Page 30 of Captive Promise

I have twenty-seven days of a woman waiting out a sentence, and I planned for more than that.

I broke a glass in my hand after she left the study.

I didn’t even notice I’d done it until Luca found me standing over the sink with blood running into the drain and asked if I wanted him to call for a doctor.

I told him no, we already have a doctor, and he had the sense not to laugh.

So I’ve let her have her silence since.

Three days of it.

Meals eaten without a word, her eyes on the plate, gone the second she can manage it.

I told myself I was giving her space.

Lie.

I have twenty-six days left with this woman.

I’ve spent three of them the same way I spent the last two years. Watching from a distance and calling it patience.

Enough of that.

I find her in the gym a little after four.

I don’t knock. Some habits don’t die just because I’ve decided to try being a better man for her.

She’s on the treadmill running hard.

She’s wearing a bright pink sports bra and matching biking shorts.

Her ponytail swings behind her as she sprints, her eyes focused in front of her.

I stop in the doorway and forget every reason I came down here.

My mouth goes dry, which is fucking humiliating for a man in his forties.

My pulse picks up to match her pace and there’s a tightness low in my gut that has nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with the sight of her.

My eyes track the sweat on her collarbone and the muscle working in her thighs, the small, private sounds of her breathing hard that I have no right to be standing here listening to.

I’ve had two years of photographs but this…this is so much better.

My eyes trail down her body.

Sweat runs down her spine, her legs, her shoulders, the flat line of her stomach.

I look at every inch of her and feel nothing close to shame about it.

I’ve wanted this woman for two years, and I’ve had a lot of practice telling myself that wanting was as far as it would ever go.

Standing here now, watching her, none of that practice does me any good.

My hands ache to touch her—her waist, her thighs, the damp skin at the back of her neck—and I have to grip the doorframe to keep myself exactly where I am, because if I move right now I don’t entirely trust what I’ll do.

This is her with no one watching. I could stay in this doorway an hour. I could stay a lifetime.

I don’t get the hour. Hell, I don’t even get another minute.