Chapter Six

Living Together

He came back on a Tuesday.

I didn't know he was home until I heard the elevator open. I was in the living room at the time, fabric swatches and sketches covering the dining table — the flat wide surface was the best workspace I'd found, and since Lucas wasn't here to mind, I'd spread out.

I was in the middle of pinning a toile when the doors opened and Lucas Lancaster walked into our shared life for the first time.

He stopped when he saw the table.

I stopped when I saw him.

He looked like he'd stepped off a transatlantic flight and still managed to appear like a man in complete control of every room he entered. Jacket over his arm. Top button open. The single concession to twelve hours in the air.

His eyes moved over the table. The swatches. The sketches. A half-constructed bodice pinned to a dress form in the corner.

"The dining table," he said.

"I'll move it for meals."

A pause. "It's fine."

He set down his bag. Looked at the dress form.

I waited for the diplomatic suggestion that I set up a proper studio somewhere else in the apartment — a guest room, perhaps. Something contained.

Instead he crossed to the table, picked up one of the fabric swatches — midnight blue silk, with a hand-painted grain pattern I'd been testing — and held it to the window light.

Something in his expression shifted. Brief. Hard to read.

"Lancaster Fashion is relaunching in six months," he said.

"I read about it." I watched him. "Congratulations."

"We're looking for a creative director." He set the swatch down. "Someone who understands luxury without performing it."

I kept my voice even. "I have my own studio."

"I know."

"Then you know that's not something I'd walk away from."

"I'm not asking you to walk away from it." He met my eyes. "I'm asking if you'd consider a conversation."

A conversation. Not a command, not an assumption — a question. From Lucas Lancaster.

I filed that away somewhere.

"I'll think about it," I said.

He nodded once and went to change. No pressure. No follow-up.

Dinner was Mrs. Chen's doing — she'd prepared for his return without being asked. We sat at the cleaned table. He ate with focused efficiency. I ate and watched the city out the window.

The silence wasn't comfortable. But it wasn't hostile either.

It was two separate people, in the same space, not yet sure what the rules were.

"Ground rules," I said, halfway through the meal.

He looked up.

"We share the kitchen. I work in the dining room during the day. I won't leave anything in your study. You don't touch my sketches." I paused. "Does that work?"

He looked at me for a moment.

"Yes," he said.

We finished dinner.

That night I lay awake and listened to the apartment settle — the faint sounds of another person present in it. Him moving to his room. A light under his door at midnight when I went to get water.

Still working.

I went back to bed and stared at the ceiling.

He notices things, I thought. The swatch. The light.

I fell asleep before I could finish the thought — which was probably for the best.

Chapter Seven

A Fever Night

I didn't tell anyone I felt unwell. That's a habit from years of running a studio on a skeleton budget — you don't stop until you physically can't move. By the time I understood that the headache and the chill weren't going away, I was already on the floor of the studio bathroom.

Lily found me. Lily called the penthouse.

I'd told her to call a car, not a person. I found out later that she hadn't.

I was on the studio couch with a blanket when Lucas arrived. He was still in a suit. It was four in the afternoon — he'd been in meetings. I know because I heard him on the phone as he walked in, ending a call in a way that suggested the person on the other end was not pleased.

He crouched down in front of me.

His hand went to my forehead without hesitation. No preamble. Just his palm, cool and certain, against my skin.

"One-oh-two," he said, like he had a thermometer built in.

"I'm fine."

"You're not." He stood. Looked at Lily. "Do you have ibuprofen?"

He managed the next four hours with the same manner he managed everything — efficiently, without fuss, without comfort that felt performed. He got me to the car. He got me to the penthouse. He found the medicine in the bathroom cabinet, brought water, adjusted the thermostat.

He didn't flutter. He didn't hover. He just handled things.

By midnight my fever had climbed instead of fallen. I surfaced from a restless half-sleep to find the room dark and Lucas sitting in the chair by the window, a document open on his tablet.

"You're still here," I said. My voice came out rougher than I intended.

"You're still sick."

"I don't need — you don't have to—"

"Sophia." Quiet. Final. "Go back to sleep."

I looked at him for a moment. In the low light he looked different — less composed, somehow. Or maybe it was the fever.

"You had a meeting," I said. "I heard you cancel something."

A pause. "It wasn't important."

Something about that sentence — the flatness of it, the complete absence of resentment — made something shift behind my ribs. I closed my eyes before my face could say something I hadn't decided yet.

He crossed the room once more to check my temperature — his hand again, efficient, impersonal. Except that he didn't move it immediately. A moment longer than necessary.

Then he went back to his chair.

I woke at six to gray morning light and the sound of rain.

He was still there.

Asleep in the chair. Fully dressed. Head tilted slightly back. The tablet dark in his hand.

He'd stayed the entire night.

I lay very still and looked at him and tried not to think about what it meant that the sight of him sleeping in that chair made my chest do something it had absolutely no business doing.

Remember what it is, I told myself.

But looking at him, I was already less certain.

Chapter Eight

The Return

The Meridian Fashion Preview was the kind of event I normally loved — a hundred designers competing for a hundred buyers' attention, the air thick with ambition and perfume and the particular high of work you've made with your hands on display for strangers to judge.

Tonight I was distracted.

Lily and I were at the far end of the venue when I saw him.

Ethan Carter moved through the crowd like he'd rehearsed it — which, knowing him, he had. Tall, easy smile, the kind of confidence that reads as charm until you've seen what it conceals. He was heading toward me with the particular focus of a man who'd decided something.

I considered leaving.

I didn't leave.

"Soph." His voice landed like a hand on my shoulder. Familiar. Presumptuous.

"Ethan." I kept mine level.

"You look—" He exhaled. "God. You look incredible."

"Thank you. Enjoy the preview." I turned.

"Wait." His hand caught my arm. Not hard. But there. "Please. Just five minutes."

Lily, beside me, had gone very still.

I turned back because walking away felt like running, and I was done running.

"I made a mistake," he said. "The biggest mistake of my life, and I know you know that." His voice dropped. "I never stopped thinking about you. Not for a day."

"Ethan—"

"You're married to a contract, Sophia. Everyone knows what that is." His eyes held mine, and for a second I saw the man I'd loved at twenty-one — the earnest version, before ambition calcified him. "It doesn't have to be permanent."

I was composing my reply when I felt it.

A hand at my waist.

Warm. Steady. Laid there with the absolute certainty of ownership.

I hadn't heard him arrive. I hadn't known he was coming.

Lucas stood at my shoulder. Not in front of me — beside me. In the particular way of someone who is not protecting you from a threat but simply making a fact known.

"Carter." One word. Silk over steel.

The warmth in Ethan's face closed off. His hand dropped from my arm.

"Lancaster." He managed a neutral tone. Barely.

Lucas didn't say anything else. He didn't need to. His hand at my waist said everything his voice declined to.

Ethan looked between us once. Then he nodded, something shuttering in his expression, and moved back into the crowd.

Lucas's hand stayed at my waist for three more seconds. Then it withdrew.

I turned to look at him.

"You didn't have to do that," I said, keeping my voice quiet.

"He was bothering my wife." Flat. Final. Like it was simply a statement of logic.

He turned his attention to the nearest display piece — a sculptural jacket in architectural white — and studied it with genuine focus, as if the entire interaction had already been filed and closed.

I stood beside him and tried to identify the feeling that had taken up residence in my chest since the moment his hand found my waist.

My wife, he'd said.

Two words. Zero sentiment. Pure contract.

I had absolutely no explanation for why they didn't feel like nothing.