Chapter 1 He Swoops In The autumn wind had grown cold and cutting. It was past nine in the evening, and the hospital emergency wing hummed with its usual restless energy. Clara Whitmore leaned against the corridor wall in a sleek black evening gown so thin it barely counted as armor against the chill. Her arms were folded, her posture all languid elegance, and she let out a slow, drowsy yawn. A nurse walked past and couldn't help stealing a glance. One look was all it took to lose track of where she was going. Clara was breathtaking in the way that stopped people mid-step. She had the kind of beauty that didn't ask permission, all luminous skin and wide, upswept eyes that held equal parts innocence and something far more dangerous. Her irises were a pale, clear color, like shallow water over pale stone, bright and startlingly vivid. When the corner of her mouth curved, it was seven parts allure and three parts purity, wild and refined in the same breath. It was an extraordinary face. And the figure beneath that gown was no less extraordinary, all graceful lines and quiet, devastating curves. And yet this was the woman who had sent a man well over six feet tall straight to their emergency room. Word had spread fast: he had a fractured hand and a mild concussion. Clara's gaze drifted to the nurse, who was still staring. Her mouth curved upward, faintly teasing. "Am I pretty?" "Yes," the nurse replied, completely without thinking. Clara's smile deepened, bright and a little wicked all at once. The nurse's heart absolutely lost its footing. She was fairly certain she was about to discover something new about herself tonight. Just then, another woman appeared from down the hall, moving with a kind of deliberate, practiced softness. Her voice was gentle when she spoke. "Clara, there you are. I've been looking everywhere for you." So, the beautiful one was called Clara. What a lovely name. This new arrival wore a white embroidered dress with a cashmere wrap over her shoulders, every inch of her composed and pristine, like a pale lily blooming quietly on still water. But standing next to Clara, her light simply couldn't hold. Clara looked at the woman who'd called out to her with the same mild, unreadable expression she gave most things. They shared no blood. After Clara had been brought back into the Rowe family, they'd become sisters in name, and that was as far as it went. Her name was Evelyn Rowe. On Clara's nineteenth birthday, she'd never in her life expected that a man would appear and tell her, with complete sincerity, that the orphan girl who'd grown up eating whatever kind strangers provided was actually the eldest daughter of one of Eldhaven's most prominent families. "You're the Rowe family's firstborn daughter," he'd said. "Clara, come home with me." Eldhaven had no shortage of storied, powerful families, and the Rowes were one of the most prominent among them. Clara had wanted a real family. She'd wanted it for as long as she could remember. But when she actually came home, she discovered that her parents were not quite what she'd imagined them to be. They didn't particularly like her. Evelyn, on the other hand, had been adopted after Clara went missing as a child, and she'd been cherished and doted on every single day since. Clara's return hadn't changed that dynamic in the slightest. Whatever warmth and affection existed in that household, very little of it found its way to her. She'd tried. Half a month had passed, and nothing had shifted. If it weren't for her brother, Erick Rowe, the one who'd come to find her and bring her home, and the genuine, uncomplicated warmth he showed her, Clara wouldn't have stayed a single day longer under that roof. She'd grown up alone, and she was fine. Being the Rowe family's eldest daughter wasn't something she needed. She didn't care about the title, and she certainly didn't ache for it. "Are we done here?" Clara asked, her voice even. "Not yet. Mom wants to see you." Evelyn smiled, small and soft. "Alright," Clara said. The man she'd broken was Carson Lawson, the second son of the Lawson Group. The Lawsons sat somewhere in the middle tier of Eldhaven's social hierarchy, a family of solid means with business ties to the Rowes. … Today had been the day Clara was formally presented to society. The Rowes had thrown a lavish, glittering affair to announce her place in the family to the world. She hadn't gone looking for trouble. Carson had simply had a mouth that wouldn't quit, and hands that thought they were welcome where they weren't. Inside the hospital room, Carson lay in the bed. The moment he saw Clara in the doorway, the color drained from his face, and something ugly moved through his expression: fear, anger, and the particular wounded pride of a man who couldn't stand what had happened to him. Carson's mother, Julia Lawson, looked at Clara with open contempt, the kind that came from a woman who considered her son's honor entirely more important than the truth. "If I had a daughter this crude and uncivilized," she said, her voice sharp with deliberate disdain, "I wouldn't let her be seen in public, blood or no blood. How generous of your family to send her out into the world before anyone bothered to teach her how to conduct herself." The elegantly dressed woman standing beside Julia turned a cold, flat look toward Clara. "Clara. Apologize to Carson." The woman demanding an apology was Rachel Leclair. Her mother. Clara looked at her and asked, very calmly, "Why?" Just those few words were enough to make Rachel's composed expression crack at the edges. This daughter of hers was nothing but trouble: unruly, impossible to manage, and apparently incapable of a single quiet evening. Rachel drew a breath. "You hit someone. That makes you wrong. Come over here and apologize." Clara stood very still. Not a single question had been asked. Not a single person in this room had wondered why she'd hit Carson, or what had led to it, or what he might have done to deserve it. Rachel had simply walked in and decided. The disappointment that moved through Clara was cold and thorough. "I hit him, yes," Clara admitted. "But I'm not apologizing for it." Carson didn't deserve an apology. A fractured hand was getting off lightly, as far as she was concerned. "You—" Rachel was known throughout their social circles as a model of grace and restraint. And yet her hand was already rising, the threat of a slap hanging in the air between them. Clara didn't move. She was already bracing to catch it when a figure stepped in front of her and took the blow instead. Evelyn's head snapped to one side. A vivid flush bloomed across her cheek almost immediately. Her voice came out soft and careful. "Mom, please. Let's just talk. Don't hit my sister." Rachel froze. When she realized it was Evelyn she'd struck, her expression shifted in an instant from fury to stricken guilt. "You foolish girl. Why would you jump in front of me like that?" Evelyn's cheek burned red as she lifted her eyes gently to her mother. "Mom, even if she handled things the wrong way, you could just tell her. She'll listen." Evelyn's gentle words didn't cool Rachel's temper in the slightest. If anything, knowing that the slap had landed on Evelyn instead of Clara only stoked the fire hotter. The look she turned on Clara grew colder by the second. What kind of daughter is this? A walking disaster, that's what. Nothing but grief wrapped in a pretty face. There wasn't a single thing about Clara that Rachel found acceptable. Clara watched the whole display and let the faintest smile touch her mouth. What a performance. "Evelyn," she said, her voice light and unhurried, "isn't this exactly what you wanted?" Evelyn's reddened cheek was doing extraordinary work for her at that moment. She looked up with an expression of pure, uncomprehending hurt. "Sure. Why don't you tell me exactly what I did wrong?" Clara's tone carried no real edge, just a lazy, almost bored quality, yet underneath it ran something that made it very clear she stood above the room and knew it. Evelyn bit her lip. "You hit someone." Clara pressed, still perfectly calm. "I hit him because Carson deserved it. Isn't that reason enough?" Evelyn's eyes shifted just slightly. "Do you have any proof of that?" Proof wasn't a difficult thing to obtain. Give her a computer and she'd have everything she needed in minutes. But she had neither a computer nor even her phone on her right now. Clara said nothing for a moment. "There must have been some misunderstanding between you two," Evelyn said, reading the room with a precision that didn't match her gentle expression. "Clara, please don't let your emotions make this worse than it already is." Clara looked at her with an expression that held a great many things she wasn't saying. Since the day she'd come home, Evelyn had resented her presence. The hostility came wrapped in soft manners and sympathetic eyes, but it was there in every small moment. And when genuine provocation came along, Clara wasn't the type to step aside graciously. She'd been known to take things that weren't hers to take, including men. She'd heard that Evelyn had her heart set on someone. Adrian Sterling, the third son of the Sterling family, one of Eldhaven's oldest and most powerful dynasties, with roots deep enough to anchor a city and members spread across every significant industry in the country. The interesting thing was that the Sterlings and the Rowes had a standing arrangement, a formal betrothal that predated Clara's return. If Clara had never come back, the woman most likely to have fulfilled that arrangement would have been Evelyn. But it wasn't stealing if the arrangement had been made for Clara in the first place. The word "deserved" was apparently the last straw for Julia. She rose from her chair with the energy of a woman who had been patient long enough. "Rachel," she snapped, "are you hearing your daughter? Is that how she speaks? I am telling you right now, if I don't get a satisfactory resolution tonight, I will have her taken down to the police station myself. By tomorrow morning, everyone in Eldhaven will know that your family's precious firstborn daughter is nothing but a wild, graceless embarrassment." Rachel didn't flinch. She had every intention of coming down hard on Clara, but the cold composure on her face never cracked. "The fault is mine for raising her poorly," she said flatly. "Do whatever you feel is appropriate." She smoothed a hand over her jacket. "Evelyn, we're leaving." "But my sister—" "Leave her." Rachel's voice was ice. "She made this mess. She can sort it out herself." This was the consequence of not listening. Evelyn started to say something, stopped, and ultimately said nothing at all. She was entirely satisfied with how the evening had landed. As long as she had her place in the Rowe household, Clara could forget about displacing her. She would make sure Clara understood that having the right name didn't make anyone lovable, and it certainly didn't guarantee a future worth having. … On the ride home, Evelyn sat quietly for a moment, turning something over in her mind. Then she asked, "Mom, do you know where things stand with the Sterlings right now?" Adrian had apparently been expected at tonight's celebration, but he hadn't appeared. That told her something about how seriously he was taking the betrothal. "With a temperament like Clara's, the Sterlings would never actually let Adrian bring her home," Rachel said, the worry written plainly across her face. "And Adrian is exceptional. He wouldn't settle for someone like her. That arrangement may as well already be void." If it fell through, the loss to the Rowe family would be significant. Evelyn bit her lip and pressed forward. "Mom, you still have me. I've cared about Mr. Adrian for years. Please help me." After Rachel left with Evelyn, Julia had a very clear picture of exactly where Clara stood in the Rowe household. She picked up her phone without hesitation and called the police. Clara still looked completely unbothered. A police station visit was fine with her. She had no money and no phone, so she'd have to make the trip regardless, borrow a computer somewhere, and prove her innocence. She'd get her dignity back one way or another. … Outside the hospital entrance, a black Maybach pulled up to the curb with the slow, unhurried authority of a vehicle that had never needed to rush. The man who stepped out wore a perfectly fitted suit, and he moved with the ease of someone who had never once in his life needed to prove he belonged anywhere. He was tall, with the long-limbed proportion of a figure that suits were made to flatter. Everything about him radiated the polished, effortless distinction of a man in his prime. The night obscured his face somewhat, and gold-rimmed glasses caught the light before the rest of his features did, but even so, any observer would've known instinctively that he was extraordinarily good-looking. When he stepped into the light, the full picture of him landed in the room like something out of a portrait. Refined, quietly luminous, the kind of face that belonged to a different and more beautiful era. Eldhaven had its share of compelling men, but Adrian Sterling was the name people reached for first. He was, by near-universal consensus, the standard against which others were measured. And there he was, a man usually confined to financial headlines, standing in a hospital corridor at this hour. He held his phone to his ear, his voice unhurried and low. "Grandpa, I'll handle it." "Try to be approachable about it," the voice on the other end said. "I'd rather not have you frightening off my future granddaughter-in-law." "Got it. I'm hanging up now." The crowd had their eyes on Adrian and missed the man walking just behind him: a clean-cut, attentive young man who fell into step at his shoulder and spoke in a low, efficient voice. "Mr. Sterling, I have the full picture now. Ms. Whitmore struck Carson because he verbally degraded her and then attempted to put his hands on her, given that she's attractive." This was Phillip Stout, Adrian's personal assistant. "Noted," Adrian said. Phillip glanced down at the file in his hand and let out a short, unimpressed breath. "Seriously? Five years of kickboxing, and Ms. Whitmore dropped Carson in under three exchanges." Five years of training, and that was what Carson had to show for it. He moved on without dwelling on it. "Ms. Whitmore is in a difficult position at the moment. Mrs. Rowe left the hospital roughly ten minutes ago and abandoned her entirely. Mrs. Lawson has filed a police report, and officers are already on their way." Adrian's gaze lifted just slightly. His only question was, "What floor is she on?" "Eighth." A knock came at the hospital room door. Julia assumed it was the police and looked up, already composing her expression into something appropriately aggrieved. What she saw instead stopped her cold. It was Adrian. Her mind scrambled to make sense of it. Why was he here? Unless... Julia's expression shifted through several things at once before she pulled herself back into something resembling composure. "Mr. Adrian," she said carefully, "what brings you here?" Chapter 2 Mesmerizing But Dangerous "I'm here for my fiancée," Adrian said, his voice perfectly pleasant and completely unhurried. He said it like it was the simplest fact in the world, and it left Julia absolutely speechless. The betrothal between the Sterlings and the Rowes was real. They'd never taken it seriously because the Sterlings had never once brought it up, not until this moment. Getting justice for her son tonight was going to be considerably more complicated than she'd planned. Clara had been waiting for the police to show up. She hadn't expected this instead: a legendary fiancé, stepping through the door like something conjured from the pages of a story. The voice reached her before anything else did, low and unhurried and absurdly easy on the ears. Clara's gaze moved toward it on its own. One look, and Clara thought, with complete certainty, that she would remember this man for the rest of her life. He stood there quietly, the light barely enough to do him justice, and yet nothing about him could be dimmed by something as ordinary as poor lighting. There was a settled, unhurried quality to him, the kind that came from years of being tested and never once broken. Like uncut marble, you sensed the brilliance before you ever saw it, and when it finally emerged, it was blinding. His features were extraordinary, each one drawn with the precision of someone who had been very deliberate about the whole affair. Gold-rimmed glasses sat on a high, clean nose bridge, lending him the air of an aristocratic figure lifted straight from an illuminated manuscript, refined and devastatingly attractive, with something quietly dangerous underneath all that polish. Clara's wide, expressive eyes tilted upward just slightly at the corners as she looked at him, curiosity sharpening to something more like genuine interest. Julia's expression churned through several complicated things at once. Adrian would take Clara with him, that much was clear. But her son was lying in that bed with a fractured hand and a concussion, and she wasn't about to let this evening end without some form of satisfaction. She pressed forward, her jaw set. "Mr. Adrian, you've arrived at just the right moment. This reckless girl put my son in that hospital bed, and her own mother walked out without a word of accountability. You're her fiancé. Tell me how you intend to settle this." Settle it? Julia knew what her son's behavior actually looked like up close. The sheer audacity of treating Carson as the wronged party was breathtaking. Adrian let his gaze drift toward Carson in the bed, measured and unhurried. It was a brief look, nothing more, but Carson felt it land somewhere in his chest, and his legs quietly lost their confidence beneath him. He held himself together on sheer wounded pride. Adrian Sterling was not a man people took lightly. He ran the Sterling empire with one hand and, if the whispers were to be believed, something considerably more powerful with the other. The weight of his presence was not something most people walked away from without noticing. Carson told himself there was no proof. The evidence had been handled. There was nothing to find. "We should settle this properly," Adrian said. Julia allowed herself a small, satisfied breath. "I'm glad you're reasonable, Mr. Adrian." Adrian continued, still perfectly unhurried. "Mr. Carson verbally degraded my fiancée and then attempted to put his hands on her. Mrs. Lawson, how would you like to settle that?" Julia's face went white. She'd come looking for leverage and had just handed over her throat. "That's impossible," she said, the words coming out too fast. "My son would never do something like that." She looked at Clara when she said it, and despite herself, she couldn't entirely deny what she was looking at. The girl was stunning in a way that made denial feel faintly ridiculous. Out of pure, female, deeply irrational spite, she refused to admit it. She refused to admit that Clara had better looks than Eldhaven's most gorgeous woman. "It seems you aren't entirely familiar with your son's habits," Adrian said, and glanced at Phillip. "Show Mrs. Lawson the evidence." Phillip produced his phone and tapped open a video. It was exactly as described: Carson's words, Carson's hands, and then Clara's response, fast and absolutely precise. He'd gotten close enough to reach her, and she'd put him on the floor in one move. The fractured hand and the concussion were the natural consequences of his own momentum. Julia had nothing left to say when the video ended. What she did have was a creeping, cold fear about what Adrian might do next. Of all the women Carson could have targeted, it had to be the one engaged to Adrian Sterling. The man was known for his grace and his civility, which made the occasional glimpse of what lay underneath all the more alarming to those who'd seen it. Adrian didn't get called in the tone people used without having earned it in ways that weren't entirely comfortable to think about. Julia folded. "I clearly failed in raising him properly. Mr. Adrian, I hope you'll extend some understanding. We've caused a great deal of trouble tonight." Adrian's smile was small and perfectly pleasant. "At least you know yourself well enough to admit you never quite managed to be a proper example. With a mother like you, it's no real surprise the son turned out the way he did." Julia's face cycled through several colors. All she did was call Clara an uncivilized hick, and now Adrian was throwing it all back at her. She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Adrian wasn't finished. "Since you haven't been able to teach your son correctly, perhaps I should take a turn?" Julia's nerve broke entirely. She turned sharply toward the bed. "Get up and apologize. Right now." Carson climbed out of bed, looking like a man walking to his own execution. "Mr. Adrian," he said, through his teeth, "I had too much to drink. It was a lapse in judgment. I've paid for it. I hope you can overlook this." Beside him, Clara pressed her lips together against a laugh. The irritation that had been sitting in her chest all evening had lightened considerably. The score wasn't fully settled yet, but this was a very satisfying start. Carson was obviously furious underneath all of it and was not even trying to direct the apology at the right person. Hey, I'm the one he owes an apology to. And this guy doesn't hold back when he berates someone. Adrian's expression remained neutral. "The person you owe an apology to isn't me." Carson turned to look at Clara. She was watching him with an expression of pure, unhurried entertainment, like someone who'd bought a front-row seat to exactly this. He bit back whatever was rising in his throat. "Ms. Clara," he said stiffly, "I behaved disgracefully. I apologize. I hope you'll be generous enough to overlook it." Clara's mouth curved at one corner. "I'm still upset about it. Say 'Boss Lady, I'm sorry, I was wrong' twenty times, and I might consider it." Carson said nothing for a long, pained moment. Phillip was working very hard to keep his face professional. This woman really had no intention of letting anyone off easy. Making a grown man degrade himself like this in front of witnesses, with a fractured hand, no less. Clara was something else entirely. "Clara, you—" Julia's temper flared, and her mouth opened, but Adrian's gaze moved to her in the same instant, quiet and absolute, and whatever she'd been about to say dissolved somewhere in her throat, leaving her red-faced and spluttering. The standoff held for a tense, uncomfortable moment. Julia caught Carson's eye and gave him a sharp look that communicated everything. Carson's expression turned the color of old storm clouds. He opened his mouth. "Boss Lady, I'm sorry, I was wrong!" he bit out. All twenty times, each one colder and more bitten-off than the last. … When he finished, Adrian added pleasantly, "Let this be a lesson. Don't let it happen again." Clara turned a warm, genuinely amused look on Adrian. She had to admit, for a fiancé who'd shown up completely unannounced, he'd made quite an entrance. Something about it felt lifted straight from a novel, the kind where the devastatingly capable man appears from nowhere and dismantles the entire situation before the heroine has to lift a finger. Julia swallowed her humiliation and managed a strained smile. "Mr. Adrian, my son has apologized, and Ms. Whitmore has agreed to forgive him. I trust that video can be deleted now?" Adrian didn't look at her. He looked at Clara, his voice unhurried. "Ms. Whitmore, what do you think?" Chapter 3 Are You Sure? Clara's expression stayed perfectly light. "I said I'd forgive him. I didn't say anything about deleting the video." She smiled pleasantly. "Mr. Sterling, the police will be here shortly. Let's just hand everything over to them." Adrian gave a small, composed nod. "Clara, you've gone too far!" Julia's fury finally boiled over completely. Clara paid her no attention whatsoever. She had a fiancé holding the room together, so she was perfectly content to stand there looking quiet and delicate. "How exactly has she gone too far?" Adrian asked. Julia opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She felt like she was about to have a medical episode. "Mrs. Lawson," Adrian said, his voice calm and steady and carrying the kind of quiet authority that didn't need to rise to make itself felt, "I would strongly encourage you to choose your words carefully when addressing my fiancée." He turned his head slightly toward Phillip. "Leave someone here to wait for the officers." Phillip acknowledged the instruction and moved to arrange it without further comment. Julia swallowed every bit of resentment she had left and held it down. She couldn't afford to cross Adrian, and now that Clara had his name behind her, she couldn't afford to antagonize Clara either. The elevator doors slid shut. A quiet settled between them. "Mr. Adrian," Clara said. The man looked down at her. "Thank you," she said. "For tonight." "You don't have to thank me," Adrian replied, his tone easy and unhurried. "It was the right thing to do," he added. "You'll be my wife one day. Once you're part of my family, it's not anyone else's place to treat you that way." Clara turned that over silently for a moment. Was this man genuinely planning to marry her? Just because some arrangement had been made between their families years before either of them had a say in it? She was young. Thinking seriously about marriage hadn't exactly been on her agenda, and the idea of discussing it with someone who was, for all practical purposes, still a stranger felt extremely premature. She chose her words carefully. "Mr. Sterling, would you be open to reconsidering the arrangement between us?" Phillip glanced at her with genuine surprise. In all his years working alongside Adrian Sterling, he had never once encountered a woman who didn't want to marry him. Clara was something entirely unexpected. Adrian looked down at her. She was, objectively, stunning. If beauty operated on a ten-point scale, she sat at the very top of it without question. Hers was the kind of beauty that had edges to it, vivid and unapologetic, like a black rose in full bloom, mysterious and elegant and lethally lovely, and yet her features held something else too, a sharp, clean confidence in the line of her brow and the way she carried herself, bold and entirely unbothered. She wasn't the reckless, unrefined creature the rumors had suggested. Even the way she'd handled herself tonight had been precise and effortless. Her character appeared sound. Her looks were more than passable. Bringing her home would honor the promise to his grandfather and settle the matter cleanly. "There's nothing to reconsider," Adrian said, his voice carrying the same tone he might use to discuss a quarterly report. "Barring anything extraordinary, you'll marry me." The thing was, she really wasn't sure she wanted to. She did not say this out loud. He'd just untangled an entire mess on her behalf, and throwing that back at him without warning seemed both ungrateful and unwise. When she thought about it from a different angle, though, marrying a man of this caliber had its advantages. It would give her a foothold, and more importantly, it would give her a clean exit from the Rowe household. That alone made it worth considering. Not that she needed the support. She was perfectly capable on her own, with or without the Sterling name behind her. She followed Adrian out of the hospital, and the autumn night wrapped around her the moment they stepped outside, cold and sharp-edged against her bare arms. The gown was far too thin for a night like this. Then something warm settled across her shoulders, cutting through the chill in an instant. It was Adrian's jacket. It carried the faint, woody scent of amber and cedar. The man was a gentleman, no question about it. Everything he did was measured and considered, never crossing a line, never making things awkward. She could see why people responded well to him. But that was all he was. A gentleman. Approachable on the surface, quietly remote underneath. He could look after you, and he would, but warmth wasn't part of the equation. Love certainly wasn't. This was a courtesy he extended because she was his fiancée, and for no other reason. Adrian checked the time. "Shall I take you back to the Rowes' place?" Clara raised an eyebrow. "I'm not going back there." Just the thought of walking through that door and having to look at Rachel and Evelyn at this hour made her head ache. She wanted to sleep somewhere quiet and be left alone. "I have my own place in Eldhaven," she said, her voice easy. "You can drop me there." "Alright," Adrian said. They got into the car. The warmth of the interior settled around her immediately, chasing the last of the chill away. Clara reached up to slide the jacket off her shoulders and held it out toward him. Adrian didn't take it. "Keep it on," he said simply. "Okay," she replied. The cedar-and-amber scent from the jacket was stronger now, warm and settling, and Clara had been tired before any of this started. Her head felt heavy and pleasantly fuzzy, the kind of drowsy that made thinking feel like too much work. City lights blurred past the window in soft, trailing streaks. Clara closed her eyes. A few minutes later, she was asleep. Soft instrumental music played through the car's speakers. Adrian had his documents open in his lap, but as the car moved through the quiet streets, he became aware of a subtle shift in weight: the woman's head had come to rest against his shoulder. Her breathing was slow and even, and she showed no signs of waking. "Turn the music off," he said. Phillip reached for the control without a word. In his peripheral vision, he caught a glimpse of the two of them in the back seat, and something in his chest made a quiet, complicated observation. Adrian was being remarkably tolerant. He was letting her lean on him. Women had been throwing themselves at this man for years, and he'd never given any of them so much as a second glance, let alone this kind of proximity. It would be wonderful if Adrian actually chose to invest in this marriage. But Phillip had long since accepted that was unlikely. The man had built walls around himself so thoroughly that the idea of him loving someone felt like trying to light a fire underwater. Thinking about it that way, he found himself feeling just a little sorry for Clara. The drive took about half an hour. The driver pulled up to the address Clara had given, Maple Ridge, one of the quieter and more exclusive residential areas in Eldhaven. The fact that she'd been living here entirely on her own, without the Rowe name or its resources, said quite a lot about her. Adrian touched her shoulder to wake her. Clara opened her eyes slowly, the way people did when sleep hadn't quite let go yet. Her gaze in that unguarded moment was soft and a little hazy and considerably more arresting than it had any right to be. "We're here already?" she murmured. "Yes," Adrian said. "Which building? The driver can pull closer." "Building Two, Section B." "Direct him." … Three minutes later, the Maybach rolled to a stop in front of the building. Clara slipped the jacket off her shoulders and held it back toward him. She stepped out of the car, then turned and bent slightly at the waist, looking in through the open door. "Goodnight, Mr. Sterling." "Goodnight," Adrian said. Clara lived on the twenty-first floor, the very top. She keyed in her code, stepped inside, and let the door close behind her. A long, hot shower later, she felt considerably more like herself. She pulled a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet, settled into the corner of the couch, and sipped it at whatever pace she felt like. Back at the Rowe estate, Barry came out of his study and found Rachel and Evelyn downstairs finishing a late snack, but there was no Clara anywhere in sight. He frowned. "Where's Clara?" Rachel set down her spoon without looking up. "I didn't bring her back with me." Barry looked at her. "She refuses to be reasonable," she claimed. "If she doesn't face any real consequences, she'll never learn, and she'll keep creating problems for this family." Barry said nothing for a moment. His wife had loved their daughter deeply once, had watched over her with all the fierce tenderness of a mother who knew how precious something was. Then, Clara had disappeared at five years old, and the accident that took her had broken Rachel in ways that time hadn't fully repaired. She'd slipped into a dark, hollow place for a long stretch afterward, and it was only when Evelyn had come into their lives that something in her had slowly rebuilt itself. And now the real daughter had come home, and the warmth Rachel had once had for her was simply gone. Maybe that was what happened when you loved someone from a distance for long enough. Maybe the years had quietly worn it all away. Or maybe all that love had been redirected somewhere else, and there was nothing left to give back. Barry himself wasn't without guilt in this. Clara's disappearance hadn't been entirely outside his responsibility, and he'd carried that weight for years. Whatever else she was, she was still his daughter, and she was still the Rowe family's eldest. "Even if Clara is difficult," he said, his voice tightening, "she's still our daughter. You're her mother. How could you just leave her there and walk away?" "I don't have it in me anymore," Rachel replied, her face still. "Is she still at the hospital?" "Mrs. Lawson probably had her taken to the police station by now." Barry's expression darkened considerably. "That is completely unacceptable! Do you have any idea what that does to this family's reputation?" "Clara has been damaging this family's reputation since the day she walked back through that door," Rachel said, with the kind of flatness that was worse than anger. "What's one more incident?" "Mom, Dad, please don't argue," Evelyn pleaded softly, her voice the picture of gentle concern. "It's not worth the tension between you." The world believed the Rowes to be a devoted, harmonious couple. In reality, the distance between them had been quietly growing for years, long before any of this had started. Barry had nothing left to say to her. He turned and went back upstairs to his study, already reaching for his phone to have someone look into where Clara actually was right now. A few minutes later, the report came back, and Barry went very still. Not long after Rachel's departure, Adrian Sterling had arrived at the hospital and personally escorted Clara out. She hadn't come home. Barry sat with that for a long moment. Was she with Adrian? Was the Sterling-Rowe arrangement actually still alive after all?
