Sloane pov
Caelan appears in the doorway on the third night. I see him in my peripheral vision tall, jacket still on, standing at the threshold with the expression of someone who has been there longer than they're admitting.
I turn a page and keep reading, I do not acknowledge him, not because I want to be rude, but because the moment I do he has to do something about it — leave, or enter, or explain himself — and right now he is simply watching, and I want to know what he sees.
Emmet is asleep against my arm. Jasper has migrated from the floor to the arm of my chair, following the story with the focused attention of a child who will not admit he's invested. Rowe turned from the window seat minutes ago and has been watching my face as I read with an expression I can only describe as data collection.
Caelan stands in the doorway and looks at all of it for a long moment.
"I told you to keep your distance," he says, very quietly, so as not to wake Emmet.
I don't look up from the page. "You did."
"This isn't keeping your distance."
"No," I agree pleasantly, still reading. "It isn't."
The silence that follows is deafening, the silence of a man who has made an instruction and watched it be acknowledged and ignored simultaneously and is now recalculating as I turn a page.
"They'll get attached," he says, and something underneath the control in his voice is not quite as steady as the rest of it.
I look up then. "They're already attached," I say, keeping my voice low and even. "That happened before I did anything at all, I just showed up."
His jaw tightens. Jasper, to his credit, does not look at the doorway as he pretends not to listen.
"It's a twelve month contract," Caelan says.
"I know what it is."
"When it ends"
"When it ends," I say, "is eleven months from now. Right now it's eight o'clock and someone needs to finish this chapter." I look back down at the book. "You're welcome to stay if you want to hear how it ends."
Another long silence. Then, quietly — so quietly I almost miss it. "What are you reading?"
"The Phantom Tollbooth," I say. "It was Dorian's."
Something crosses his face that he doesn't manage to control in time, he looks at Emmet asleep against my arm, at Jasper rigid and pretend-oblivious on the chair arm, at Rowe who has turned from the window and is watching his uncle with that flat, careful expression that misses absolutely nothing.
Caelan looks at all of it for a long moment. Then he leaves.
I turn a page as I keep reading.
Jasper's hand finds the armrest beside mine in the dark as I turn another page. I keep reading. Emmet breathes slowly and even against my arm, and for the first time since I arrived. Vivienne, I think. You were onto something in here.
I just intend to finish it.
Later I carry the kids to their room, Rowe watches me ease Emmet down against the pillow, tucks his chin, and says nothing. He doesn't need to. When I pull the blanket up he turns onto his side and closes his eyes like he's been waiting for permission.
Jasper is last, as expected. He's sitting up straight in the bed even now, like falling asleep with bad posture would be some kind of defeat.
"You can close your eyes," I tell him, pulling the door too. "I won't tell anyone."
"I'm not tired," he says, and falls asleep seconds later.
I pull the door almost shut, leaving the hallway light on because Emmet needs it, and when I turn around Caelan is at the end of the corridor.
He hasn't said anything yet. He just looks at me, and even from this distance I can read the anger radiating off him.
I walk toward him because standing at opposite ends of a hallway outside three sleeping six-year-olds is not a position I intend to hold, and he turns without a word and I follow him around the corner, far enough from the door that our voices won't carry.
Then he turns on me.
"Stop." His voice is low and controlled and furious underneath both. "Whatever you're doing in there the books, the reading, the tucking in — stop."
"They asked me to read to them," I say evenly.
"I don't care what they asked." He takes a step toward me and I hold my ground, which seems to make it worse. "You've been here for just less than two weeks, and you're already in Dorian's room, touching his things, letting them climb all over you like you're" He stops, jaw tight. "You're not their mother. You're on a twelve-month contract."
"I'm aware of what I am," I say.
"Are you?" Something sharp enters his expression. "Because from where I'm standing it looks like a woman playing a very long game. Soften up the children, charm the staff, make yourself indispensable — and then what? You think I don't see it?"
Something cold moves through my chest, but I keep my face neutral. "You think I'm doing this to get to you."
"Aren't you?" He says it like it's obvious, like I'm naive for pretending otherwise, and the contempt in it is so clean and practiced that for one second I almost believe I deserve it. "You should wake up from that delusion. Whatever you think you're building here — it won't work, you will never have me."
He moves before I register it, closing the distance between us in one smooth step, and then his hand is at my neck, warm and deliberate, his thumb pressing lightly against my pulse like he's checking whether I'm afraid, and the answer my body gives him is humiliating.
His mouth drops to the curve of my neck and shoulder, not rough — slow, purposeful, his lips dragging against my skin like he has all the time in the world and knows exactly what he's doing with it, and I shudder despite everything I know about this man and this moment and exactly what he's trying to prove.
"This," he murmurs against my skin, his voice low and terrible and close, "is all you'll ever get from me."
His mouth moves to my ear, warm breath first, then the deliberate edge of his teeth against the shell of it, and my eyes close before I can stop them, my head tipping back by approximately one traitorous inch, a sound leaving my throat that is quiet and involuntary and completely unforgivable.
His hand slides from my neck to my jaw, tilting my face toward his, close enough that I can feel the warmth of him, and then — nothing.
He steps back as the cold air where he was standing hits me, and when I open my eyes he's watching me with something that might be satisfactory.
Heat floods my face, which I hate, and he sees it, which I hate more.
"Stay away from them," he says, his voice back to its original tone as if nothing happened. "That's not a request."
He turns to leave and I say, very quietly, "Are you finished?"
He stops.
"Because I'd like to be clear about something." I keep my voice steady. "I'm not doing all this for you, I'm not running a strategy and I'm not under any delusion about what this is." I hold his gaze when he turns back. "Those boys lost their father and mother. They are six years old and they are lonely and I read them a chapter of a book. That's the whole conspiracy."
Something moves in his face that he shuts down immediately.
"And as for what just happened," I say, "do that again without my permission and we'll be having a very different conversation."
I walk back down the corridor before he can answer, step into the dim hallway outside the triplets' room, and lean against the wall in the dark with my heart doing something completely unacceptable in my chest.
Down the corridor, I hear nothing.
He's still standing there. I know he is.
Stop it, I tell myself, pressing my fingers to my neck where his mouth was, where my pulse is still going too fast. You have read all two hundred chapters. You know exactly how this man operates.
The problem, a quieter part of me answers back, is that the book never mentioned how good he smelled and the book never mentioned what his voice does at close range, and the book, I think, pressing harder, was not nearly specific enough about any of this.
In my last life, I let men touch me like they owned the rights. This time I was going to make the touching count — on my terms. Break that famous control of his, piece by piece, until the cold CEO realized he wasn't the only one who could play this game.