The Rolls-Royce glided through London’s rain-slicked streets like a vessel slipping free of a storm’s grip—silent, sure, sacred. Eleanor leaned back against the plush leather, her fingers resting on the steady swell of her belly. *Leo.* The name still shimmered in the air between them, not just spoken, but *claimed*. A declaration. A promise. A first act of joint authorship in the story they were rewriting.
Dominic sat beside her, quiet—not in withdrawal, but in reverence. His gaze kept drifting to her hand, to the sapphire ring catching the streetlight like a shard of captured sky, to the rise and fall of her breath beneath her green wool dress. He didn’t dare touch her. Not yet. Not until she invited him back into the orbit of her skin.
Clara drove with the calm precision of a woman wh
