STITCHED IN LIES

Chapter 8: May I?

Tuesday came. Dominic parked outside the Tower and opened her door with the expression of a man paid to see nothing.

The elevator ride to the forty-first floor was the longest ninety seconds of her life.

She had barely slept. She had spent half the night rehearsing sentences. I'm only here for the exercise. I won't be long, I didn't mean to bother you, and she knew with a sinking certainty that she would not use any of them. A woman who needed that many scripts was a woman who had stopped trusting her own voice.

The doors opened. The club was nearly empty again, the same pale wood and chrome, the same city sprawled beyond the glass. And at the far heavy bag, back to her, a gray T-shirt dark between the shoulder blades, stood Chad Wenthworth.

He did not turn when she came in.

Of course he didn't. A man like that never turned first.

"Left bag," he said. "You're early."

"How did you know it was me?"

"You walk like you're counting the steps."

Now he turned. His eyes were dark and unreadable, and they did not wander over her body the way eyes had learned to, in rooms at charity events and corporate dinners and shop windows. They simply stayed on her face, as though everything he wanted to know was written there in a language only he had been taught.

"Your husband is Marcus Maine."

Her stomach dropped. The room tilted.

"You looked me up."

"Yes."

"Without asking."

"If I'd asked, you'd have lied." He said it flatly, with no apology and no heat, a fact set on a table. "I'll tell you what I know and what I don't, and you'll tell me nothing you don't want to. That's the rule."

She heard her own voice come out thin. "Why do I get rules from you?"

"Because you've had none. Only orders."

Shyne stared at him.

Nobody had ever said that out loud. Nobody had looked at the shape of her days, the walls and the manners and the careful, sensible yes, and called it by its right name. Lilian had come closest. But Lilian loved her, and love softened things. This man spoke like a surveyor measuring a field.

She was suddenly furious. And then, just as suddenly, she was close to tears, and both feelings were so enormous that she had to look at the floor.

"Why are you doing this?"

"I don't know yet." For the first time, something in him looked uncertain, and she understood that it cost him more to say that than any speech. "Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'll be on the next bag. We use no names that don't belong to this room. If you want to leave, you walk out. I won't follow you."

She should have left. She knew that. She stood in the clean quiet air with her heart beating in her ears, and she knew exactly how this would look to the man who owned the tracker app.

But nobody had ever told her she was allowed to leave, and meant it.

She stripped off her jacket, walked to the left bag, and began wrapping her hands without looking at him. Her fingers were clumsy. The cloth twisted. She tried again, and it twisted worse, and heat climbed up her neck because she could feel his eyes on her, and she could not make her hands obey.

"May I?"

He was standing three feet away. He had not come closer. He held out one hand, palm up, a clear and patient space between them.

Something in her chest cracked, small and bright.

May I.

Nobody had asked her that in three years. Marcus took. Politely, always politely, but he took. She had forgotten that a hand could wait.

"Yes," Shyne said, and was astonished by how steady it sounded.

He crossed the three feet. His fingers were warm and dry and quick, and he rewrapped her wrist with careful efficiency, thumb pressing the cloth flat against her pulse, and every nerve in her arm lit up like a struck wire. It was not a caress. He did not linger. But she felt her breath catch, shamefully, and she felt something low and hot pull tight inside her.

Oh, she thought. Oh, no.

He let go. He stepped back. His face gave nothing away, but his hands, she noticed, were not quite steady when he dropped them to his sides.

"Fix your wrist," Chad said quietly, and the sound of it ran down her spine like a lit fuse.

She followed his instruction, turned to the bag and hit it so hard her teeth rattled.

However, neither of them noticed the small red light blinking on the ceiling above the heavy bags.