Page 30 of Rogue
The bar ran along the pavilion’s far edge, a long stretch of dark wood that ended at a service door covered by a heavy curtain.Tall arrangements of white flowers in crystal vases stood at intervals along its length, screening the bartenders from the main crowd and creating pockets of relative privacy between the blooms.Grant had chosen the farthest one deliberately.I watched him straighten his cufflinks -- platinum, custom, the same ones he’d been wearing the night he gave me the diamond bracelet -- and turn to face me with the ease of a man greeting an old friend at a party.
Someone approached him and he smiled, spoke with them for a moment, then made his way even closer.It didn’t take long before he was nearly within touching distance.
“Lennox.”
He said my name the way he always had.Two syllables that contained no question, only recognition of a thing that belonged to him.
“You look well.”His voice was low, pitched for me alone.“The Tennessee air agrees with you.”
I said nothing.
He didn’t rush to fill the silence.Grant had never rushed anything.He took a sip of his scotch.“Your mother asks about you every day.She’s been unwell.The stress of all this has taken a toll.”
The lie landed between us with the weight of something he’d rehearsed.My mother hadn’t asked about me in years.My mother had stopped being a person who asked questions around the time I turned fourteen, when it became clear that my father preferred her quiet.
“I’m sure she has,” I said.
He nodded, as if I’d offered sympathy rather than sarcasm.“The foundation does good work.I’m glad to see you involved.Though I have to admit, the company is… unexpected.”His gaze moved past my shoulder, toward the cluster of cuts near the auction table, and came back to my face.“These men have a reputation, Lennox.I hope you’re being careful.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you?”He leaned forward slightly, the way a concerned fiancé might lean toward his troubled partner at a charity event.Anyone passing would see only caring.“Because from where I’m standing, you’re living in a motorcycle compound with a group of men who have felony records and federal attention, and you’re calling that fine.I worry about you.We all do.”
Sure.We.I felt the old response rising -- the urge to nod, to agree, to make the conversation easier by surrendering the difficult parts of it.My jaw tightened against it.
“I didn’t ask you to worry about me, Grant.”
Something moved behind his eyes.A recalibration, quick and precise.He took another sip of scotch, buying the half-second he needed, and when he set the glass down his smile had cooled by several degrees.
“Let me be direct,” he said.His voice had lost the warmth.What remained was flat, even, the controlled delivery of a man reading terms from a contract he had no intention of altering.“This situation has gone on long enough.The media attention, the speculation -- it’s embarrassing for everyone involved.But it doesn’t have to continue.You can come home with me tonight.Quietly.No scenes, no headlines.We’ll tell the press you needed time, you’re getting help, you’re back where you belong.The whole thing disappears by morning.”
He stepped closer.
One step.Then another.The gap between us narrowed until the scent of his cologne -- something expensive and understated that I had once found comforting -- filled the space where the night air had been.I could feel the heat of him, the particular radiation of a body that had decided it owned the square footage around it.My lower back pressed against the bar edge.There was nowhere else to go.
“These people can’t protect you, Lennox.”His voice dropped lower.“My family has resources you don’t understand.Connections.The kind that don’t appear on paper.Whatever you think you’ve found here…” his gaze flicked past me again, toward the club members, then settled back on me with a coldness that nearly made me shiver “… it’s temporary.And when it ends, and itwillend, the fallout will reach further than you’re prepared for.I’m offering you a clean exit.Take it.”
I held his gaze.My heart was doing something complicated in my chest, but my face, I hoped, was doing nothing at all.
“No.”
The word sat between us.Small.Final.
Grant’s jaw tightened.A muscle worked at the hinge of it, once, then stilled.He reached for my wrist.
Not a grab.A grip.His fingers closed around me with the practiced precision of a man who had held women this way before and knew exactly how much pressure to apply -- enough to communicate ownership, not enough to leave marks visible above a bracelet.His thumb pressed into the soft underside of my wrist, right where the pulse jumped, and I felt the connection instantly.The same possessive touch he’d used on my jaw in the bridal suite, softened but no less deliberate.
I looked down at his hand.
The skin of my wrist was pale under his fingers.The bruise from months ago had faded completely -- no yellow, no green, nothing but the memory of color living under new skin.His platinum watch caught the string light.The custom cufflink winked.
I looked up at his face.
His eyes were pale blue and utterly still.I had seen them angry.I had seen them perform kindness.I had never seen them like this: calculating, reassessing, the look of a man whose plan had encountered resistance he had not budgeted for and who was now running new numbers in real time.
I did not look away.
The string quartet played on.Ice clinked.Someone laughed.Grant Stewart held my wrist and waited for me to yield.I did not yield.
