SECOND CHANCE WITH MY POSSESSIVE BILLIONAIRE CAPTAIN

Chapter 3

NADIA

The Hotel Meridian lobby smelled like money, all polished marble and fresh flowers arranged in expensive, careless clusters. I checked the room number twice before stepping into the elevator, my stomach tight with a feeling I refused to call nerves.

I had texted Camille from the cab, three words, going to 1408, and she had sent back a single line, be careful, which had not helped at all.

Room 1408 sat at the end of a quiet hallway, the kind of hallway built for people who paid extra never to run into anyone else. I knocked twice.

The door opened, and it was not Vivienne Holt standing on the other side.

"You," I said, my voice coming out flatter than I intended.

"Me." Grayson leaned against the doorframe, dressed down in a plain grey shirt that somehow made him look more dangerous than the suit had. "Come in. You're letting the cold air out."

"Where is she?"

"There is no she." He stepped back, holding the door open, patient in a way that made my skin prickle. "There was never going to be an interview, Nadia. I asked Vivienne to make the call. She owed me a favor."

My hand tightened on the strap of my bag. "You lied to my editor."

"I gave your editor exactly what he wanted, an exclusive nobody else could get. He's not going to complain when the story lands." Grayson's voice stayed maddeningly calm. "Are you going to stand in the hallway all night, or are you going to come hear what I actually have to say?"

Every instinct told me to turn around and walk back to the elevator. I stepped inside instead.

The room was large, a suite with a small sitting area near the window, city lights scattered below like something out of a postcard I had never let myself want. Grayson closed the door behind me, and the click of the lock felt louder than it should have.

"Sit," he said. "Please."

"I'll stand."

"You always were stubborn." A faint, humorless smile crossed his face. "I used to find that endearing. I still do, actually, which is probably a problem."

"Nothing about tonight is endearing, Grayson. You had me lied to. You had me sitting in a cab for twenty minutes psyching myself up to interview a woman who doesn't even exist as the story I was told."

"She exists. She's just not the story." He gestured at the small sitting area again. "Sit. I promise I'm not going to bite."

"That's not exactly reassuring, coming from you."

"No," he admitted. "I suppose it isn't."

He crossed to the window instead, putting distance between us that did not feel like distance at all, not with the way he was watching my reflection in the glass. "You want to know why I'm playing nice for your interviews. Why I let you back into my life with a camera crew trailing behind you like nothing ever happened."

"I assumed it was good publicity."

"It's not publicity." He turned around, and something raw moved behind his eyes, gone as fast as it appeared. "I've had five years to think about the version of this conversation where you explain yourself. I've had five years to build entire arguments in my head, entire speeches, for a woman who was never going to give me the chance to say any of them."

"I'm not here to relitigate what happened between us."

"Then why did you take the assignment?" He crossed the room slowly, close enough now that I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze. "You could have refused. Callahan would have found someone else eventually. You didn't refuse."

"I need this job."

"That's the lie you tell yourself in the mirror every morning. Try again." His voice dropped, quieter, rougher at the edges. "The truth, Nadia. Just once."

My pulse hammered somewhere in my throat. "I don't owe you the truth."

"No," he agreed softly. "You don't owe me anything. You made that very clear five years ago." He reached out, slow enough that I had every chance to step back, and did not. His fingers brushed my jaw, light as a question. "But I think some part of you came here tonight because you wanted to see if this would still feel the way it used to."

"Grayson."

"Say it like that again."

I hated how badly I wanted to. Five years should have been enough time to forget the exact weight of his hand, the particular way he said my name like it belonged only to him, like nobody else in the world had ever been allowed to use it the same way. Apparently five years had not been nearly long enough.

"This is exactly why I left," I said, my voice unsteady in a way I resented. "This. Whatever this is. It never gave either of us room to think clearly."

"Maybe thinking clearly was never the point."

"It has to be the point. For both of us." I stepped back, putting air between us again, though it did nothing to slow my pulse. "You have a season to finish. A team depending on you. I have a job that requires me to write about you honestly, which I cannot do if I let you stand this close to me."

"Then tell me to stop."

I did not tell him to stop.

"I meant what I said earlier," he murmured, close enough now that I could feel the warmth of him even without touching. "Some part of you came here tonight because you wanted this exact moment. I don't think you even hate me for being right."

"I don't hate you at all." The admission slipped out before I could stop it, quieter than I meant it to be. "That's the problem. I never did."

Something shifted in his expression, raw and unguarded in a way I had not seen since long before I left him, and for one dangerous second I forgot every reason I had ever given myself for walking away.

A sharp knock at the door broke whatever had been building between us, and Grayson's whole body went rigid, some instinct sharpening in his eyes that had nothing to do with me at all.

"Ignore it," he said quietly.

The knock came again, harder this time, followed by a voice I recognized immediately, one I had heard exactly once before, over the phone, right before he told me to be at this hotel by eight.

"I know you're in there, Donovan," Callahan called through the door, his voice carrying a satisfaction that turned my stomach cold. "Open up. I've got a photographer with me, and we both know how this looks."

Grayson's jaw tightened. "He followed you."

"I didn't tell him where I was going."

"You didn't have to." Something dark and furious settled over his face, aimed somewhere past me, toward the door, toward a man who had sent me here in the first place. "This was never about an interview for him either, was it. It was never about the story at all."

Another knock, sharper, and Callahan's voice again, closer now, close enough that I could hear the smile in it even through solid wood.

"Say cheese, you two," he called out. "This is going to be a very good picture."

Awaiting your review before Chapter 4.