Page 72 of Mile High Ex's Dad
“Come upstairs first.”
A beat. “Why?”
“I need you to look at someone before you go.”
There’s a pause just long enough for him to understand more than I’ve said.
Then, “I’m on my way.”
I end the call and slip the phone back into my pocket.
Sienna is watching me. Her color is a little better now that she’s sitting, but not much. She still looks shaken, still too pale, still as if she’s holding herself together by discipline alone. The roomI brought her into is mine, though I haven’t told her that yet. I didn’t think about where I was carrying her until I was already halfway there.
Now that we’re inside with the door shut, it’s obvious.
“Where am I?” she asks.
“My room.”
Her eyes move past me then, taking it in.
It’s the largest suite in the house, too large for a man staying two nights. Dark wood, cream walls, tall windows opening onto the rear gardens. A sitting area near the fireplace with low leather chairs and a long sofa. A bed wide enough to be absurd, dressed in white linen and a charcoal throw folded precisely at the foot. Everything expensive. Understated. The sort of room designed for privacy and power rather than comfort, though it manages both.
My jacket is over the back of one chair. A watch case lies open on the dresser. The air still carries the faint scent of my cologne and the coffee I left half-finished an hour ago.
“Wow,” she says quietly.
I almost ask which part of it she finds worth remarking on, but the question feels too close to vanity and too far from the point.
Instead I say, “Sit still until Maksim gets here.”
She gives me a look. “You really don’t hear how bossy you sound, do you?”
“I hear it. I simply don’t object.”
That gets a small breath out of her that might have become a laugh if the morning had been kinder.
Good.
I turn toward the bar and pour water, more to give her a moment than because she needs help lifting a glass. When I hand it to her, her fingers brush mine, and that small contact is enough to bring back entirely unhelpful memories of another room, another flight, another time I had her flushed and open and looking at me as if she had forgotten where she ended and I began.
I sit in the chair opposite her before my thoughts get any worse.
She drinks, then lowers the glass and watches me in the quiet that follows.
Something in her face changes. Not much. Just enough that I know she has noticed something.
“What?” I ask.
Her gaze drops to my arm. “You keep favoring that side.”
I hadn’t realized I was.
“It’s nothing.”
She continues to look at me in a way that tells me she doesn’t believe that for a second. Then she leans forward slightly and, before I can think to stop her, reaches for my arm.
Her fingers touch just above the wound.
