CHAPTER TWO — THE QUEEN SLAYS THE KING (2)

He was thinking about a hand.

Small. Warm. Impossible.

He had touched thousands of hands. Business hands, political hands, the clammy hands of men begging for mercy and the cold hands of women offering themselves for advantage. Every one of them had been a transaction.

Elena Valentine's hand had been a catastrophe.

His shadow-blood had reacted. Not the way it reacted in a negotiation—coiling, reading, exploiting. It had reacted the way a drowning man reacts to air.

Get a grip, he told himself, and his own voice in his head sounded remarkably like Jason's.

"Boss," Jason said, appearing at his elbow with two glasses of champagne and the resigned air of a man who had long ago accepted that his job description included emotional babysitting. "You're doing the stare again."

"I'm not doing the stare."

"You're staring at the woman who's staring at the woman who's staring at you. That's a chain of staring. It's inefficient. You have a board meeting in the morning."

"I'm aware of my schedule."

"Then you're also aware you've lost two billion dollars and you haven't once mentioned the loss. That's not business. That's a crush."

Kaelan turned his head very slowly, and Jason, to his credit, did not flinch. The man had survived four years of Kaelan Isos's silent disapproval; he'd developed the armor of a creature that could no longer be startled.

"I don't have crushes," Kaelan said.

"You watched her exit for six seconds at the auction. I counted."

"You counted wrong."

"You flexed your hand four times when you got in the car. I count that as replaying the touch."

Kaelan said nothing.

"I'm just saying," Jason pressed on, emboldened by a champagne flute and a total lack of self-preservation, "if you're going to wage a decade-long war against a woman you clearly find fascinating, you could at least pick a war that doesn't involve me calculating your heart rate from a spreadsheet."

"You're not calculating my heart rate from a spreadsheet."

"I am. It's in the notes app. I titled it 'Project: Boss Has a Pulse.'"

For three seconds, Kaelan Isos—the man who had made grown men cry in boardrooms, who had liquidated a rival's dynasty over a bad martini, who had never once in his adult life been caught off guard—had absolutely no response.

Then he said, very quietly, "Delete that note."

"Sure, boss." Jason raised his glass. "Right after you admit you're not going to stop thinking about her all night."

* * *

The storm hit Manhattan at 10:47 p.m., the way New York storms do—fast, furious, and completely unconcerned with your plans.

Elena had planned to leave at 10:45.

She stood in the gala's marble portico, watching rain turn the city into a smear of gold and black, and felt the universe laughing at her. Her driver was stuck in traffic three blocks away. Her heels were designed for applause, not puddles. And behind her, the party was still going, warm and glittering and full of people who would love to see the Golden Girl of the Valentine empire look even slightly flustered.

She would rather wade through the Hudson.

She was squaring her shoulders to do exactly that when a black sedan pulled up to the curb with the silent, predatory smoothness of something that had been waiting for her.

The rear window rolled down.

Kaelan Isos looked out at the rain, at her, at the rain again, and said, "Get in."

"No."

"Ms. Valentine. It is raining. Your car is four minutes away. You are wearing shoes that cost more than a used sedan. Get in."

"I said no, Mr. Isos. I don't take rides from men who spent the evening entertaining Selena Crowe."

Something flickered across his face—not embarrassment, exactly. More like the irritation of a man whose alibi had just been checked.

"She was... talking."

"Mm. She was orbiting. There's a difference. It's called body language. I'd explain it, but you seem busy being the sun in someone else's solar system."

The rain hammered down. Kaelan stared at her for a long moment, and then—unbelievably—his mouth twitched. It wasn't a smile. It was the possibility of a smile, the ghost of one, and it was the most alive she'd ever seen him look.

"You're going to stand in the rain to win an argument," he said, "aren't you."

"It's not an argument. It's a correct opinion you're refusing to acknowledge."

"Get in the car, Elena."

The sound of her first name—from him, in that voice, in this rain—hit her like a hand on bare skin.

Her light-blood sang.

No, she told it. We are NOT doing this.

She got in the car.

It was a mistake. She knew it was a mistake the second the door closed, sealing them into a space the size of a confession, all warm leather and cold air and the impossible, magnetic gravity of him.

"Thank you," she said, very stiffly, because she had manners and because she needed the distance.

"Don't read it as mercy, Ms. Valentine." The ghost-smile was gone. He was all glacier again. "I just didn't want to explain to the press why I let a rival drown in a puddle."

"Because that would be so bad for your image."

"It would."

"Right." She looked out the window. The city slid past, blurred by rain, and the silence between them was the loudest thing in the car. "You knew."

He didn't pretend to misunderstand. "Knew what?"

"That my car was stuck. You were coming back from—wherever, at 10:47, in the rain, on the exact route from the gala. You knew."

"Coincidence."

"My driver has worked for my family for eleven years. He's never been 'stuck' on that block. And your car was here in ninety seconds." She turned to look at him, and the weight of it—the years, the war, the impossible pull—sat in her chest like a stone. "You knew."