Page 71 of Mile High Ex's Dad
I look at her for a moment. Her face. Her hands. The way she’s holding herself too carefully now, trying to seem steady when she clearly isn’t. I know that look. I’ve seen it before. A woman trying to manage herself past the point where management is still enough.
One of the staff says, “Sir, Ms. Laurent pushed her.”
I lift my head.
Camille’s mouth parts. “I barely touched her.”
My eyes stay on her just long enough to silence whatever she was going to say next.
Then I look back at Sienna. She’s still trying to stand on her own, still trying to wave this off before anyone makes too much of it, and I can see the effort it’s costing her.
That settles it.
Before she can argue, I slide one arm behind her back and the other under her knees and lift her.
She lets out a startled breath and catches at my shoulder. “Viktor, no. Put me down.”
“No.”
“I can walk.”
“You can be angry with me later.”
She opens her mouth again, probably to do exactly that, but I’m already turning.
Ethan steps forward. “Father?—”
I don’t stop. I don’t even look at him at first. “We’ll talk later,” I say.
Something in my voice must land the way I intend, because when I do turn my head, he has already stopped moving.
“It wasn’t like that,” he says.
“Later.”
That ends it.
The hallway clears in front of me without anyone needing to be told twice. Camille says something behind me, brittle and angry, but I don’t catch the words and I don’t care to.
The only thing I care about is the woman in my arms.
She’s lighter than she should be. Tense all through her body. Trying very hard not to show fear and failing only in the small ways most people would miss. The fast pulse at her throat. The way her fingers tighten on my shoulder when I shift my hold.The way her free hand keeps hovering near her stomach before pulling away.
I notice all of it.
I carry her into the room and set her down carefully on the sofa.
The second she’s seated, she says, “I told you, I’m fine.”
I kneel in front of her. “Tell me the truth,” I say. “Is anything hurting?”
I take out my phone and call Maksim before Sienna can start telling me, for the third time, that she’s perfectly capable of checking herself.
He picks up on the second ring.
“Where are you?”
“In the drive,” he says. “I was thinking of going to the hospital to check on the girl.”
