His Name Was a Secret
1424 Words
Rose woke up with a headache, someone else's jacket over her shoulders, and no memory of how she'd gotten home. "You walked yourself home," Nina said from the kitchen doorway, holding two coffees like a peace offering. "Mostly. I steered you around one trash can and a very confused Uber driver." "Did I...? " Rose sat up too fast and regretted it immediately. "Did anything happen with..." "With tall, rude, and devastating? You kissed him in a hallway, he vanished like Cinderella's evil twin, and you spent the cab ride home describing his jawline in unsettling detail." Nina handed her a coffee. "So. Productive night." Rose pressed her palms against her eyes. "His name was Rowan." "Rowan what?" "He wouldn't say."
Nina's expression shifted...amusement sliding into something more careful. "A guy who won't give you his last name in this city, at that club, wearing a suit that cost more than your bakery's monthly rent?" She sat on the edge of the bed. "Rose. That's not romantic. That's a red flag wearing cologne." "He was funny," Rose said, weakly, already knowing it wasn't a defense. "Sarcastic. He made me laugh so hard I nearly choked on a lime."
"He also left in the middle of your moment because some guy said a name like it was a bomb going off." Rose remembered that part now, through the fog...the way the room's temperature had dropped, the fear in the other man's voice. Mr. Miller. We have a problem. "Miller," she said slowly. "His last name might be Miller." Nina went very still. Then she picked up her phone, typed for ten seconds, and turned the screen around without a word. Rose looked at the headline first: ROWAN MILLER, CEO OF MILLER HOLDINGS, DECLINES COMMENT ON FEDERAL INQUIRY.
Then she looked at the photo. Dark hair. Sharp jaw. Grey eyes that had looked at her like she was the only unplanned thing in a very planned world. Her stomach dropped somewhere near the floor. "Nina," she whispered. "I made out with a man the internet calls 'allegedly connected to organized crime.'" "Yep." "In a hallway." "Yep." "While drunk." "Rose. Breathe." "I told him my actual name." Nina winced. "Okay, that part's less great." Rose grabbed her phone with shaking hands and kept scrolling...photo after photo of Rowan Miller in tailored suits, exiting black cars, a small unreadable smile in every single one, like he found the entire concept of being photographed mildly tedious. Court documents nobody could make stick. A dead business partner three years back, ruled an accident. A name that made reporters nervous just to type.
She should have felt fear. What she felt...infuriatingly, humiliatingly, was the memory of his hand at the small of her back, and the way he'd said you're the kind of beautiful that gets men killed, and the horrible, traitorous thought that crossed her mind before she could stop it: I hope I see him again. Her phone buzzed in her hand. Unknown number. She almost didn't answer. She answered.
"Rose Haven," said a voice she'd know anywhere now...low, amused, entirely too calm for a man the internet was afraid of. "I believe you have something of mine." Her mouth went dry. "I don't even know how you got this number." "I own the city, Ms. Haven. Phone numbers are the easy part." A pause, and she could hear the smirk in it. "You still have my jacket." She looked down. She was, in fact, still wearing it.
"Keep it," he continued, before she could speak. "Consider it a very expensive apology for vanishing on you last night." "Are you actually apologizing, or is this you being sarcastic again?" "With me," Rowan said, "it's almost never just one thing." Rose closed her eyes, torn between hanging up immediately and never hanging up at all. "I have to go," she said instead, the safest lie available. "Before you do." His voice changed, just slightly. Less amusement. More weight. "Whatever you read about me this morning and I know you read something, everyone does the morning after, I need you to do one thing for me."
"What's that?" "Don't believe all of it," he said. "Just enough to be careful. Not enough to be afraid." The line went dead before she could ask him what, exactly, that was supposed to mean. She was still holding the phone to her ear, staring at nothing, when Nina's face went pale looking out the window. "Rose," Nina said carefully. "There's a black car parked outside our building. It's been there for twenty minutes." Rose's heart slammed once, hard, against her ribs. "And someone," Nina added, "just got out of it. He's walking toward our door."
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