harsher than I intend for them to. In all honesty, I don’t even know why I say them. While true, they are the furthest thing from what I want.

Her expression flickers, not quite from pain, but something close to it.

“No,” she says softly. “I probably shouldn’t be.”

Her gaze holds mine. In that moment, I can see what the last three days have done to her too.