ISLA'S POV
Five days off, and I'd expected to walk back into the office and find some version of peace waiting for me. Instead, I found Dare had reverted entirely — the version of him from before Spain, before the terrace, before any of it. Clipped instructions. Impossible deadlines dropped on my desk with no warning. A meeting moved up two hours with a one-line email that read only "be ready."
"You're doing this on purpose," I said, on my third day back, standing in his doorway with a stack of files he'd sent back twice for reasons that had nothing to do with their actual content.
He didn't look up from his screen. "Doing what?"
"Punishing me. For Spain. For the terrace." I dropped the files on his desk harder than necessary. "You can't stand that I said something true, so now you're
