HER ONLY EXCEPTION

CHAPTER 20 -ROOM SERVICE

The elevator ride up felt endless.

Andrea kept her arms folded tight across her chest and her eyes fixed on the polished doors, but her mind refused to cooperate. She could still feel the exact pressure of Henry’s thumb against her jaw in the corridor three hours earlier, which felt deliberate and warm.

The way her breath had caught before she could stop it. The way he had noticed but said nothing, just watched her with those dark eyes like he had already seen every crack she was trying to hide.

She pressed her arms tighter and told herself she was fine. She had walked back into that meeting room, sat down, and stayed perfectly professional for the rest of the afternoon. No one had known, what happened in the corridor earlier because she was handling it well.

The elevator doors opened on their floor.

Henry stepped out first. She followed. They walked the quiet corridor in silence, the kind that felt almost normal after the long day, until they reached the suite.

Henry disappeared into his bathroom after a few minutes. The sound of the shower started moments later, low and steady through the wall.

Andrea changed out of her meeting clothes into something more comfortable, pulled her hair into a loose knot, and settled on the sofa with her laptop and the Bellamy follow-up notes. She worked in the growing dark while Paris lit up outside the tall windows, streetlights flickering on one by one like distant stars.

Twenty minutes later, a soft knock sounded at the suite door. That was probably Henry's.

She glanced toward Henry’s bathroom and the shower was still running so she set her laptop aside, crossed the room, and opened the door.

“Room service.” A young man with a trolley smiled at her, two covered plates and a bottle of wine arranged neatly. Andrea stepped back to let him in, signed the slip, and took the tray herself.

“Bonne nuit,” he said, and disappeared down the hall.

She turned around with the tray in her hands and her entire body went still with the sight she just saw, Henry was standing in the middle of the shared living area.

The sight hit her in pieces. He had clearly come out to answer the door and stopped the moment he saw her there. A white towel was wrapped loosely around his hips, the only thing covering his nakedness. Water still clung to his skin in slow, shining trails that ran from his shoulders down the hard lines of his chest and stomach, disappearing beneath the edge of the towel. The cut of muscle at his hips pointed downward in a way that made her mouth go dry before she could stop the reaction.

She almost dropped the tray. But her grip tightened instead, forcing her expression to stay neutral, even as heat flooded her face and something low in her stomach twisted tight.

Henry had frozen mid-step, one hand already reaching for the tray. For a second he looked almost surprised, like he had not planned for her to see him like this. Then his gaze shifted. It moved over her face, slow and knowing, and she felt the exact moment he registered the way her eyes had dropped and snapped back up. He knew exactly what that split-second glance had done to her.

“I was going to get the door,” he said finally, voice low and rough from the shower.

“Well, I got it,” Andrea answered. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. She was proud of that small victory.

“So I see…” but he still had not moved. The towel sat dangerously low on his hips, and the air between them suddenly felt too warm, too thick, like the suite had shrunk around them.

Andrea turned toward the kitchen counter before she could do something stupid. “Please go and change,” she said, setting the tray down with careful precision. “I will serve the food.”

A pause stretched between them.

“Andrea.”

The way he said her name sent another unwelcome shiver down her spine. She kept her back to him, hands flat on the cool marble. “Go. Please.”

There was another beat of silence, then, quietly and almost to himself, he murmured, “Right.”

She heard his bare feet on the floor as he walked back toward his bedroom and the soft click of the door closing behind him.

Andrea stayed exactly where she was, palms pressed to the counter, staring at the covered plates while her heart hammered against her ribs. The scent of warm food and the faint trace of his shower gel still hung in the air. She could still see the water sliding down his skin, the way the towel had clung to his hips, the dark trail of hair that disappeared beneath it.

Her rules were screaming in her head but she ignored them.

Because for the first time since they had arrived in Paris, the connecting door between their suites no longer felt like a barrier.

It felt like an invitation she was terrified she might actually accept one of these nights.

And as she uncovered the plates with unsteady hands, Andrea realized the real problem was not that Henry had come out in a towel.

The real problem was how badly she had wanted to look.

Dinner was set by the time he came back out properly dressed now in a dark shirt and sweatpants sleeves already rolled to the arm. Andrea was already seated, looking at her food and absolutely not thinking about the towel.

Henry sat down across from her.

He poured the wine and set her a glass in front of her without asking. Then picked up his fork.

For a moment neither of them said anything, just eating in silence, like they were practicing table etiquette and Andrea thought it was fine. “We are two professionals eating dinner in Paris after a successful business meeting and everything is completely normal.”

Then Henry looked up at her with the specific quality of attention he'd been deploying since the meeting at the corridor — steady, unhurried, like he had already decided something and was simply waiting for her to catch up.

Andrea picked up her wine glass and took a sip looking back at him but said nothing because she did not trust what would come out of her mouth if she tried to speak.

Outside, Paris glittered quietly through the floor to ceiling glass. Inside the suite the only sounds were the soft clink of silverware and the low ambient hum of the city below them and the particularly charged silence of two people eating dinner together while pretending they were not thinking about everything they were thinking about.

Henry reached for the bread at the same moment she did, their fingers brushing against each other.

Neither of them moved for a moment. Just that fingertips, the warmth of contact, the small ordinary accident of two hands reaching for the same thing.

Andrea pulled her hand back. "Sorry. Go first"

"Don't be," he said.

The same words. The same tone. Exactly what he'd said on the plane when she'd grabbed his arm during the turbulence and she knew he knew that she remembered that and the look on his face said he knew it too.

Andrea looked back at her plate, picked up her fork and ate her dinner like nothing had happened at all. She did not look at him again for the rest of the meal.

But she felt him looking at her the whole time, steady and patient and completely unhurried.

She felt every second of it and she didn't feel uncomfortable for the first time in a long while.