HIS SONS GIRL

CHAPTERTHREE;SIENNA

Of all the people I could have stumbled into tonight.

Him.

He was still holding my arms. Steady. Like catching me was nothing. Like he did this every day and it bored him.

And I was staring up at him like an i***t.

Julian Hale.

I had heard that name a hundred times from Cole's mouth. Always with that same look on Cole's face — half admiration, half something that ate at him. His adopted father. Self-made. Ruthless in business. The kind of man people moved out of the way without being asked.

I had heard the other things too. The quieter things.

That no woman had ever been linked to him. Not one. Not publicly, not privately. People said he was cold. Said he was untouchable. Said he didn't feel things the way normal people did.

And then the rumour. The one people talked about in low voices.

That he was impotent. That was why he adopted a son. That was why he was always alone. That was why there was never any buzz of any woman around him.

Any other night I would have apologised and stepped back and gotten away from him as fast as I could. He was Cole's father. He was intimidating. He was everything the rumours said — cold eyes, no expression, the kind of quiet that made you feel like you were being assessed and falling short.

But tonight was not any other night.

Tonight Cole had called me a simp and an orphan in front of a room full of people. Tonight I had watched my cousin laugh against his shoulder while his friends cheered. Tonight something hard and angry had moved into my chest and it was not leaving.

And this man, this man right here was the one person Cole Hale had never been able to reach. The one person Cole had spent his whole life wanting to be and never managing to get there.

The thought arrived fast and complete.

You want to hurt Cole? Really hurt him?

Go after his dad.

I made a decision in about three seconds.

I let my face relax. I stopped looking panicked and started looking a bit something else. Softer. Warmer. I tilted my head up at him and smiled slowly.

"Well," I said. "Nice reflexes."

I didn't step back. I let my hand rest on his arm where he was still holding me. Looked up at him properly — the way I never usually bothered to look at anyone.

Something moved across his face. Quick. It was almost nothing.

"You should sit down," he said. Low voice, flat like he was reading from a list.

"I'm fine," I said. And I moved a tiny bit closer instead of away. "I'm much better now actually."

He looked at me. Really looked — slow, steady, giving nothing back. Then something behind his eyes shut down. Like a door closing.

I felt a shiver down my spine.

"Miss —"

"Sienna," I said quickly. Friendly and easy. Like we were already friends.

A pause. Short but heavy.

"You've had too much to drink," he said. "I'll have someone call you a cab." He gestured to his assistant.

Not warm. Not mean. Just brief, like the conversation was already over and he was just waiting for me to catch up.

I held my ground. "I don't want a cab. I want another drink." I kept my voice light. "You look like you could use some company."

He looked at my hand on his arm.

Then back at me.

"What you need is water and a cab home," he said. "Not another drink."

He stepped back. Gently. In a way that moved my hand from his arm without making it awkward. Then he turned his head slightly and said something to the man standing just behind him — his assistant, I realised had been there the whole time like a shadow.

A minute later there was water in front of me and the assistant was saying a car was outside.

I opened my mouth.

Julian looked at me once. Just once. Those grey eyes, completely steady. And something in that look said the conversation was over in a way that had nothing to do with being rude.

He just was not moving on this.

He walked me to the door personally. Waited while I got in. Leaned down and told the driver an address.

My address. Which I had never given him.

The door closed.

I sat back and looked out the window as the bar disappeared behind me.

He had known who I was the whole time.

The whole time.

And he still sent me home.

Fine, I thought.

If he wouldn't come easily — I would find another way in.

JULIAN'S POV

He stood on the pavement until the cab turned the corner.

Then he breathed out slowly through his nose and went back inside.

He needed a moment. Just one. Which was not something Julian Hale typically needed.

He had known who she was the second he caught her. He would have known her anywhere even in darkness. That was the inconvenient truth he had been managing quietly for two years. From the first night Cole brought her to introduce to him, something had shifted in him that he had immediately and firmly put back where it belonged.

She was his son's girlfriend. That was the end of that.

But tonight she was right there. Hands on his arm, looking up at him, close enough that he had spent thirty seconds actively reminding himself of every reason to step back. And he had. He had stepped back, called the car, and put her in it.

He had handled it.

What no one would ever know. Not his son, not his assistant, not anyone — was how close he had come to not handling it.

He had a reputation. The Ice King, they called him in business circles, he had heard the whispers. Cold. Unreachable. Unaffected by things that moved other men.

They were right. About almost everyone.

She was the exception he had never told a single person about.

He walked back into the bar, hands in his pockets, face giving away nothing. He was nearly at the exit when he passed the private booths and his eyes moved automatically to the one with the curtain half open.

He stopped.

Cole. Jacket off, arm around a dark-haired girl, laughing with his friends like a man without a care in the world.

Julian stood very still.

He looked at the girl beside his son. Then he understood. All of it. Why Sienna had been alone at a bar on a Friday night. Why she had been drinking and hurting loudly and reaching for something, anything, to make it stop.

His jaw tightened.

Cole didn't notice him standing there. Cole never noticed things like that.

Julian looked at his son for one long moment — the boy he had taken in, given everything to, tried to build into something. He felt something move through him that he kept very carefully off his face. He had to hold his temper in because right he did not care that he was his son he wanted to hurt him for hurting her.

He turned and walked out.

His hands, deep in his pockets, were not quite steady.

And that — for a man like Julian Hale — said everything.