STUCK BETWEEN BROTHERS

LUNCH IS NEVER JUST LUNCH

AURORA

Victor Kingston did not, as it turned out, “clear his calendar and pretend it was a business call.” He simply didn’t show up on the calendar at all, which Aurora discovered when his assistant — a perpetually amused man named Oliver — poked his head into her office at 11:58 and said, “Car’s downstairs. He said if you try to say no, I’m authorized to tell you he’ll just keep asking until you say yes out of exhaustion, so you may as well save us both the trouble.”

Character Note — Oliver Reyes, 29. Oliver has been Victor’s executive assistant for four years, which qualifies him, in his own words, as “part therapist, part bodyguard, part alibi.” He is unflappable in the specific way of a man who has already seen every version of chaos his boss is capable of causing and stopped being surprised by any of it around year two. Fiercely loyal to Victor despite — or maybe because of — the constant teasing, Oliver has a dry, economical wit he deploys mostly for his own amusement, and an uncanny gift for reading a room before he’s fully in it. He likes Aurora immediately, mostly because she’s the first person in a long time who’s made Victor actually show up early to something.

“That’s either very charming or very concerning,” Aurora said.

“With Victor, it’s usually both,” Oliver said, entirely unbothered, and held the elevator.

The restaurant Victor had chosen sat tucked into the corner of a converted warehouse near the harbor — exposed brick, low light, the kind of place that didn’t put its prices on the menu because the people who ate there had never once had to ask. Victor was already seated when she arrived, jacket off, sleeves rolled, looking considerably less like a Kingston heir and considerably more like a man who’d been looking forward to something.

“You came.” He stood halfway out of his seat when she approached — an old-fashioned gesture that looked entirely unpracticed on him, which somehow made it land harder than if it had been smooth. “I had a whole speech ready in case you didn’t.”

“Save it. I might still leave.” Aurora sat, mostly to hide the fact that his smile had done something unhelpful to her composure.

“Ruthless.” He looked delighted by it. “Good. I like a woman who keeps me on my toes. Damien’s dated women who agree with everything he says and it’s the single most boring thing I’ve ever watched in my life.”

“Is that a warning?”

“That’s an observation.” Victor leaned back, studying her with an ease that felt less like performance than it had at the office — like the charm was a door he’d left open rather than a mask he was wearing. “You’re not what I expected, you know. Most people who walk into that building for the first time either shrink or perform. You did neither. You just — existed. Like you’d already decided none of us were worth changing yourself for.”

“I wasn’t trying to make a statement,” Aurora said. “I was trying not to spill coffee on a merger contract.”

“See, that’s exactly it.” He pointed at her with his fork like she’d proven a point. “You say something like that and somehow it’s still more interesting than anything Priscilla Adair’s said to me in four years of knowing her.”

Aurora arched a brow. “Careful. That sounds like you talk about her a lot for someone who claims not to be interested.”

“I talk about her the way you’d talk about a mosquito bite. Frequent, mildly irritating, never romantic.” Victor’s grin sharpened, teasing, but something steadier moved underneath it when he added, quieter: “There’s a difference between attention and interest, Aurora. I’ve had plenty of the first my whole life. You’re the first person in a long time who’s made me feel the second.”

The air between them shifted — not dramatically, just enough that Aurora felt it, a small pull low in her chest that she recognized immediately and distrusted just as fast. She’d built her whole life on not falling for men who made falling sound easy.

“You flirt like it’s a competitive sport,” she said, because deflecting was safer than admitting the compliment had landed exactly where he’d aimed it.

“I flirt like it’s the only honest thing I know how to do well,” Victor said, and for just a moment the teasing dropped away entirely, leaving something unguarded in its place — something that made Aurora’s pulse do an inconvenient, traitorous thing. “Most people in my world say what they think you want to hear. I’d rather just tell you what I actually think. Right now what I think is that you’ve got a laugh you’re rationing like it costs something, and I intend to find out what it takes to get the real one out of you.”

“That’s a very confident plan for a first lunch.”

“I’m a very confident man.” He said it with a wink that took the edge off, but his eyes stayed steady on hers, warm and a little too knowing, like he’d already clocked the exact moment her guard had cracked half an inch and had no intention of letting her forget it. “Tell me something true. Not office small talk. Something real.”

Aurora hesitated — she wasn’t in the habit of handing out real things to men in tailored jackets who ate lunch in restaurants without printed prices. But something about the way he asked, like the answer actually mattered to him and not just as a means to an end, loosened something in her chest she usually kept locked down tight.

“My mother’s sick,” she said, quieter than she meant to. “That’s the real reason I took this job. Not the ambition. Not the opportunity. The insurance.”

Victor didn’t flinch, didn’t perform sympathy, didn’t reach for her hand in some rehearsed gesture of comfort. He just went still, listening, in a way that felt more respectful than any reaction she’d braced for.

“Then I’m glad my father hired you,” he said simply. “And I’m sorry it took her getting sick to get you in that building. You deserved to be there regardless.”

It was such a small thing to say. It shouldn’t have hit as hard as it did.

“Careful, Victor,” Aurora said, voice unsteady in a way she didn’t love. “Keep being genuine like that and I might actually start liking you.”

“Now that,” Victor said, grin blooming slow and dangerous and entirely too pleased with itself, “is the single best thing you’ve said to me all day.”

He reached across the table — not for her hand, just to steal a fry off her plate, easy and familiar like they’d done this a hundred times before instead of once — and Aurora found herself laughing before she could stop it, the real laugh, the one she rationed, the one he’d promised to earn.

Victor’s whole face changed when he heard it. Like he’d just won something he intended to keep.